Yo.
- What up? - What's up?
- What's going on? - Well, I got some news.
I gotta leave for a few days.
I've gotta go meet the agent
that's been working on this water license.
And I gotta go meet him down in Vancouver.
The timing's terrible, but I pushed it off all year.
And if I don't get this done right now, then, you know,
is just not gonna move at all.
Timing kind of sucks, but that's pretty important.
There's only two things to focus on right now,
it's getting pay out of the cut
to the plant and getting that pay
through the plant, and that's it.
- Sounds good. - Appreciate it, guys.
All right.
On the edge of what I just told all those guys,
I mean, just with the way things have been going,
just kinda just keep your eyes on everything,
you know what I mean?
No problem. I'll keep it light
and keep everyone fed.
And if not, a swift kick in the ass will solve it.
- I can yell, too. - Thanks, buddy.
Yeah.
Everything's still up in the air.
You know, with this water license,
our future here is unknown.
And I could be stuck
holding something that's not worth anything.
I'm not saying I'm gonna come back with an answer,
but by going down there and having some talks,
I might be able to make this happen.
Rick ness's mining career is on shaky ground.
After going all in to buy his own claim early this season,
he needs to secure a new water license,
or this could be his last chance to mine Duncan creek gold.
We gotta make sure we get every ounce of gold out of the ground here
before the winter freezes us out of here.
It's coming soon.
The guys here, they've worked so hard this year,
and, you know, they even risked
their gold bonus and everything that we've got on... on Vegas valley.
Rick has risked $1 million
to mine the 180-foot-deep Vegas valley.
But his gamble is starting to pay out,
delivering over $670,000 in gold last week.
Now, he's aiming to smash his original 1,500-ounce goal
and get as much gold as possible for his crew.
Rick's struggles have put the crew on edge
and frayed their relationship with foreman buzz legault.
So, while he's away,
Rick's put best friend, zee zaremba, in charge.
Whatever I can do to help
keep everyone on the same page while Rick's gone.
Rick was saying keep, pay at the plant, and keep the plant...
Running.
So, that's our main objective at this point, so...
If you don't take any risks, you may not get reward.
Mechanic Ryan Kent clears tailings.
Our gold bonus went into that cut,
and pretty excited to actually see
what this ground can give all of us.
It's the final push here,
and the main focus is to keep that plant running.
And I'm pushing to the limit to try to keep it fed.
In the cut, Bailey car ten digs pay.
Well, I promised Rick that, you know, that plant
won't stop till, till it freezes.
Hopefully, you know, he gets... comes back
with some good news,
or, you know, or at least has an idea
of what the heck our future is gonna be.
Looks like the water is rising.
It's a challenge every day right now,
how much groundwater is coming in here.
It's just a pain in the ass.
We'll have to go back to hauling the slop to keep the cut dry.
Hey, buzz, can you hear me?
I've gotta get this crap out of this hole.
Go back down and move this pump again.
180 feet deep in Vegas valley,
Bailey has dug below the water table...
Causing the cut to flood and a mud slide to wash in,
covering the pay in worthless sludge.
To fix the problem, buzz will dig a deeper pit
for the pump to drain the water,
while Bailey removes the slop on top of the pay
and trucks it to a waste pile.
Until that's done, no pay can be sent to the plant.
We are dealing with the slop right now,
throwing sloppy loads,
sloshing back and forth in the rock trucks.
Hey, Bailey, you got a copy?
Yeah, go ahead, zee.
- Hey, man. - How you doing down there?
This pay pile is getting pretty low.
No more fresh pay is going up to the pile.
Not getting much accomplished,
only can do two scoops at a time loading the trucks.
So that's, where a lot of the time is,
you know, disappearing here.
Running out of pay and stopping
the plant is not an option.
Buzz lowers the pump
into the deepened drainage pit.
Hey, Bailey, you got a copy?
Bailey, do you got a copy?
I said, "Bailey, do you have a copy?"
Give me a second.
This pay pile is just getting really low.
We're, like, down to the nitty-gritty up here.
Yeah, man,
this is gonna take a little bit longer than expected.
It's gonna take a day or two, for us to do this,
just to get the stuff down.
