This season has been a real fight.
I really thought that we had
this property locked down.
But I see why it's broken people and companies.
The amount of cash to pay the bills
just consumes you.
Now it's time to finish strong,
or the house of cards falls.
This year, I finally became a landowner.
It's been a dream come true.
But I still don't have a water license for next year.
I went for broke.
One of the biggest gambles of my mining career,
opening up Vegas valley.
If we don't bring it home,
I could lose everything.
Now, as temperatures plummet,
gold prices soar to a record 2,680 bucks an ounce.
Miners have just days
to cash in.
What the!
We're not going down without a fight.
Attaboy, boss!
Nice job.
Want to see how we finished up?
Load up!
30-year-old mine boss... In the back.
Parker schnabel is in uncharted territory.
This season's been a bit of an ass-kicker.
A lot of lean ground.
Spent a lot of money.
Record high gold prices are saving our ass.
It's the only light in a very cloudy sky.
But it also hurts because record high prices
would have been the time to have a record season.
Parker kicked off
his season chasing a record 10,000 ounces.
He's thrown everything at it,
burning through more cash than ever
to crack his dominion creek claim.
But the land has fought back.
And he's banked just 6,088 ounces.
We started the season with a 10,000-ounce goal.
We brought it down to an 8,000-ounce goal.
And we're nowhere close.
But in 14 years of mining,
we've never set a goal and not hit it.
So the fight's not over.
We just moved Bob into the bridge cut.
Mitch is sluicing the elbow cut with Roxanne.
We're scratching at every last bit of ground
that we've got available.
And we do have one trick left up our sleeve.
I'm just headed up to gold run.
We are going to
go see if we can
throw some more ounces at our target.
As most miners prepare to shut down for winter,
Parker's hail Mary play
is to open a whole new operation at gold run.
Bought two months ago,
this 1,100-acre claim is some of the richest ground
ever mined in the klondike.
Prospectors first found gold here in 1898.
Since then,
gold run has produced nearly 10 tons of gold.
Today, worth over $800 million.
Now, Parker needs this legendary claim
to deliver once again.
We desperately need something that has some decent gold in it.
We've got a cut in there that
the monitor has been washing.
Tyson's meeting me here.
- What's up? - Hi.
When you look at the area we've covered,
this is a fairly significant chunk.
What are you hoping to see come out of this ground here?
Hopefully there's tons of gold in it.
All righty. Let's do it.
So this is the final step.
Then we need a plant running and,
you know, we need gold coming in.
Tyson has already opened up a one-acre cut.
To remove the overburden quickly,
Parker blasts it with a water monitor,
washing the worthless dirt away
and revealing gold run's premium pay dirt underneath.
When the boss is out working,
not looking at future plans, up here monitoring,
you know we really need the gold.
Even bosco's helping out.
He's digging away, trying to find gold.
Parker's gotten us a long ways
in the time I've been mining with him.
Purchased gold run and he thinks it's a good idea,
then I'll stand behind him any day of the week.
We're at the point
where we're ready for rock trucks to come up here.
Come in, haul this pay down to the wash plant.
Pay ready to haul, Parker turns his attention
to his gold run wash plant.
I don't really know anything about this wash plant.
I'll have the boys fire this thing up and see if it works.
Hopefully it does.
There's no other wash plant close, so,
this will have to do.
Come on.
This ancient shaker deck
came as part of Parker's gold run purchase.
It's capable of sluicing 180 yards of pay an hour.
And has massive 600 square feet runs.
Parker's biggest ever sluice box.
The only problem, it's an untested relic.
I know it'll cause a big headache for.
Tyson and Alec.
And they already have a lot on their plate.
But we need the ounces.
I see you found the place.
Yeah. This is it?
What do you figure?
It's definitely a unit.
It's got a lot of character.
Try and do Parker a solid
and see if we can get this thing running.
Yeah, I'm game.
Doesn't look like the grizzly bears work.
No, yeah, the pins are out of them.
Yeah.
Let's just see if the generator
- wants to start and then... - Yeah.
We can go from there.
To get it running, Tyson
and mechanic Alec Kelly... I hear a tick.
First need to fire up the generator and pump.
Holy!
Okay.
- There's hope. - That's pretty cool.
We got power.
Yeah, we got lights.
Shall we see what it does?
- Here we go. - Yeah.
- Nothing. - Nothing.
What's going tick over there?
Something in one of these guys.
- This one's moving. - Okay.
Screen that.
Screen.
I like how something sounds a little loose.
Damn, this thing's a rock.
Can we see if we can get some water?
Go take a look at the water pump.
All right, here we go!
Got her runnin'.
Yeah!
We got water!
I'll go grab the loader.
All righty, here we go.
First scoop of gold run pay.
Buddy, we're sluicin'.
This is really amazing that we got this plant going this fast.
A lot of things went right.
You know, this plant, it's old, it's nasty.
It seems to be doing the job, so I think we should call it rock gobbler.
At this point in the season,
should be thinking about going home,
but we just fired up a third wash plant.
We got three wash plants running now
between gold run and dominion.
We're not going down without a fight.
- You got that tiger torch? - Yeah.
Weather.
The temperatures are just brutal right now.
Yeah.
There we go.
We're all pushing hard to get to our season goal.
