Original subtitles

It's been a real struggle all season,

figuring out where to put plants

and hauling pay long distance and just on and on and on.

So it's been hard.

Four months into his most ambitious season ever.

Parker schnabel is struggling

to bring in enough gold from his dominion creek claim.

Overall, the gold, it's been very consistent.

Consistently poor.

We need to figure out how to do close to 1000 oz. Every week.

Initially gunning for 10,000 oz.,

Parker is now hoping he can bring in at least 8000.

And the problem is this week we only have two wash plants running.

Sad.

I'm starting to get used to having three plants running

and having a lot of nice, big, clean ups, right?

To hit his goal, Parker has been running three wash plants.

But last week the operation on sulphur creek

ran out of stockpiled pay dirt, shutting it down.

Now, as a skeleton crew digs out more pay,

he's back to depending on the unreliable dominion creek claims

including the infamous long cut.

Mitch is up at the long cut.

The cut's been just a brutal one all season,

and the gold's been kind of little less than I had hoped.

But I'm glad Mitch is up there.

I'm confident he'll get through it.

We need that cut to pay out.

Right now we're pulling the pay dirt

from the downstream end of the long cut,

and we've got a lot of material

that's got to make it up to Roxanne to keep it running.

The long cut's gold

has been checkered for 16 weeks.

Now, Mitch is on a mission to find more

and deliver a big week.

I'm just trying to get as much gold

out of this long cut as possible.

Parker doesn't want to pull anything from any other project.

And there's no spares,

which means to keep Roxanne running 24/7,

these 60-ton trucks have to be hustling here.

To increase their gold haul with limited crew,

Mitch is using two giant a60 rock trucks.

Together, the mega-truck duo can deliver 600 yards of dirt an hour.

Those a60s have been just lifesavers.

They're packing around almost double

of what some of the other trucks are packing.

In order to keep up, we're overloading them quite a bit,

and it's very impressive what they'll handle.

I've talked to my dad a lot about loading trucks,

like, "do you get greedy and overload them a lot,

or do you go with what they're rated for?"

And my dad's like, "no, just go with what they're rated for."

Maybe it's 'cause my dad says not to do it is why I do it.

This season, we have a bunch of new operators,

and this is going to be a big test here.

We are going as fast as we can.

Me and the boys are flying today.

Operating one of the a60s

is 22-year-old greenhorn James Kurtz.

Definitely a good learning lesson

for it'll be my first time ever

working at a mine before and running equipment.

What was that noise?

That didn't sound good.

It's beeping at me.

Hey, Mitch, you got a copy?

We've got a problem.

I'm pretty sure this truck just went down.

Man! That's not what we need right now.

Okay, dude, just park that thing.

Let me pull up out of the way for everybody.

That sounded worse.

That... okay, I'm gonna park it here, I guess.

Hey, Mitch, I've got, like, four error codes flashing at me.

Hoses are all.

That's a hell of a mess.

This is the companion flange that mounts... the drive shaft mounts to.

This must have been cracked, and it snapped.

As soon as he backed down the ramp,

the wheels are driving the broken drive shaft,

and it's just blendarizing everything.

Yeah. That's heavy.

It's probably the worst one I've seen actually.

It's in a tough spot with 60 tons in the back.

The flange connecting the drive shaft

to the rear wheels has snapped,

destroying all the brake lines

and hydraulic hoses that power the dump box.

There's a drive shaft that goes to the front axle.

Obviously, we need to get the pay out of the back,

and then limp this thing back to the yard.

All of this does something.

These hoses are okay,

but everything that these attach to outward is.

The lift cylinders don't function properly, so we can't even dump the box.

Let's just start yanking everything out and run new.

Taylor's plan,

replace the hoses to operate the truck's box,

and dump the 60 tons of pay.

Then, using only the front 2-wheel drive,

limp the mega truck back to the yard for the full repair.

The other half of this hose...

It does a lot of damage when the drive line breaks like that.

Okay, let's try it again.

Okay. I'll try to...

Lift up as much as you can right there.

Okay, let's try, bro.

It seems like it's working.

We'll just dump it right here.

That's pretty impressive.

In not a good way.

Experienced operators are expensive,

and inexperienced operators...

