Zack Sheets may not have been able to cut it as a miner on Gold Rush: White Water, but he has now opened his own logging business.
Dustin Hurt and his Gold Rush: White Water crew have just finished one of their most successful gold mining seasons yet. But this team has not always been the well-oiled machine that we know and love today.
In fact, when Gold Rush: White Water was just starting out, the entire operation (including Fred and Dustin Hurt’s crew) looked almost entirely different to how it does these days.
What happened to Zack after he left Gold Rush: White Water?
There are a few Gold Rush: White Water crew members, like Paul and Wesley Richardson, who have been with the Dakota Boys since the beginning of their daring Alaskan mining operation.
But, there are also a few crew members who have only made a few brief appearances in the show’s now, six-year run on television.
The latter category includes young Zackary “Zack” Sheets, who joined the Dakota Boys’ operation early on in the first season.
Unfortunately, since Zack has never returned to the show after he stormed off the set following a heated disagreement with Dustin in this first season, fans of the show have been wondering about what happened to this inexperienced miner after he left the show.
Fortunately though, it seems like Zack did not let this failed experiment in mining get him down. And he has made quite the successful career for himself as a logger over the last few years.
Re-watch Zack’s episodes on Gold Rush: White Water
Although Zack managed to make quite the impression on Gold Rush: White Water fans who have been watching this first season from home, he only ever appeared on two episodes of the show.
If you would like to re-watch Zack’s very brief Gold Rush: White Water appearance from start to finish, you will need to find the following episodes of the show on Discovery Go, Max, Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Google Play (and more):
| Episode | Title | Initial air date |
| Season 1, Episode 1 | “Between Craziness & Insanity” | January 19, 2018 |
| Season 1, Episode 2 | “First Gold” | January 26, 2018 |
Zack is part of the Gold Rush: White Water family
It has now been almost six years since Zack made his first appearance on Gold Rush: White Water and longtime fans of the show may have forgotten how he originally landed the job at McKinley Creek with so little experience to begin with.
The Dakota Boys’ mining operations have always been, first and foremost, a family-first operation. And Zack fit right into this dynamic as Jen’s (Fred’s then-girlfriend’s) son.
Avid fans of Gold Rush: White Water will likely already know that Jen and Fred eventually tied the knot in a private ceremony held in 2016.
They stayed together until Fred’s death in 2023 and Jen still runs his public Facebook page to this day.
It also seems like there were no lingering hard feelings between Fred and Zack after this inexperienced miner’s departure from the show, as Fred posted a photo of the two of them together as recently as May 2021.
Zack has now become a regular television star
Zack had an incredibly short run as an Alaskan gold miner and star of Discovery’s Gold Rush: White Water. But he actually had some television experience before signing on to do this show alongside Fred and Dustin.
In fact, Zack’s television career stretches almost as far back as Dustin and Fred’s careers do. Zack, who has been interested in the world of heavy machinery since he was a teenager, is, however, more interested in high-tech logging than diving for gold.
He actually got his very first taste of what it is like to be a reality television star on a different Discovery Channel show called Siberian Cut in 2014, when the producers interviewed him during his brief stint as a travelling logger in Russia.
Over the years, Zack has also logged in places like Finland (and other parts of Western Europe), Minnesota, Wisconsin and more.
What Zack is doing now
Since Zack never returned to Gold Rush: White Water after the whole campfire-incident, and Siberian Cut was never renewed for another season – Zack has largely dropped off the reality television map throughout the last few years.
However, the variety of day-in-the-life style videos that he has posted on his YouTube channel reveals that he is still working in the logging industry to this day.
Zack has now even started a business called Sheets Trucking & Excavation LLC and it looks like he is already training his young son to take over their family business one day.