The guys have gambled everything on this.
On Vegas valley here.
You know, they put up their gold bonuses.
And stuck the year out with me,
and they deserve to get it.
Rick ness is on the brink of a windfall.
After spending his season's profits
to open the Vegas valley cut,
he's already broken even,
hauling out 379 ounces of gold in just two weeks.
But with his water license on the claim expiring soon,
the only thing that's certain
is that the crew needs to pull in
as much gold as possible.
We don't know what's gonna happen,
but one thing I know for sure is that we have to get
every ounce out of it before
the winter freezes us out of here. And that's coming soon.
- Hey, guys. - Hey, Rick.
Well, I know it feels like we're done.
The weather's here, but we're not quite done yet.
You guys have worked so hard this year.
I know you don't need some big speech,
but, you know,
I just wanted to tell you that I appreciate you guys a lot.
And I don't know
what the future is here,
but let's just focus on this one for now
and knock it out of the park.
- Yeah. - Should we do this?
- Let's do it. - ! Let's do it.
Let's do it. Let's go.
To bank a big final payday,
Rick's crew must sluice 24 hours a day
for the rest of the week without any shutdowns.
We're still shy of our goal, so,
really, this is the last push.
And with this weather coming in,
this push could be cut short.
We're getting to colder temperatures right now.
It does seem like this is gonna be our final stretch here.
And we'll have to run night shifts
just to keep that plant from not freezing.
After a full day of sluicing
without any problems
I got zee over in the loader. Load and pay.
I'm over here just taking care of the tailings.
Zee and Ryan brave arctic temperatures
during the first night shift.
It's only getting colder.
You know, you got ice going through the pipes.
You always take a chance of something freezing and bursting.
We're at that point in the year where
the temperatures are dropping
and everything's kind of freezing up.
It's gonna be more beneficial
just to keep the plant running,
so you're not wasting time in the morning thawing stuff out.
Hey, zee, you got a copy?
Yeah, go ahead.
Hey, you didn't shut that shaker deck off, did you?
No.
Hey, man, shut the plant down.
All right.
The shaker deck just stopped.
What the!
Belt.
Hey, Rick, you got a copy?
Yeah, go for Rick.
Hey, if you want to come down to the plant quick,
the belt for the shaker deck snapped.
So what we have here, this is our main belt that drives
the shaker deck to move back and forth.
And without this belt, this deck doesn't shake.
All that material that we just piled up in there freezes up.
Water lines start to freeze up.
So really, right now, time is not on our side,
and neither is mother nature, so...
Ice all over this thing.
- There's ice everywhere. - Look at that.
- Yeah. - -This is all gonna freeze up
if we don't get this fixed.
- No. - Belt for the shaker.
! For real?
At Duncan creek, Ryan and zee's first night shift
has ground to a freezing halt.
We're kind of limited on time. We got freezing quick.
And there's a pretty good pile stuck in the shaker.
I know I don't have one.
What are we gonna do?
We can't fix it. I mean,
we can fix conveyor belts. We can't fix those.
You got any of those conveyor belt pieces?
The clips? Yeah.
I got 'em.
And it's strong enough to hold a conveyor,
what's telling us we can't do it on this?
We're already down.
We don't have any other choice, really.
The longer we wait, we're not firing back up. It's froze.
Well, let's... I'll go find those clips.
Monster red shaker deck belt
transfers power from a drive motor
to a pulley wheel
that vibrates the wash plant's screens.
But it snapped, stopping the plant from cleaning
the gold-rich pay dirt.
Without a replacement,
Ryan intends to fix the broken belt
by drilling two holes,
then use a conveyor clip to join the pieces,
and file down the screws
so the belt can pass safely
over the pulley and drive wheel...
Getting Rick's crew
back on the gold.
I know this is silly to try to put a belt back together,
but we don't have one.
I mean, sometimes, sometimes weird works.
Found some... Found the clips, found the tool.
- Nice. - -Found the tool and the clip.
- And the tools. - Yep.
- If this doesn't work... - Plant freezes.
- The plant's gonna freeze. - -Plant freezes, season's done.
A magnet to something?
And so, what our plan is,
we'll shave this down once we get it bolted in half and half.
- Yeah. - -The only problem I see,
we just gotta get it for the initial startup.
- That's the most violent. - Yeah.
Yeah, once it's rotating, it's on.
Once you get a hole there, it's gonna blow up
- right away. - Yeah.
- That's water done. - Okay. Let's get it going.
That is a good hole there.
Looks good.
There's definitely a sense of urgency right now.
Hopefully this fix works.
Hopefully Ryan can do it quick enough.
Hell yeah.
- I'm gonna cut these off. Watch your eyes. - Yeah.
Look at that.
- I like it. - -Both sides, yeah, you're good.
We'll put that little bit of tape around it.
Just trying to keep
the least amount of metal to metal contact we can.
Take the belt over. I'll grab the guns.
Well, this is it. Fingers crossed.
Ready?
- You all right? - Yeah. It's heavy.
Yeah. It ain't light.
You got to get around that pulley back there first.
Let's do it.
- Okay, ready? - Yup.
- Hold on. - Yup.
Okay. There it is. It fits right in there.
You know, this belt is in terrible shape.