They're also expensive.

Just in different ways.

There's a lot of work to be done

to get it back to running condition.

How long is it gonna take?

This pay pile is getting pretty small.

This thing is not safe to run.

- It's gonna be down for a bit. - Got you.

Taylor limps the truck back to the yard

to replace its drive shaft,

leaving Mitch just one 60-ton truck

to haul pay to Roxanne.

Hey, we're gonna shut this thing down.

We can't keep up with only one truck here,

so let's just let her run out of dirt and turn her off.

Parker wants 8000 oz.

That means we need dirt going out of this cut

to a wash plant, keeping it running.

But right now, that's not gonna happen

until we can fix some truck.

There's just a month and a half left of this season,

and klondike kingpin Tony beets

is running at limited capacity.

After plowing through his ready to sluice ground

on his Indian river claims,

Tony is waiting for the sun to thaw the frozen pay dirt.

Both plants are shut down at the moment.

We're waiting for pay.

The pay we have here is frozen solid.

In the meantime, no pay, no plants going.

So that means we're not catching any gold at the moment.

Until cousin Mike's crew finish stripping

the frozen ground, Tony's only gold

is coming from paradise hill.

Well, they're shut down in the Indian

because they've got a bunch of frozen pay,

and they can't feed the two plants.

So they're kind of a little bit reliant

on me right now, sluicing as fast as possible.

In charge of the trommel on paradise hill,

Tony's youngest son, Mike beets.

A rough ride.

Running the trommel all out

has filled the 30-acre settling pond with silt.

If dirty water spills into the nearby creek,

environmental authorities will shut down Tony's operation.

To prevent this,

Tony has no option but to stop sluicing.

Paradise hill has a series of three connected ponds.

They clean the trommel's ls dirty sluice water

by allowing silt to settle on the bottom,

while clean water flows

through the culverts back to the creek.

Now the top pond is full

and silt is clogging the culvert

creating muddy discharge water.

To fix it, the beets crew must build up the dikes

and raise the culvert to make the pond deeper,

giving the silt space to settle,

cleaning the water.

I don't know if I want rock trucks backing up that road

'cause that's the quickest way for me losing a rock truck.

Yeah.

To raise the dikes roads,

Mike's crew uses this specialty side dumper

ideal for widening the narrow roads.

It's late in the season and the pressure is on.

So right now we're down on the dike,

making the road a bit longer and wider.

As the trucks dump their load,

Mike levels the dike roads with the d11 dozer.

Much better to shut down for these two days

and do the work proper than it is

to risk being possibly shut down for the rest of the year.

These shutdowns are gonna cost a lot of money,

but there's no point in crying over spilled milk. Will happen.

You will have to fix it.

Crying, whining, complaining,

and saying "woe is me," ain't gonna solve it.

Sure.

Sakes!

First time ever I've seen a truck here flip.

I wouldn't stand anywhere near the front of the truck

'cause it could all come over.

At paradise hill, disaster has struck

while Mike beets' crew

rush to build up the settling pond's dike.

That frame is completely.

He went through the corner with a full load.

That's why it started to flip in the first place.

I should have been watching it more,

but the back tire caught the side of the dike

and it just slowly started pulling it in.

So by the time I stopped, it had... it kept moving,

and then it started grabbing the truck.

The 10-ton side dumper now hangs off a 15-foot drop.

Give me a chain.

Mike's trying to position the chain here

so that we get it back out of the ditch.

The thing still wants to fall that way.

To keep the truck from rolling into the pond,

Mike uses his 220 excavator to yank it back onto the road.

That chain is under a great deal of stress.

Yeah.

Take that hoe, drive it to the end.

It's just too much weight,

so I have to try to grab it from two points.

To double his lifting power,

Mike brings in a 480 excavator rated to lift up to 20 tons.

- It doesn't help with the fly. - The hell!

It's gonna have to be a bit of a twin process here trying to flip this.

So we have to find another spot on this truck

where I can lift two.

Okay, I'm gonna start lifting and you start lifting.

Nope! That ain't gonna work.

I simply don't have enough power

to do this the way I want to do it.

It's just too much weight.

That means I can't apply the right force the right directions

'cause I have no room to work.