Yeah, if you're gonna be a day,
I definitely don't have enough...
Well, I don't know what you wanna do.
As much as I hate to shut down the plant,
I actually think we're gonna have to.
I know, Rick said
you know, keep pay coming to the plant
and keep the plant moving.
That's the only things he wanted.
Who knows how long it's gonna take Bailey
to get back on the pay,
so this is our only option right now.
Nobody wants a company to die.
We're at the point where it's just a monster,
we just need to shove handfuls of gold
down its throat in order to not lose our ass.
As winter descends on the Yukon,
Parker schnabel finds himself in an unfamiliar position.
The season's starting to wind down to a close.
It's been difficult.
We're well behind this season right now.
It's a struggle.
And it's only gonna get worse.
Parker started the year with high hopes...
Aiming to pull $25 million
from his recently purchased dominion creek claim.
But decoding the ground has proved difficult,
and he's only banked $14 million.
To right the ship,
he wants to bring in another 2,500 ounces
before the big freeze.
Man, it's been a rough one with where we're at for gold,
and we're just coming into panic season for me.
Right now, he's sluicing the elbow cut,
which netted him 280 ounces last week.
And his wash plant, big red,
is working through the top pay layer in the bridge cut.
But the gold payouts have been meager.
Big red's just about done
plowing away on top gravels.
The bridge cut, I don't know how to UN-bleep This
as far as gold goes.
The numbers in the bridge cut haven't been over the top.
We're just fighting and scrounging
for the little bit of gold we can get.
In the bridge cut,
plant boss Tyson Lee loads trucks
with the last red gravels for big red.
We got the red layer sluice
through big red in this section,
and that's it for sluicing in the bridge cut.
- Hey, man, how's it going? - -Do you wanna go look at this
- with me real quick, Tyson? - Yep.
This is, like...
A little bit thawed.
So, I think with gold prices where they are...
Yeah?
We should try to get some ounces out of here.
The only thing is, we were leaving it for next year,
which kinda... you know, that was the whole name of the game,
stepping away from the bridge cut was we had lots of...
Lots of ground on pay for next year.
Regardless, we need the ounces.
We have a lot of bills to pay.
- Right on. - Right?
What we could try doing is just doing, like,
a perimeter lap around the whole thing
and see... see how that goes.
Okay, that's fine with me.
You guys have your work cut out for you, then.
Yeah, definitely.
All right.
In the 114-acre bridge cut,
big red is almost done sluicing
a 15-foot-thick layer of red gravels
that's averaged just half an ounce per 100 yards.
Beneath the red gravel is the real moneymaker.
Fourteen feet of frozen rich white channel pay,
which Parker believes could be four times richer.
To bank it this season, Tyson will pull the thawed pay
from the perimeter and run it through big red.
We just need to keep gold coming in.
So, we're gonna pull strips around the outside edge of the bridge cut,
and hopefully, it has a lot of gold in it.
While the stripping crew get to work at the perimeter...
The sluice crew load the last of the red gravel.
Gold prices are up, every speck of gold counts.
And hopefully, we'll see a lot better results
out of bridge cut.
Hey, Tyson.
Parker wants the perimeter of the cut sluicing by tonight.
We gotta pound through this
and then get back to sluicing.
What the is that?
What the...
Hey! Cut it out!
! Clamp bars are gone.
This is not good.
What the happened?
What the actual, big red?
We got a side tension bar laying down here, man.
Yeah, and we probably got two,
and nuts and bolts.
- Me. - I just absolutely can't.
I can't fix this.
At dominion creek, Parker schnabel's wash plant,
big red, has shaken itself apart.
How did our side tension bar on on us?
The structural integrity of big red here is so weak,
just had enough to spin off those nuts
one last time or shear the bolts.
Five months of relentless sluicing
has destroyed the hardware
securing big red's side tension bars,
which hold the screens in place.
Is there any chance you can patch it back together?
Take a look at how this thing is, man.
We can't weld to nothing. It's paper-thin there.
This is not a band-aid fix.
This is a complete rebuild.
For sakes.
This is not good.
Big red's dead, man.
She's finally calling it quits.