There's a lot of damage to it. But...
If that holds, I'm okay with it.
- That's it. - That's it.
We are gonna fire up again.
Let's hope this works. We're gonna know right away.
It all relies on this fix right here.
Come on.
If it gets running, it got through the hardest part.
It's lit.
It's running. We gotta get going.
Dude, nice job. Okay, let's get some dirt in it.
Thank god that worked.
We can celebrate it later, 'cause we still...
We gotta get some dirt in that thing.
We haven't hit our goal yet. So, let's get moving.
King of the klondike, Tony beets,
has been pushing his family hard all season.
They've delivered 5,290 ounces
and brought him to the brink of his best gold haul
of his 40-year career.
Now, with gold prices breaking records,
Tony's in a rush to cash in.
Cousin Mike is running a stockpile of pay dirt
through his sluice-a-lot plant at Indian river.
Son Mike is sluicing paradise hill pay
through his trommel.
And Tony's also banking royalties
from eldest son, Kevin, mining on his own
for the first time.
Ready to head out?
We're ready to head out.
Couldn't have done everything without you guys.
I'm gonna be able to go home and, you know,
tell everybody about my experience here. And you guys
made it really good for me, that's for sure.
Appreciate you guys coming out this year and helping us out.
Thanks for everything, kev. It was a pleasure working for you.
Thank you.
- Thank you. - Thank you.
Hunter and chase had prior commitments they had
to go deal with, so,
so we are down to the bare skeleton crew at this point.
For the last six months,
Kevin has struggled
to ahead of the mine boss learning curve.
Now he's failed to secure his crew
for the entire season, and is down two key members
at the worst possible time.
Now night shift is kibosh. We don't have the people.
Everyone is on days, and we're just gonna keep
going throughout the days and get the last little bit
of pay run.
We're getting down to the wire at this point.
We're on our final big push to get to 1,000 ounces.
Kevin still needs 320 ounces of gold
to reach his 1,000-ounce break even target.
The push is on. You know, we're down to just day shift now.
We lost hunter and chase there.
They went home for the season.
So, you know, we're gonna just do
one shift a day on the wash plant.
In the links cut extension, foreman Brennan ruault
is busy digging pay.
We worked our asses off this year as a small team
and... So after everything we've faced this year,
I'd be pretty bummed out
if we don't hit our 1,000-ounce target, you know.
In a last gasp effort to hit his goal,
Kevin's brought on new hire Gary masters
to load the plant.
The stress levels go up towards the end of the season
because you're aiming for that goal,
and you're pushing really, really hard.
You all right over there, Gary?
What the is going on?
Okay, I'm on my way.
- Yeah, the felt clips tore apart again? - -Yeah.
See that in there?
Like, we knew this was gonna happen.
We have a vulcanized belt that's one piece, right,
but we've been just kind of waiting to change it.
If we just pulled this out, it wouldn't have been so bad.
Seven weeks ago...
We've been down about 11 hours now.
Kevin faced a frantic struggle to patch up
the same broken belt,
fixing it with conveyor clips.
Okay, that's it.
Now completely shredded, the belt needs replacing.
Got the call from Brennan, so,
I'm down to have a look-see.
Hola.
Hey, kev, how are you, buddy?
- No. - She's!
My rough battle plan
is that we'll hook up with the 220,
use that to yard it out.
- Okay. - Then pick it up
with the 480 to pull it all the way out.
And then we can swing it, set it down on that side.
Okay.
Everybody start standing clear.
There we go.
Lift your bucket up a bit.
Okay.
Now try both straight back.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
Hold on, hold on.
Get in the 480?
Yes.
Want me to put those chains in the bucket?
Yeah, they're already hanging off the back.
Okay.
Next step is Brennan is gonna hop into the 480.
I'm gonna hook up our four-point sling
to the frame of this conveyor.
And then hopefully he can take the weight
and swing it out the last little bit.
And we'll place it on the ground, put the belt on.
Brennan, you can see what you're doing to pull it out?
Whoa!
- Whoa! - No arm.
Yeah, I barely touched the joysticks.
I let them go and it kept sliding, so sorry about that.
At scribner creek, rookie mine boss Kevin beets
is battling to keep his 1,000-ounce goal in sight.
You basically clear the supports.
So if you can swing it out...
- Yay! - Beautiful.
There we go.
We're just sliding the belt up,
and then we get the new one on.
It's one continuous piece, like a rubber band.
It's gonna be a lot of fun.
The new belt weighs in at 1,500 lb
and needs to be stretched over the head and tail drums.
We're both gonna use the crane and the excavator
to try to get the belt started on the rollers.
Where's the pry bar?
We just need to get over this tail, pull it, and then we're golden.
Trying to pry this.
There we go.
Golden, ponyboy.
Say that's a success right there.
We have the belts on the frame. So...
We're ready to put it back in.
There we go.
I'm gonna give it a push with the 220 for the last little bit.
Yeah, you bet. Okay.
Whoo!
Whoo! Smooth like butter.
Attaboy, boss.
All right. Piece of cake.
- Yeah. - Good job.
Whoo! Skeleton crew.
Twenty-four.
That went really well, so we'll get back running.
Run hard till, we get snowed out.
We got our 1,000 ounces somehow.
40 miles north at paradise hill...