It'd be so much easier if I just detach the thing.

But I don't want to do that. That's gonna be a ton of work.

The flies!

Argh!

What's the plan now?

It's really hard to think of solutions

when I'm constantly getting interrupted.

I don't even know if I have enough chains to do what I want.

Do we have any other half-inch chains?

I don't know.

Everything seems to take forever.

I think we're gonna have to bite the bullet and stop this right now.

We're gonna be down for what, two, three days.

Until the truck is rescued,

raising the dike is stopped cold,

and Tony's trommel can't sluice any gold.

I'm annoyed because somehow it's my fault

when they do something stupid.

And just one little up and guess what happens.

I might have to ask my dad to come over here and give a hand.

Forty miles down the road

I'm finding being out on my own a lot more peaceful.

I am definitely not getting as much sleep as I should be, but.

I will persevere.

Mike's brother and first year mine boss Kevin beets

is working around the clock to keep his fledgling operation afloat.

I'm very glad to finally have some gold coming out of the ground.

We just started sluicing,

so we still have quite a ways to go before we hit 1000 oz.

Kevin's invested nearly two million dollars

of his life savings to start up his own mine.

Since deciding to run 24/7,

he's brought in 155 oz.

But now, he has a new problem.

The plant is going through our pay pile

a lot quicker than we thought.

So it really means we've got to hammer down on getting another cut

opened up before it's too late.

In order to hit 1000 oz., we will need to be running... 24 hours.

Today, we're just working

on trying to open up the lynx cut extension

and get it down to pay.

It needs to happen super bad,

because that pile is getting chewed down so quickly,

it's actually getting scary.

But I keep stressing it that it could be a really early cold winter,

and that will not be good.

We need to find our 1000 oz. Minimum.

If you look at that mountain, we're in a huge belly here,

so hopefully that means maybe there'll be some huge nuggets over here.

Right now, we're still stripping overburdened.

We're trying to get down to pay.

We've got a little bit of a water problem,

and it's making for a couple of sloppy days here in the cut.

As you can see, we've got tons and tons of water in here.

Let's start turning out and taking a different path here.

It's just turn way out and go over there.

It'll be way easier.

As you can see, everything's saturated in the cut.

There's some muddy spots in the back of the cut.

There's a mud hole.

Sakes.

Hey, Brennan, you got a copy? Brennan?

Hello?

Hey, buddy, I'm stuck down here in the cut.

Yeah? Okay.

You've got to get this water dealt with.

What a.

I'm gonna need to get another pump in here immediately.

And we have no extra pumps.

Earlier this season, the lynx cut flooded...

Yeah, I need that pump.

Until then, we're really shut down.

Forcing Kevin to borrow a pump from Tony.

This is the pump Tony sent for me to borrow.

Whoo! Nice work, kev!

But he's since run out of favors

from the bank of mom and dad.

And the borrowed pump is now being used

to run Kevin's wash plant... Looking pretty good!

Leaving him without a spare.

I think I might try and nudge you backwards.

Thanks, Brennan. You're the man.

The main reason why there's so much water on this side

is because it's bleeding over from the wash plant side

and it's really hindering us from getting this cut stripped,

and the pay out of here.

I can't wait any longer to get a pump in here.

The two-acre lynx cut extension

shares a wall with the wash plant's settling pond.

The sluice water is seeping through it

turning the new cut's floor into a swampy mess.

To strip the cut without shutting down the wash plant,

Brennan needs a new pump to drain the extension

allowing the trucks to operate without getting stuck,

haul out the overburden and hit pay dirt.

Hey, Brennan.

I can't dig pay down here, dude.

I've been needing another pump for, like, a week now.

I know.

We just got to do a cleanup with you to pay for the thing.

Can we get another pump from Tony?

I'm not going to ask Tony until I have to.

I've fixed enough with Tony.

I'm just really struggling down here, man.

I'm just getting frustrated as like,

if that pay pile runs out, that shuts off,

we don't have any money coming in,

and I feel like that's on my shoulders.

Like, what do you want me to do here?

I need a pump.

I don't know what to say, like,

we don't have the cash right now.

We don't got a pump.

Tough.

Okay, well, I'm gonna...

Yeah, I don't know what else to say here.

