'Gold Rush: White Water' Season 3: Veteran gold miner Fred Hurt shares that it's 'adventure' that attracts him rather than gold
A tough septuagenarian, his son and a group of men try to survive harsh conditions in Alaska only to find gold. Now, doesn’t that sound like an old-timey adventure you’d want to see? ‘Gold Rush: White Water’ brings you exactly that. Except this Discovery Channel show is a documentary series and it is as real as it gets.
About to enter its third season, the show will see a new twist this time. But before we get to that, let’s find out who the grumpy old star of the show really is. Seventy-five-year-old ‘Dakota’ Fred Hurt has been gold mining in Alaska for over ten years. He is known to be a "straight-shooting, self-taught gold miner who speaks his mind and is not afraid to rub people the wrong way".
Born on July 10, 1945, Fred began his construction career in the late sixties, working as a commercial diver in the Gulf of Mexico. There he learned underwater construction, demolition, and salvage. According to Discovery Go, in 2004, after nearly 25 years of running his own construction company, he retired. But only to follow his passion. After an unsuccessful few seasons of mining at Porcupine and Caribou Creek, he moved on to claims in Nevada, Wyoming, and Montana. Then in 2008, he returned to Alaska. Here he helped design, build and operate a gold processing plant. In one short season, his five-man team managed to extract over 600 ounces of gold from the frozen ground.
Fred is way more fit than your average man in his 70s. And this, despite the fact that his left leg is “bent, twisted, crooked, and shorter” by four inches -- he wears a two-inch lift inside his cowboy boots. In fact, he was supposedly unfit while he was still in his 60s, working. But ever since he started mining, he’s managed to become more fit than ever.
In an interview with TV Insider earlier this year, Fred said, “The year before, they were taking us over by the waterfall, and of all the things they didn’t want me to go down there because they didn't think I could do it. What's wrong with these people? They don't know me!” adding, “I have been blessed with good health. Been busy, I worked hard all my life, so I'm no stranger to hard work. I was never a mountain climber, though, but I sure became one.”
Being in remote areas with extreme terrains requires strength, endurance, and physical fitness. Had Dakota Fred not possessed all three, he wouldn’t have made it to season three, now would he? And it's not all for the gold. Speaking to Hollywood Soapbox, Fred admitted that there was something more than gold that drew him to his excursions. "The adventure is what drew me. I’ve worked hard all my life -- not taking many vacations, which I’ve come to regret -- but that’s exactly what drew me, the adventure. I never really had gold fever, but it doesn’t mean I don’t have a thrill when finding gold."
To get to know more about Fred, tune into the Discovery Channel on November 8.