While his eldest son tries to prove himself as a mine boss,
Tony wants to smash his best ever gold haul of 5,295 ounces.
To do it, he needs to run a third plant and is looking to daughter Monica.
We're just using the pipe so that we can hook
the pump up to the plant and start sluicing.
It's been a long time coming.
We got the pipeline together.
We could have water at the plant by the end of day.
Last week, Tony bought Monica
a new half-a-million-dollar wash plant.
She has set up the plant, and run a 1,000-foot-long pipeline to feed it water.
Now she's asked Tony to help her drag and connect it to the pump.
Tony beets is in full "get-her-done" mode.
In a race to get his youngest child, Monica, on the gold.
Tony is battling to connect a 1,000-foot-long
water pipe to her new wash plant's pump.
And then we can throw some dirt through.
- Hey, could you start the pump up, please? - -All right.
Let her rip.
Yes.
So are you ready?
Yeah.
Harald is a super-sluice wash plant
designed to tackle coarse rocks like the old timer tailings.
It separates large boulders from gold
with three hydraulic-powered decks, armed with 93 steel teeth
that push rocks weighing up to 4,000 lb into the tailings pile.
The finer pay dirt drops through the decks where sluice runs catch the gold.
It's nice to see it sluicing.
I'm impressed.
, yeah.
Okay.
I'm happy that the plant is running and it's all running well.
Hoping that the plant stayed running good for night shift.
Right now it's cold, there's no denying it,
but Parker wants to keep sluicing. Gold prices are high.
He wants to try and get every ounce we can this season.
In a last throw of the dice,
Parker schnabel has two plants running twenty-four-seven at dominion,
and at his hail Mary gold run cut,
Parker and Tyson pull out as much pay dirt as they can.
We have wash plants on all the ground
that we've got that is sluice-able.
I just need another hour or two here to finish cleaning the rest of this
and then haul this stuff out of here,
down to the wash plant.
You want to just barely barely see the outlines of the riffles.
We can turn the pump down. That's no problem.
I think I would. I think I'd turn it down a click or two.
At the rock gobbler wash plant,
gold recovery expert Chris doumitt dials in the sluices
we inherited this wash plant when we bought the property.
It's all brand new to us.
We don't have a lot of time left in the season,
but you got to have this thing dialed in properly, right?
Otherwise, why are you doing it all?
We're going to make those adjustments here.
That one click made a world of difference.
- That looks really good now. - Yeah.
I think this is gonna do it.
Okay, young man, I gotta go around.
- I'll see you around. - Okay.
We've got three plants running and everybody's just stretched thin.
Parker, he's under a lot of stress.
This could be the first year that we do not reach our goal.
So now is the time when we really have to push.
We're gonna make this work.
Let's see if we can push this to the end of the season.
Gotta play everything by ear today.
Alec and operator John Kurtz push 150 yards of pay an hour through the plant.
I never thought in a million years that
this thing would be still functional, but, it is.
It's gobblin' rocks.
Everything's looking good.
I'm just gonna hop in the loader here and deal with some fine tailings.
We're getting up there.
Feed belt is stuffed.
What the?
. Shut it down.
What the happened?
Holy.
Here it is, the end of the season.
You just gotta scrape up the... rest of the pay you've got
in all the little corners and edges
and get it through a wash plant.
At gold run,
while Parker pulls every last scrap of pay...
Why is this belt not working?
Too much weight?
Half a mile away,
the tailings conveyer on his rock gobbler plant has piled up with rocks,
shutting down the plant.
We gotta clear it out.
Yeah, we're gonna be here for hours.
, man.
Right now operating costs are going up and
money getting made is going down.
Here comes Tyson.
What the happened?
We had a little bit of a conveyor jam up.
Well, let's try and get this thing back going here.
Still got more material to send it, you guys.
- We need a running wash plant. - Yep.
So right now we don't have any other option than the rock gobbler.
This is the last thing we want to be doing at this time of year.
You have that pretty much cleaned out, don't you?
Yeah. I want to give her a go.
- I'm done with the shoveling gizmos. - -All right, man.
Yeah!
Yeah?
- It's good. - It's good?
- It's good. - Whoo!
Yeah.
Whoo!
Halle... lujah.
Here we go.
Got the first scoop going back in the rock gobbler.
I think this thing still has a lot of life left in it.
Let's go, baby. Whoo!
Hey, Alec and John, you guys got a copy?
Go ahead, Tyson.
How are things going down there, guys?
You guys got the plant back up and going yet?
Yeah, we sure do.
Nice work, man.
Good job, guys.
Few rocks ain't gonna hurt us.
Every ounce that's still in the ground
has to be fought pretty damn hard for.
Man.
It is cold.
I'm gonna switch the light on. You want to jump the 460?
- Yeah. - Do the tailings,
I'll just get in the loader and we'll run this thing.
All right, let's do it.
Rick and longtime friend zee
tackle another freezing night to prevent monster red from icing over.
You're still happy that you came up,
now that I stuck you on night shift with me?
Well, I'm still awake
[so that's good.
Man, the things you do.
You come all the way up here to help me out, and I just.
Out of you,
put you on night shift, run you ragged,
and then send you back home to your wife.
Let's just hit the goal. I'll be happy with that.