Get out of my face for a while.

I need a pump.

Weird. Where the he's going?

Those 60-ton trucks,

they've had a huge impact on the mine site.

And so when one of those goes down

for whatever stupid little things have been going on with them,

things can grind to a halt in a hurry

if we don't get them fixed and keep them running.

In Parker's long cut sluicing is on hold

after a 60-ton rock truck broke down,

stopping pay dirt from reaching the plant.

Three hundred tons an hour of pay that's not getting to the plant right now,

and this thing's going to be down for a bit.

Just hammer the box against the stops

and we'll try to get that out of there,

so it's not going to land on anyone.

That's enough dirt to kill someone, and we don't want that.

It's going to fall out at some point.

We want it to fall out right now.

There it comes.

Maybe you get off your high horse and throw some tools around.

You want this thing hauling pay?

You know, Mitch wants us at the plant.

Yeah?

He wants us hauling pay at Roxanne.

Dude, we're on it.

Okay? We can't do it any faster.

Okay? So stop hounding us.

To get the a60 back on the road,

and Roxanne back on the gold,

Taylor needs to replace the broken drive shaft.

Let's get this changed.

I'll grab some wheel Chucks.

Let's do it.

Here's our new harness...

We need to lay it into the machine.

Taylor's first step,

replace all the destroyed brake lines and electrical wires

before fitting and installing a new drive shaft.

Here. We can start feeding it through?

Yeah, they are...

Screaming to have this truck back in the cut.

So we're busting our ass to get it back out there.

So we... we've just put the harness in.

Everything is pretty secured.

Janko's just I jumped in the skid steer

to go grab our drive shaft.

So, the next step is to crane our drive shaft in here.

All right. The final step to this job?

Send this thing back to work.

These are the ways that they're supposed to look... undamaged.

Swing it into position.

All right. We've got a drive shaft in the air.

It's go-time.

Look at that bad boy.

Yeah.

This has to line up perfectly,

because these grooves have to meet with the companion plunge.

We're just throwing some bolts here in the drive shaft on the deaf side,

and then we can line up the park break side.

The transmission's in neutral.

It can sit there in free wheel right now,

with the engine running there.

It wants to do it on its own.

It could go sideways, but it's really dangerous.

I have pressure on it right now with my pry bar,

so I'm pushing the brake pad against the rotor.

So I'm just... Just bouncing it a little bit

to release pressure, to get everything lined up.

As soon as we get the bolts in there,

we can... We can shut the machine off.

All right. Release.

How much?

We got to go about 30 degrees.

A little more.

Little more.

Okay, hold it right there.

That's one installed drive shaft.

Okay.

Mitch will be stoked we got this thing done.

We can give him a shout, and he can come pick it up.

- Yeah. Nice, buddy. - All right, bro.

I'm glad I can start trucking again.

Moving more pay for the boys.

We're back to hauling as fast as we can.

Taylor is a wizard and what he does,

so he's getting... He got it back up in...

Only a couple of...

And hopefully she doesn't break down anytime soon again.

After just six hours,

the ace 60 is back, hauling pay to the plant.

Time to fire up Roxanne.

And Mitch can start sluicing again.

You know, definitely not the way

we thought the day was going to go,

but we got the trucks back up and running.

We're back sluicing,

and we're going to try and keep it that way.

The truck was tired, decided it wanted to take a nap.

After shutting down his only running plant

to rebuild a dyke road,

Tony beets hasn't caught an ounce of gold in over 24 hours.

And a truck crash is adding to his sluicing delay.

I managed to get the trailer out of the hole

so it's not sitting there bending.

Well, I was hoping to just get the whole thing to come down over.

Yeah.

Tony wants to unhook the truck from the trailer

and rescue each piece separately.

To do that, he must first remove the metal pin that's holding them together.

Yeah.

What do you want me to do?

Yeah. We are two different pieces.

Tony can now flip the truck and trailer upright individually.

First up, the 20-ton semi-truck.

I am.

I am.

At nearly 40 feet long,

Tony wants to ensure the truck

doesn't smash into the excavator

when Mike pulls it over.

While attempting to rescue a flipped truck.

Mike has nearly smashed the semi into his own excavator.