Without a wash plant,
the crew can't run the white channel pay
that could save the season.
We've gotta go come up with a plan 'cause...
We gotta keep a wash plant going here in the bridge cut.
King of the klondike, Tony beets,
is gunning for a record-breaking season.
The king's only 180 ounces away
from hitting his 5,000-ounce target
and wants to smash through it this week.
Tony already has two plants producing gold...
The trommel at paradise hill
and sluice-a-lot at Indian river.
Now, with time on the season running out,
he wants to fire up a third plant,
and it's on daughter, Monica, to make it happen.
Seven weeks ago... This cut was gonna be mine.
Monica attempted to kick start
the two-acre hester cut,
prime virgin ground left behind by the dredges
that Tony believes could deliver a quick monster payday.
I'm really excited to see...
What kind of gold we get out of here.
But a series of setbacks
left Tony's hopes
for a third sluicing operation dead in the water.
Now, he has a pump draining the cut
and is ready to sluice.
It's full of water.
The pump can't keep up.
Me, too.
Should we poke around,
see what it looks like down there?
To dig out the pay dirt,
the cut needs to be dry enough
to support the weight of the machines.
It's pretty squishy.
You're slowly sinking.
Yeah.
The waterlogged mud
means getting equipment into the cut is impossible.
I mean, that's not dirt, that's pudding.
Talk about a waste of time.
I have an idea.
What do you think if we got what gold was left
in some of these old-timer tailings?
I mean, it's not virgin ground,
but there's gold in it still.
1,000 feet from the hester cut
lies a pile of tailings left behind by the old-timers.
Four years ago, Tony sluiced them
for five weeks, banking 330 ounces.
Really glad t. Beets likes the idea.
I think it's brilliant, but that's 'cause I had it.
Tony, you want the tailings on the other side?
Monica stockpiles the tailings,
ready to sluice through the moose creek trommel,
and Tony's hopes for a triple-plant blitz
are back from the dead.
Big red is pretty well dead for the season.
Like, it has taken an ass-kicking,
and there's definitely no time
or manpower to fix it this year.
At dominion creek,
Parker's scramble to haul in enough gold
to hit his 8,000-ounce, $20 million target, has been derailed
by the death of his wash plant, big red.
We need a new plan
to run more ground in the bridge cut.
Bob is our highest yardage plant.
So, we're gonna go get
the biggest production wash plant we have.
I'm really hoping that the bridge cut
can go, you know, a couple ounces an hour.
But we'll see.
25 miles away at sulfur creek...
Wash plant, Bob, has sat idle for nearly three weeks.
Now he wants it moved to dominion
and fired up by the end of the day.
We just need to get Bob out of sulfur,
over to dominion, and we're running out of time.
Pull on it.
There you go.
Honestly, like, I'm surprised we're even moving this plant.
I don't even listen when he comes up
with an idea anymore.
It's kind of a pain in the ass.
, we probably moved a plant 100 times.
Everyone's run ragged.
To move the plant, Tyson must use
jordan's 50-year-old pacific p-16 heavy-duty hauler
that he's never driven before.
Do you want me to pilot you back and help unload
no, you take it yourself.
I'm not sitting with you.
Do you want more time to around,
or do you wanna just haul the plant?
- No, I'll haul it... - okay, there you go.
Take your corners wide, like you always would.
But don't it up is the goal.
- Yeah. - Sounds good, man.
- You'll be fine. - All righty.
Okay, see ya.
Here goes nothing.
She's rough.
First time hauling anything in this pacific.
Last thing I wanna do is this wash plant up.
Doing my best, man.
Built in the 1960s for use in the logging trade,
the p-16 is a six-by-six-wheel-drive monster...
Packing a v12 twin-turbo diesel engine
that can produce up to 525 horsepower.
Weighing in at 25 tons, with no power steering,
driving the steep mountain roads
to dominion is no easy task.
If you take it slow and steady...
We'll get there in one piece.
Hey, jordy, I'm just pulling into the dominion.
10-4.
So here we go. We're at the bridge cut here.
Bob's new home.
Nice and gentle.
Sluice runs are on.