If we don't get all this dirt run,
I... I don't know that we're gonna hit our goal. You know what I mean?
Like, we're gonna need every bit out of this pile, if we're hoping to get it.
Yeah, I agree.
I'm tired, but I can't stop thinking
that I hope we had enough here to hit our goal.
I mean, this team... This team deserves it.
They put the goalposts on the line,
and these... These guys worked harder than
any crew that I've ever had out here.
Hey, Rick, you got a copy?
Yes, sir. Go for Rick.
Hey, man, there's like water pouring out from the backside of the feeder,
and it's washing the rocks out.
Feeder? What do you mean, the feeder?
Like, on the backside of the feeder.
All right, got it.
Water by the feeder, doesn't make any sense.
What the?
Holy.
Waterline.
There's a waterline back there that feeds the plant.
If that washes out, it'll take the feeder down the hill with it.
The main waterline is leaking through the pad supporting the wash plant.
That's not even enough water to keep material moving through the plant.
We just don't have enough water pressure anymore.
That waterline... Something's wrong with that waterline.
You got to go down and turn the pump off.
All right.
Why is there water everywhere?
Shut it down like this,
it's gonna be frozen in a matter of probably half hour, an hour or so.
I don't know what happened.
Water just puking out back there.
That's where the waterline is.
So a rock hit or what?
Fixable, or...
We're not gonna be able to do anything with this tonight, man.
Like, we... it... It's dark.
Let's just pack it in and we'll look in the morning.
All right.
A lot of water did that.
At Duncan creek,
Rick and zee investigate the full extent
of their late night waterline disaster.
- I'll dig it up. We'll see what we get. - All right.
Down at the feeder pump.
Rick's crew inspect the equipment
after it lay dormant for half the night in subzero temperatures.
Ice.
It's freezing quick.
What we have now is two and a half inches of ice
all the way around this eight inch ring
that's completely solid all the way into the impeller.
And then still... We gotta still find the...
Wherever the hole's at, behind the grizzlies.
To discover the source of the leak,
Rick will need to dig up the waterline.
You're on the side of it.
Yeah, so I'm just gonna try to dig below it.
So that way I don't it up anymore.
Look at that.
- You're not gonna like what you see. - -Big hole?
Yeah, it's... it's big. It's like half the pipe.
. That's bad.
- That's way worse than I expected. - -Yeah.
That's not something we're gonna be able to fix.
Not this year.
This obviously got caught by the bucket last night.
It's literally the size of the tooth.
Line should have never been there.
Anybody would have done it.
It would've happened eventually. Someone was gonna hit that thing.
I mean, we're constantly moving stuff.
This line should have been on the other side of the... the feeder.
That's a... A catastrophic failure.
Hey, Rick!
- Ooh. - -That is how fast that freezes up.
Holy, where is that from?
That's out of the pump, feeding the plant.
We're taking an eight inch suction,
taking it down to three and a half,
- four inches of suction. - Yeah. You're choking it.
It looks like you could barely fit a baseball through it.
That water line's got a big old hole in it.
That plant's frozen up already.
So try to get it thawed to do another run, ain't gonna happen.
With the broken water line,
and the pump and wash plant frozen solid,
Rick has a tough call to make.
Hey, guys.
- Well, that's it. - We're shut down for the season.
We didn't get a chance to run all that pay through, so that's kind of.
Especially if we can't come back next year without a water license.
It's time to winterize. Let's just hope we got enough gold in the box.
There was really no way we were gonna go any farther, so,
that's it. We're done.
We almost got all the pay run.
Hopefully we got enough gold. But it's gonna be close. It always is.
All right, it's starting to blend out.
That's it for sluice-a-lot this season.
At the comeback cut extension,
Tony beets' nephew cousin Mike, is out of thawed pay dirt.
It's finally done.
But 40 miles north at paradise hill...
The king still has two of his kids sluicing towards a new record gold haul.
When you hit the pile,
first thing you do is you go up.
At wash plant Harald...
So when you hit that bank,
- first gear is gonna be your best friend. - Okay.
Monica trains her crew to feed the plant with the old timer tailings
that she believes are rich in lost gold.
It's really nice to see Harald up and running.
Hopefully, we can get some gold out of it.
Just checking to make sure that the boys are keeping up.
Make sure Andrew's not overfeeding it.
The rocks come out clean.
As long as we keep the dirt in the box,
keep everything moving, Monica should be very happy.
Excavator operator Andrew moran feeds a 100 yards of old timer tailings an hour.
It's just a big coin machine.
In the loader, Roy hoekstra does double duty...
This stuff is hard.
Restocking the pay pile,
and hauling the re-washed tailings to a dump site 200 feet away.
I just have to watch and make sure everything's going good on the plant.
Make sure the tailings are not piling up and, Andrew has enough pay.
I don't have much room here.
A lot of obstacles, like the water line,
the fuser, the fuel tank and stuff.
I got hooked on something there.
What the?
, the water pipes.
Monica, do you copy? Monica? The pipes are bursting.
He's gonna turn the pump off.
Mike, do you copy, Mike?
Go ahead. Go ahead.
Hey, my pipe burst down at the hester cut.
Do we have a collar and a breather?
Yeah.
Okay, I'll be down there as soon as possible.