I knew exactly where she was gonna land.

So everything's fixed, back to work.

The pressure is on though a little bit,

so we've got to make some rounds here

and try to get caught up for the delay.

After nearly two days, the truck is rolling again,

and the dyke repair is back on track.

I want to get this up as soon as possible.

You can get fired up.

The final step,

Mike raises the culvert to get the settling ponds ready for sluicing.

We're gonna hit the sluice to make the gold.

Dyke is done. I got it lifted up.

Culvert's back in.

Now I'm just gonna go start up the pump and I can get sluicing.

Time to get sluicing.

First year mine boss, Kevin beets,

is running out of time and pay dirt.

So I had talked with Brennan, and he is understandably concerned about

our pond for settling.

I honestly have no clue where he is now.

After Kevin denied foreman Brennan a pump

to drain the new cut, Brennan disappeared.

Brennan's gone, and he was the only one that had the know-how.

And now I wish he taught me a lot more,

and showed me how to do everything before he left.

I just had to take matters into my own hands there

and help Kevin and faith out a little bit.

What we have here is a pump that I went and purchased from

a really good friend of mine upstream.

And so I'm actually super excited to see how it works.

Then we'll pump some water and we'll dry her cut out.

I'd imagine by tomorrow you'd see a lot of this surface water dissipated,

which is what we need right now.

They started hauling overburdened gravel off

and started filling that pay pile up immediately.

Before he can start stripping again

and replenish the dwindling pay pile,

Brennan first needs to drain the cut.

I got a pretty good deal on this pump.

I got it for 11 grand,

and it had come with like, 800 feet of lay flat hose.

Maybe one day I'll be able to find my own ground to mine.

Just slowly adding to the collection of mining utensils I'll need

if I ever get to find a chunk of ground for myself one day.

It would just be cool to have a piggy bank full of gold

to take home for myself.

I'm so excited I bought a pump.

I'm more happy about buying this

than any of the cool toys I've bought in the last 10 years.

And hopefully she just starts pumping immediately.

That's a very nice looking pump.

Somebody had one for sale.

- Nice, nice. - And I went and bought that.

I was a little worried when you peeled out.

I wasn't sure where you were heading, so...

Yeah.

Well, I want to smash this out of the water.

That's pretty good.

Let's have a gander. Let's have a look.

Are we getting any water at all?

No, I put... I took this off. It's dry in there.

Self-farming pumps generally require some water in the system to prime.

Otherwise, it's essentially compressing air

and not creating a vacuum to suck.

So we're going to pull it open.

Prime it a bit manually.

Then hopefully that will work.

And if that doesn't work,

we'll move on to the next steps.

To manually prime the pump,

Kevin pours water inside its casing.

We'll do one more bucket and then we'll dry it.

I'm definitely hoping that this is all it was.

- Okay. You want me to fire up? - Yeah.

Whoo!

This stick runs really nice.

Small little cap motor in it.

It sounds really, really good.

Come on.

Getting the water on the cut is kind of vital,

because if we can't get the water down,

we can't dig the payout.

We should have water here by now.

I don't know what's going on.

Should just suck, I don't know what's going on.

Hear it pump now?

There we go.

Yay!

Great job! To the rescue.

Brennan can now dewater the cut extension

and get stripping down to pay again.

That's a very nice little pump

Brennan went off and bought.

This will at least allow us to get this cut down.

Get more pay to the plant so we can keep sluicing.

Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

A purchase, I think.

That's really hot. Don't touch that.

It's definitely awesome working with Kevin.

Like, he's got his strengths in all the mechanical side.

I got it all in the earth work side.

And combine those together,

you know, we worked really, really good together.

I was a bit worried when Brennan took off.

I do appreciate him coming back

and explaining what happened.

And him spending his own money so we can keep going.

That is very kind of him. Honestly.

It's a very old drill.

At paradise hill,

Mike beets has discovered some buried mining treasure.

I'm doing my best.

I love how it has the old style tires

- and it even has a spare on it. - -Yeah.

Yeah, that's impressive, too.

- Hi, guys. - Hello.

This week, Tony's been running just one wash plant,

his trommel on paradise hill.

We haven't been sluicing all week, have we?

I heard you had a bit of excitement with one of your trucks?