Just gotta get this up on the hill and sluice it tonight.
Tight section. Tyson, we're coming across the cross stitch now
with the pipe.
No. Hey.
We really don't want to damage these sluice runs
'cause they're the only ones we got.
Just take it easy. Thread the needle, baby.
Yeah, nice and slow.
All right. Coming through the worst of it.
Looking good.
Okay. Prewash is in line right now with the superstacker.
Really close. Forward. Yep.
Yep, right there.
Nice work, guys. Nice work, Tyson.
You guys have made quick work of this move.
- We're trying. - I appreciate that.
No worries, man.
Just eight hours after leaving sulphur,
Bob is set and ready to sluice premium white channel pay
that could save Parker's season.
Here we go.
See what the bridge cut has to offer.
Fire her up.
- Thanks, guys. See you. - Take care.
This part of the bridge cut isn't quite ready to go,
but it's partially ready.
And at this point in time, we'll accept partially ready.
Desperate times, right?
Until all this muck is gone, you know, we're gonna have more and more fun.
It just never ends in this cut.
Rick ness is away dealing with red tape
over the water license to mine his ground,
leaving his crew in charge of bringing in the gold.
But sluicing is at a dead stop while they truck out the worthless mud
drowning their Vegas valley pay.
It's nasty, but it is what it is.
We're gonna have to deal with it.
Foreman buzz has checked out,
meaning it's on Rick's friend zee to come up with a plan.
Rick's pretty stressed out, obviously, with the whole water license thing,
and instead of hauling muck, we should be hauling pay.
Hey, Bailey, you got a copy?
Go ahead.
I'm contemplating going over that overspill
where monster red used to be over by rally valley
and maybe just hauling some of that over here to keep the plant going.
Yeah, that sounds good to me, man.
Might as well scrape up whatever's laying around.
Copy that.
Get this plant moving.
Two weeks ago, Rick pulled monster red from rally valley.
There she goes.
Where it sat for four years,
sluicing the richest dirt of his mining career.
That's huge.
Zee believes its old pad is covered in over spilled gold-rich pay
that could bank them a fast buck while they clear the slop in Vegas valley.
We're gonna grab a loader and a truck
and go to get that overspill and start the plant back up.
This should buy us a little bit of time.
We know there's gold in it.
This is it.
Yeah.
Throw as much at the wall.
Something will stick eventually, right?
Honestly, the first couple of scoops, they look good.
I got your truck full.
Buzz delivers the first truck load
ready to run through monster red.
You improvise. You pivot with what you got. This is what we got.
What the!
Buzz, you got a copy. There's something wrong with the loader.
I got no power.
Won't even lift up a scoop.
Honestly, right now, we don't have time for this.
This is bad. I mean, we've only got one loader. This is not good.
While hauling emergency pay from an old wash plant,
Rick ness crew member, zee, has lost power in his loader.
Hey, Ryan, you got a copy?
The loader is shooting a code, and it ain't even moving.
We'll plug it in and we'll see what's not reading.
It looks like we have a sensor problem, and
that's a problem.
This is our intake right here.
It's reading your pressure into the engine.
So a pretty vital
component for something that small.
There she is. Man, that thing is sooted up.
What is it?
It's not getting a voltage reading.
I know for a fact we don't have that sensor.
So I'm gonna go look at a few things.
But until then, it's kind of dead where it sits.
Yeah, and that's my problem is this is only a three prong in mine.
It's got to at least be a four.
Basically, everything we've got here doesn't have the sensor we need on it.
A lot of the here is a lot older.
It kind of puts us into a little bit of a predicament.
I should've had another one ordered.
I gotta figure this out.
If it's down down, I mean, we're.
It's the worst possible time.
I believe I found what we need in Rick's side-by-side.
There she is.
The chance of us getting this going is gonna be pretty slim.
But I'm hoping it'll work. Let's put her in.
Easy fix. Easy swap.
Keep our fingers crossed it works.
Dude, what the?
No code. Code's off.
- All right. - Lift it.
See what you got and see if you got power.
Way better.
Miraculously, the side-by-side parts might actually, make it through the season.
Hey, buzz, you got a copy?