Greenhorn operator Roy has caught a water pipe with his loader,
ripping open a hole further down the pipeline.
- Well, this is up. - No.
I got the drill, I got some bits,
so I'll, cut a hole around the crack.
Why don't you lift it up?
It just has to be over there, so the thing comes off the ground.
So here's the collar,
we're gonna put it around the hole,
and Mike's gonna put a breather right here.
That is a quicker fix than fusing the pipe.
That's good. It ain't got to be pretty.
To get back on the gold fast,
Monica installs a rubber backed metal collar that seals the damaged pipe.
Then screws in a breather.
This prevents the risk of an air lock blocking the pipe
by allowing trapped air to escape.
Andrew. Andrew, do you copy?
- Go ahead. - Can you start the pump back up?
I'm gonna wait to see if it actually explodes.
Nice. No geyser.
We're aces good to go.
Pipe's all fixed.
Now we're ready to fire up.
Perfect!
Pipe?
Okay. Don't go away mad.
Okay, last scoop.
Here we go.
Whoo!
Spilled a bit. That's all right.
Parker schnabel's gold run crew
has sluiced through their last pay pile of the season,
and at dominion...
Well, here we go. Shutting down Bob for the season.
Wash plant Bob has also finished
running the last of the thawed gold-rich white channel pay.
We ran all the thaw we could get.
Hopefully, there's a lot of gold in the box.
So, it really only leaves Mitch
sluicing the elbow cut with Roxanne.
That pit is right on the edge
of the money pit from last year,
which was very rich ground,
some of the best ground that the company's mined ever.
We'll finish strong, do the best we can.
Just hoping we can get the last of this material
through this wash plant here.
There's not a lot of dirt left,
but there's certainly no time left.
At the elbow cut,
Parker's last shot at hitting his 8,000 ounce goal
is now in the hands of foreman Mitch blaschke
and the million-dollar custom-built wash plant, Roxanne.
We had a hell of a season,
and it's been one fight after the next.
I think we've just reached that point
where we're fighting it, every scoop.
We've been in the elbow cut, ripping this pay dirt,
but the problem we're running into right now
is it's just not thawing out.
The temperatures are just getting too cold here.
Even though the sun's up, it's still well below freezing.
It's really only gonna get worse.
We're starting to see big frozen chunks
working their way down the shaker deck.
Frozen pay dirt is like kryptonite when sluicing for gold.
Ice chunks can jam up the wash plant,
and if they make it through,
carry gold into the waste tailings.
I think we're probably at the point of the season
where we should be shutting this plant down.
But the decision to shut down the wash plant
is definitely, you know, one for Parker to make.
I don't think anybody else can really make that call.
Hey, Parker, you got a copy?
We need you to rip down here to Roxanne.
- What's up, man? - Hi, Mitch.
What do you think of that pay dirt?
You see all those frost chunks coming off the top deck there.
I mean, that's all got gold in it.
I think we should shut this thing down,
save that stuff for next year.
What do you think?
'Cause it's not too bad.
Like, right now, it's probably, like,
less than 10%, wouldn't you say?
Well, it's up to you, man.
I mean, we can try and keep sluicing,
but we're definitely losing some gold.
Yeah, I think that we should run it.
It doesn't look too good right now
for, you know, trying to hit our season goal.
I think that has a lot to do with Parker's decision here
to want to keep running.
It's definitely a gamble here
when you're rolling the dice with frozen pay dirt.
Come on. Over here.
Let's see if I can break the frost up a bit.
To help keep his season alive, Parker uses a d10
to break up the elbow cut's frozen pay dirt
in a desperate attempt to help it thaw.
10% loss is far from ideal,
but we are where we are.
We need the gold.
And it's my fault. We could have done things differently.
But hindsight's 20-20, right?
So, I think that we'll just see it through.
Roxanne's holding on strong.
We got a bit less in the pay pile.
1,000 feet away, operator Justin Fraser
loads 250 yards of pay an hour into the plant.
We just gotta make this work,
try to get all the pay through the plant
and finish the season off strong with Roxanne.
Sake.
Right now, we're battling the hopper plugging up.
Not cooperating with us.
Well, let's get that cleaned up,
and once we get, you know, the plant back running,
we'll do everything we can to sluice this.
You need help in here, Liam?
- Sure. - I am coming in.
You got that big steel box there.
You dump this wet material into it, it freezes up,
and eventually it ends up just choking down,
you can't get the material on the belt,
up the conveyor belts, into the wash plant.
Whoa. Whoa!
Parker wants us to finish sluicing this material,
he wants to try and get this gold this year.
That means we gotta fight it out.
Whoa, watch yourself.
Timber!
Well, this is probably pretty good, hey, Liam?
What do you say we go fire this up?
Yes, sir.
If I fire up the propane torch on that rear,
- on that heinie... - Yeah.
Firing up.
Here we go.
We got Roxanne fired back up here.
What's going on with the pre-wash?
It's all froze up. Shut it off!
It's all froze up.
We gotta shovel it.
Buddy. This is not getting fun.
We're definitely battling some problems today.
Seconds after firing Roxanne back up,
Parker's last plant sluicing
is jammed with frozen pay dirt
and shut down again.
I showed up to go 12 rounds, so let's keep going.
