‘Gold Rush: White Water’—The Dakota Boys Prove They’re Crazier Than Ever in Discovery’s Spinoff Series
Whether you loved them or hated them on earlier seasons of Gold Rush, you won’t be able to turn away from the Dakota Boys’ latest mining venture in Gold Rush: White Water, premiering Friday. The father-and-son mining team—Fred and Dustin Hurt—admittedly know what they are doing is beyond extreme as they put together a team of diverse divers, mountaineers and bush mechanics to extract gold from raging rapids in a remote canyon in Alaska.
“It is one of the most impossible mining operations you could ever imagine,” Fred tells us. “Just getting there was absolutely excruciating.”
In a chat with TV Insider, Fred Hurt shared why health is more important than family, how Gold Rush: White Water is actually “real” reality TV, and more.
How, after working for Todd Hoffman for several seasons on Gold Rush, the Dakota Boys got Discovery Channel to give them their own show:
Fred Hurt: Dustin had this idea. He wanted to go up there [to the canyon]. He had some claims there, and so we decided we’d go see what we could find. That’s basically how it evolved, and we worked on it a little bit, and then Discovery said, “Man, you guys are doing something pretty interesting here. We’d better follow you.”
On being over 70 and mining in extreme terrains:
The year before, they were taking us over by the waterfall, and of all 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! I always have people ask me a question: “Fred, what is the most important thing in the world?’ And I’ve said, “Well … ” And they said, “It’s gotta be family and friends,” and I said, “No, it’s not.”
Of course, they’re very shocked by that, and I always say, “No, it’s good health.” Good health, because then you can enjoy all the rest of the good things that life has got to offer. So, 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.
Dustin Hurt submerged to his chest in McKinley Creek, in Discovery’s Gold Rush: White Water (Discovery Channel)
How extreme is “extreme”?
It’s not for the faint of heart. I mean, you’re looking down at 250 feet straight down. These are cliff walls. The walls on the sides of Porcupine Creek that we’re crossing, and where we’re working, are vertical. I mean, they’re 200 or 300 feet straight up, and when you go over that edge out there, hanging by a couple of little straps [editor’s note: they need to zipline across the canyon to even get there], it’s a little bit of a pucker moment, and we saw that fright in the eyes of some of the guys for the first time they ever went across that thing. We had to do this twice a day for the entire season.
What you see is what actually happened:
We were not in the business of re-creating things. This, we caught it as it happened. I would just have to say that some of the show will make you cringe. The seriousness of it, the levity of it, the interaction between Dustin and I and the crew and whatever. But fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, brothers and sisters—they don’t always get along in life, and this is a lot of what you will see in this show. The dynamics amongst the crew and some of it’s gonna be tough to watch, but this is the way real life is.
Gold Rush: White Water, Fridays, 10/9c beginning Jan. 19, Discovery Channel
New episodes of Gold Rush, Fridays, 9/8c, Discovery Channel
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Dustin is a total asshole, I'm glad the green horn QUIT, Dustin doesn't deserve someone with his drive and determination to help his lazy, yes lazy ass. Dustin is one of those guys that has always lived off of others sucess and abilities, he has very little ability of his own and it is easier for him to just be an ass because it takes self evaluation to identify the problem and learn from it. He is too stupid to even realize that he's the problem (like a 5th grade bully), however its his little world that he lives in and even though he lives off of other people's abilities, at the end of the day he's still that same small minded guy who could never lead people to sucess, and he has to live with that guy in the mirror who only bring people down, instead of building them up.
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Well said!
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We can't watch this anymore. Dustin is such an ungrateful, fresh-mouthed brat who spends all his time disrespecting his far-more experienced father that he destroys enjoyment of the show for the viewer. Wish he'd go back to the donut shop (or wherever he worked before this) and let his father handle the white water "dig."
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I hate to say it, but the moment I saw the first episode of 'Gold Rush' White Water, I knew they weren't going to find gold at the bottom of the pool they were dredging in. I know what you are going to say, just another armchair gold miner who doesn't know sh** about anything. The true is, I am a gold miner, and have been for thirty years. As they say, been there, done that and have the scars to prove it. To start, within the first year of mining, I read and talked to other miners about many things, one of them about mining at the bottom of a 'plunge pool'. From a distance, it looks inviting, and like the perfect place to mine for gold, right? Wrong. As an old miner proved to me, any gold that falls into the plunge pool is soon pounded into smaller and smaller bits until it's flushed out by the rushing water. Why, you asked. If you look at the video, you'll see why. There was very little fine material in the place they were dredging, due to all the rocks being in constant motion because of the rushing water. Any plunge pool is like a ball mills, gradually grinding and pounding everything into smaller and smaller pieces. You have to ask yourself why they found one nugget on the surface. That being it was recently washed down from higher up the river and hadn't time to settle down. As a golden rule, gold doesn't fall out or stop for very long in swift moving water. Their better bet was just down steams on that rock bar you see on the inside of the bend. This is where the gold and fine material dropped out. Any sand or gravel bar on an inside bend would have produced better results than what they got from that pool, and in a more accessible location. I hate telling someone he is doing something wrong, but in this case, I wish I could talk to them and share some of what I know. It's hard and frustrating for me to watch the show, wishing I could call them up and tell them. But what the hey, it's just another reality television show, right?
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The first episode really delivered. This show's gonna do good. The Dakota Boys are more relatable as they don't have the huge operations and budgets like the Hoffmans, Parker, and Tony Beets.
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