Ryan got this thing fixed.
You want to swing back down, we'll get the rest of this over to the plant.
We're gonna go ahead and run it through the plant.
Hopefully, it buys us enough time to when Bailey can start hauling pay again.
With monster red running,
Rick's mission to blow past 1,500 ounces is back on.
Now we're back up and running.
Thank god.
Tony beets and his daughter, Monica,
are trying to tap into a last ditch source of gold on the hester cut.
Yes, I do.
It's a gorgeous machine.
Well, I appreciate it.
Tony's surprise, a new half-million dollar wash plant.
I still get a birthday present, though, right?
The new plant is unlike any in Tony's arsenal.
Known as a super sluice, it's designed to handle big boulders.
Pay dirt is fed into the hopper.
Water washes the gold from the rocks.
Hydraulic steel fingers push the waste away
while the heavier gold falls to the sluices below.
To set up the new plant as fast as possible,
Tony brings in the a team.
First, Monica and Glen must lift up the 17-ton plant
while cousin Mike drags the skids into position.
Then Mike beets will use a dozer to pull it onto its pad.
Goodness.
He's got his radio out.
Which means he's getting ready to yell at me.
Holy.
Skids installed,
Mike drags the plant into position next to the old timer tailings.
We're going to use the 700 to push it the rest of the way into place.
That was pretty smooth.
The new plant's in place,
but before Tony can cash in on the old timer tailings,
there's still work to do.
There's a lot of work that will have to be done on big red.
It hasn't been our biggest producer, but it's got gold in it.
Big red's tired. It's been working all year,
a year longer than it should have.
It's the final clean up at Parker's oldest wash plant, big red,
which has shaken itself to death.
We'll have to figure out what we feel like doing.
Whether we reconstruct, rebuild or walk away.
The tailing shoot is real thin.
I can almost stick my finger through the hole.
Across 12 seasons,
big red has hauled in a staggering 34,300 ounces,
banking Parker over $53,000,000 in gold.
It's like a battled warrior.
Grandma's had the teeth knocked out of her.
But we still love the thing.
Yeah.
It's going great today, you know, sending pay to the wash plant
and doing what we're supposed to be doing here.
After a tough week,
Rick ness's crew are back on track.
This is awesome. Got through the muck
and now we're hauling pay again
so that Kyle can keep feeding the plant.
It worked out pretty good.
- Hello. - Hello.
- This looks cozy. - Welcome back.
At the end of the shift,
Rick is back from his water license meeting in Vancouver,
in time to find out how much gold his crew delivered without him.
Frustrating.
The least that could have happened was I could have came back with answers,
but I don't have any.
I really thought that maybe that by going down there
and having some talks, that it might be able to...
It would have done some good, but really, yeah, it's nothing.
I got nothing to report back, so I apologize for that.
You know, one way or another would be great, right?
Yep.
Because then you can plan on it.
But when you don't know at all, it's,
it's a thing.
If Rick's license is not renewed,
he won't be able to mine his ground next season.
I was paying, you know, paying everything into this place
to never have to leave it again, and now that it's paid for,
I sure as hell don't want to leave it.
But it's one of those things where we're
gonna have to wait and see.
You kept things going here.
- How did this week really go, you know? - -Zee broke a loader.
You're side-by-side provided what I needed.
I give you points for creativity there.
That's impressive.
We all know our jobs.
We all know the that needs to be done.
And we all know what we got invested.
That being said, should we weigh up some gold?
- Let's do it. - Let's see what you guys got.
Last week, Vegas valley delivered a massive 256 ounces of gold.
All right, here we go.
If they hit 300 this week,
Rick will smash his original 1,500-ounce gold.
But downtime at the plant cost them two days of sluicing.
Let's do this.
Twenty, 30, 40, 60,
80, 100, 110.
122.82.
Worth over $320,000,
but less than half of what he was hoping for.
- Not as good as last time. - Still quarter of a million dollars.
We did run some of that stuff from monster red spill.
So, like, obviously there wasn't going to be a lot of gold in that.
And that brings us what, over 1,300 ounces on the season.
We aren't quite there yet. You know, we got
a little less than 200 ounces to get, and this is going to be
the hardest 200 ounces we get all season.