Yeah.
I think the bell's about ready to ring here.
We'll keep doing what we can do here.
I know Parker wants to keep sluicing, but...
- It doesn't make sense anymore. - No.
We're not making money when we're doing it like this.
I think we're really at a point here
where we need to really reconsider
whether we should keep sluicing or not.
Hey, Parker, you got a copy?
We need you to get down here to Roxanne.
What's up?
It's just been one problem after the next.
Put material in the hopper feeder,
it freezes up, we get it cleared out,
it gets up to the pre-wash, it's all piled up there.
It must just be that there was a lot of water in that gravel, right?
Yeah, there's a ton of moisture.
I think it might be time to put old Roxanne to bed for the year.
We should stay going longer.
But, yeah, we'll stop. We'll stop this mayhem.
- I think we've worn out our welcome. - Yeah.
Well, that sucks.
So close, man.
- How's the cleanup look? - Frozen.
Is there some gold in there?
It's kind of hard to tell with it all frozen.
- Just say yes. - Yeah, it looks great.
Best cleanup of the season, man.
A season's worth of gold in those mats.
Perfect.
30 miles north,
winter has also shut down the beets family's season...
- Hi, guys. - Hello.
And they all gather...
So, everybody's bringing in gold.
For their final gold weighs.
With 5,290 ounces already banked,
Tony is just five ounces short of his best ever gold haul.
What are we wearing first?
First up,
the old timer tailings from wash plant Harald.
Four, five, ten,
thirty, forty...
Forty-six forty-six.
Worth $124,000.
Wow.
Like, 76-ish.
Yeah.
Next, cousin Mike's Indian river gold from sluice-a-lot.
All right, here comes sluice-a-lot.
Twenty, fifty, ninety, hundred, hundred-ten,
hundred-and-sixty, two hundred,
two-hundred-eleven point eighty-eight.
Worth over $565,000
rounding off Tony's gold,
Mike's paradise hill trommel.
Ready, steady, go.
Ten, fifteen, twenty, fifty,
hundred-and-fifty, hundred-and-sixty,
two hundred, two-ten, two-twenty... 228.7.
Worth over $600,000.
If I didn't have such a shortage of employees
'cause the Indian kept taking them,
I'd probably be able to run some more.
Well, if we had your guys, people and equipment, we would run more too.
- To be fair, is this competition? - -What?
- Is it a competition. - No, no, no.
5,777.12.
So, you're 777 ounces over your target.
Finally, it's judgment day for eldest son Kevin.
How's it been going out in the scribner?
Not too bad. We've obviously finished mining.
Got everything wrapped up.
Let's see. I mean, we set ourselves a goal of 1,000 ounces this year.
We aimed pretty high.
That's why we needed to break even.
Rookie mine boss Kevin
has three weeks' worth of sluicing to weigh.
To hit his target, he needs 320 ounces.
Let's pour, guys.
Ten, twenty, forty, fifty, eighty, ninety,
one-ten, one-forty, one-fifty,
one-eighty, one-ninety, 200, 250, 260,
three hundred, three-ten, three-twenty,
three-sixty, three-seventy... 375.80.
Worth just over $1 million.
My, such a relief.
- I can finally pay everyone off. - Right.
Thousand-fifty-six point-five-seven.
Good, first year, to actually reach our goal and beat it a little bit.
I'm happy for you guys
- that you succeeded. - Thank you.
It may mean for us to step the hell back
so that the operation can run itself, and then walk away.
Never will happen.
That's my goal.
I don't know. After us stepping out on our own this year,
I think we can really respect what you guys started with
to get to a mine site this big.
Like, it's a lot of work.
Thank you. I appreciate that.
Thank you. And it didn't come just by ourselves.
Like, you guys have helped us out as well, so...
A great deal.
Everybody needs a little bit of help here and there.
Combined, the beets family empire
has 6,834 ounces,
worth $18.3 million.
Yeah, I'm happy.
Yeah, I think so.
No. No. No.
Bugger off.
Coming up... Let's see how we finished up.
After his record gold haul,
Tony beets is already planning for next season.
Yeah.
- My... - Awful.
Just the amount of work to start.
Well...
You're looking at a project.
You have a weird definition of fun, but yes.
Hi, guys.
Nice fire.
At Duncan creek, the ness crew
are eager to tally their final haul of the season.
Remember when you called me after you got done with rally valley
and was like, "we can all go home now, all with money."
We could've. I mean, honestly, we could've.
That was the season we all left with gold in our pocket already.
That... I mean, that arguably would have been the smartest thing to do.
It would've been our most successful season,
the biggest profit, you know, ever.
But then I had to go put, like, a million dollars of gold
to tackle a pit like Vegas valley.
That was the decision, basically, you guys all made,
and thanks again for that, too.
Like, that took a lot.
Rick and his crew gambled their early season gold
to chase a $2 million payday in Vegas valley.
It's already delivered half of that,
and now everything they get is pure profit.
Let's see it, see the gold.
That is what we're here for.
Well, all right. Here we go.
We'll find out how much we did this season.
Twenty, thirty, forty,
fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety, hundred,
hundred-ten-point-seven-nine.
We're still short.
I feel like there's lingering news.
You think there's more?
You know I love leaving you guys hanging.
Here's the rest of it right here.
There's 200 ounces in here.
And...
That's another 100 ounces.
Whoo! Whoo!
In its final week of running,
Vegas valley has paid out a massive 411 ounces,
one-point-one million dollars.
- Whoo! - So, if my math is correct,
that brings us to 1,720.05 ounces, guys.
- Whoo! - That's it. We did it.
In just six months, Rick's small crew of seven
has mined over $4.5 million of gold.
There's six jars in here.
If you're wondering,
each one of these will get you more than 50 grand, so...
Pass all that... Pass that down to buzz.
There's 25 ounces in each one of these.
That's a ton of gold right there, man.
Take that and, yeah, have a party, save it,
do whatever the you want with it. You guys earned it.
- Thank you. Thank you. - Thank you.
Seriously, this is... This goes a long ways, man.
We all busted our asses or it.
Every person here just grinded out this year.
And you could see it. You could see it in everybody.
It was amazing.
You guys pulled this whole thing together. I mean, that...
Everybody has weaknesses.
I have a lot of them.
You guys fill in the gaps,
and that's the only reason I'm making this work,
is because you guys are filling those gaps, so
I mean, you guys took the gamble this year,
and it paid off,
and it's looking like next season might be a bit of a gamble
since everything's up in the air. So...
Who's willing to... You guys wanna gamble again?
- I'll gamble. - Yeah?
- We're with you. - Yeah?
You know, $4 million with such a small crew,
and what we have to go through to get it,
I couldn't be more proud of these guys, and I...
You know, I don't wanna do it with anybody else.
We all took a chance,
but Rick picked a hell of a crew right here.
Rick's gave me a lot of opportunities this year.
I really hope we get our water license to come back.
There's a lot to be said for next year.
There's a lot of uncertainties there,
but if I got these guys with me, we'll figure it out.
- Hey, hey. - Hey, hey, hey.
- What's happening? - How's it going?
How's it going, guys?
That good or that bad?
You know, it just makes you really appreciate
those warm days for sluicing, I tell you what.
After one of the hardest seasons of Parker schnabel's career,
it's time to see if he's hit his 8,000-ounce goal
or missed his target for the first time
in his 14 years as a mine boss.
You guys definitely had your challenges this year.
This year. This week.
- Every day. - Yeah.
Yeah. It just feels like
it was a disjointed season with a lot of problems,
but we got through it.
You wanna see how we finished up?
Parker has 6,088 ounces of gold in the bank.
To his his goal, he needs a record weekly haul,
nearly 2,000 ounces.
- Mr. Bob? - Let's do it.
First on the scales, wash plant Bob.
60, 80...
It ran pay from the bridge cut all week.
Two hundred, two-fifty, two-eighty, three hundred,
three-thirty, three-forty...
Three-forty-three-point-seven.
Worth over $920,000.
Nice.
- Not bad? - Yeah.
And Mitch... Roxanne.
Here we go.
Roxanne sluiced pay from the elbow cut,
the most promising pit at his dominion creek claim.
180, 240, 270
306.3.
Well done. Well done.
Worth $820,000.
Nice job, Mitch.
- Thanks, man. - Nice.
And we got a new one, the rock gobbler.
- Who named it that? - I don't know.
Parker, you wanna look at this one? This is your baby.
It's your new ground.
Last up, rock gobbler,
fired up this week
to sluice the first dirt from Parker's gold run cut.
There's that.
And that ground over there is really, really chunky.
We're gonna throw this on top of it.
- Wow. - Sweet.
Wow.
Nice.
So, with that added in, it's 99.2.
Worth $266,000.
So, where'd that put us?
With that, we had a tremendous week,
our best week. 749.2 ounces.
- Wow. - That's sweet.
Yeah.
It gives us a season total, 6,837.4 ounces.
Record gold prices mean Parker's final total
is worth $18.3 million,
more cash than he's ever pulled in before.
But he's still more than 1,000 ounces short of his goal.
Considering the price of gold's up, we're okay,
which is good,
but, we spent a lot of money this summer.
Crazy.
Well, you got a whole crew up at the campfire
just breathlessly awaiting your announcement.
Yeah, we should go let 'em know
- how the season went? - Yeah.
Let's do it.
Where's the beers at?
- Got it. - Nice.
There's a lot of people here.
All right, first of all,
I really appreciate everybody being here
and sticking this season out.
It's been a a difficult one.
Gold production wise, we ended up at 6,837 ounces.
It's well short of what we were going for,
but we did learn a lot.
We know the ground much better.
And I have no doubt we're gonna come back next season
with a vengeance and a very big goal,
and we're gonna hit it.
I'm really looking forward to that.
And I really hope that you guys all are here for that
and, you know, continue to make this place a home.
And I just wanna thank you guys.
You know, it's a hell of a season.
We still found a lot of gold.
We got an awesome team here.
So next season, we're gonna come out here swinging.
We have more ground open, we have good ground open,
as we just saw from the final gold weighs,
and we just have to really try and keep that program going.
We failed, but it's a failure that makes success great.
Next year, we'll be back,
and we'll be back stronger.
I don't like this feeling.
I don't like being a loser.
It's not gonna happen again.
Next season, we're gonna kill it,
and that's my plan.