It's not gonna be easy.
- We still got a lot of fight left in us. - Yeah.
We just keep rolling the way we're rolling.
I really think that that gamble is gonna pay off.
I can see that you're ready to go.
I'm ready to do it.
- Shall we get after it? - Yep.
- Let's go. - -Let's make it happen, guys.
The gold way was good, but not as good as we wanted.
So a little bit of uncertainty if we're gonna hit... Hit our final goal.
I came back with no answer on the water license which is frustrating.
We got to move forward from that.
We didn't get as much gold, but, you know, we're still on our way to our season goal.
And, you know, we just got to keep pushing hard till the end.
Hi, guys. How are you guys?
Well, I got coffee and gold, so I'm fine.
At paradise hill,
the beets family gather to find out if they've caught enough gold
to beat their 5,000-ounce season goal.
- We had another good week. - Yeah.
Good for you.
Are you jealous?
I'll count sluice-a-lot. You count the hill.
Tony needs just 180 ounces to hit his 5,000-ounce goal.
Okay, ready?
- First up, the comeback cut extension. - At Indian river.
So this is sluice-a-lot.
Yeah, we'll start with the Indian.
Ten, 20, 30, 60, 90, 100, 110, 160, 205.80.
That's a nice little haul, yeah.
Worth $543,000.
That gets us past 5,000.
So the rest is our bonus, right?
All right, Mike-Mike, we're gonna do your gold now.
Ready?
Next up, Mike's trommel at paradise hill.
Ten, 20, 30, 60.
100, 110, 160, 70, 80, 90, 200, 220, 230, 260.
264.76.
Taking their season total to 5,290 ounces.
Almost $14,000,000 n gold.
It's almost 5,300.
And we're only a couple of ounces short of our ever best season.
There you go.
We might even top ourselves this year.
- Bye, guys. - Bye-bye.
That's all, folks.
- What's happening, Chris? - Hey, Mitchell.
- How's it treating you? - Washing gold, man.
- Washing gold? - That's good.
Well, big red's dead, man.
That thing's put in some hours.
It looked rough three months ago.
Yeah, the red gravel did a number on her this year, that's for sure.
What a stroke of luck that you were able to find thawed ground,
since we've been battling frost all season.
Even if it's thawed on the edges, man, run it.
We get to figure out what the bridge cut is really all about now.
We've spent a lot of money in there.
Well, you are a gambling man.
So this is one of the bigger gambles, hey?
Yeah.
I'm tired.
Well, we might be able to brighten your day up with a little bit of gold.
Let's weigh some gold.
Parker needs 2,500 ounces to hit his season goal.
First up, the last of the red top gravels from the bridge cut.
Come on, t.
Big red, last run of the season.
Ten, 20.
60, 85, 90.
96.2.
Consistent right to the end.
Worth $250,000.
But that's the red gravel.
When you got Bob going.
- And you got in the good pay dirt... - -Yep.
This is what we ended up with.
That one's looking like it's got some weight to it.
Yeah.
Next up,
just four days of running the deeper, richer white channel pay.
- This is Bob. - The cream of the crop.
The cream of the crop. Here we go.
Let's see what it's all about.
One-twenty,
140, 200, 230,
270. Are we going to break 300?
290.5.
Worth $766,000.
That is very nice.
- That's super relieving. - Yeah.
'Cause I've been quite nervous about that all year.
That was pretty impressive.
Last up, Roxanne,
which last week delivered 282 ounces.
This is the elbow cut right here.
Fighting some frost down there,
but we're getting it chewed up and through there.
Okay, here we go.
Twenty, 70, 90, 130, 170,
200, 230
276.1.
Nice.
We're on a roll now, so it brings the season total to 6,088.2 ounces.
Worth at today's record-high gold price,
an incredible $16,070,000.
- Nice. - Yeah.
- Good week. - Yeah, yep.
But Parker still needs almost 2,000 ounces
to hit his season goal.
If you guys can keep wash plants running, try to keep them running.
We shall.
No promises, though.
Have a good one.
Thanks, Mitch.
- All righty. - Okay.