Well, he's lucky, because if he had gone fully over the edge,

it literally almost would have been cheaper just to leave him there.

Three nights, two days.

Okay. Well, that really sucks.

You ready?

To hit his 5,000 ounce goal,

Tony needs around 200 ounces each week.

Eighty, ninety, hundred, hundred and ten...

Hundred and twenty, hundred and thirty,

hundred and forty...

Keep going.

A hundred and forty-three point five-eight.

Worth over $35,000.

More is always better, but take what you can get.

We need to get some revenue.

So where are we in terms of amount this season?

- We've got like 3,800? - Yeah. 3,800.

Roughly 3,800.

I mean, it'd be better if you had the Indian river going,

and we had the hester cut going.

The whole hester cut's still down below waiting.

- It's calling your name? - Yeah.

This has been a lovely gold weigh,

but I have work to do.

- Okay. - -I'll see you guys later.

I'll see you guys later.

Tony and minnie.

Hey, Kevin.

Hey, guys. How are you?

How are you?

Good. How are you guys?

Good. Busy. Very busy.

We better get to the gym.

After running his links cut stockpile, 24/7,

Kevin beets weighs his weekly gold haul,

with landlords Tony and minnie

looking to collect their first 10% royalty.

So what's been happening here?

We had some more water problems

and I ended up buying a pump there just to help out.

You can never have enough pumps.

I just wanted to help out and keep going, so

I appreciate it. It definitely got us through that little rough spot.

Exactly.

So, yeah. If we're gonna reach our goal of 1,000 ounces,

we're gonna have to have a couple more good gold weights.

So let's see what we got for this one.

To hit his 1,000 ounce goal,

Kevin needs around 120 ounces each week.

Thirty... Forty... Fifty...

Fifty-five...

Seventy, eighty, ninety, hundred,

hundred twenty, hundred thirty,

hundred forty,

hundred fifty.

- Are you kidding me? - 156.60.

Worth over $390,000.

It's his best haul of the season,

and doubles his gold total to 312 ounces.

Yeah, beautiful.

It's nice to be on the upswing, honestly.

Yay, money!

"Yay, money!"

Yeah.

How about our royalties?

This gold just changes everybody's thought process on it all.

It makes me feel good that we're gonna be well on our path

to the 1,000 ounces, and that's all that matters now.

You know, frustrations can leave,

and the gold comes in, everybody's happy.

And just... let's hope the rest of the cut stays that good,

so we can actually conquer our goal.

That was good.

Now that we have capital, we'll get our pump in there.

And it was really helpful of Brennan

to to bring his down and keep us going.

- Yeah. - I'm really excited for

probably next week, week after we start running that

and see what that cut pulls out.

That should be pretty exciting.

Hi, Chris.

- How's it going? - It's going.

So how'd your week ago, Mitch?

We lost a drive shaft in one of the trucks.

So, yeah, it was a spendy week there.

Yeah, no kidding.

Big red been treating you decent

yeah. Yeah, it's been going good there.

Just more of the same red gravels,

but we're making our way through it.

To hit his 8,000 ounce target,

Parker needs to mine 600 ounces of gold each week.

- I see you got a big thermos this week. - -Yeah.

You didn't say that very confidently.

Well, you know, I've caught on to you guys.

Just pour it out.

Here we go. Big red.

Last week, Tyson sluiced red gravel pay dirt

from the bridge cut, delivering 136 ounces

from big red.

Seventy, eighty-five, a hundred...

A hundred point eight.

You definitely found an ounce to put in that to make it triple digits.

We scoured the gold room kind of hard,

trying to come up a little bit more.

You wanna see how Roxanne's doing, Mitch?

All righty. Here we go.

Roxanne.

For the long cut to be on track for 3000 ounces,

Parker needs it to deliver 475 ounces every week.

A hundred, one ten, one forty,

one sixty, one seventy, one eighty.

Are we gonna break two?

Two hundred.

206.8.

Almost 100 ounces less than last week.

This week we have 307.6 ounces.

Worth over $769,000.

This is Parker's worst gold weigh in seven weeks.

A slump, when his production should be peaking.

Did we break four?

Our season is 4,175.4.

Halfway there.

Not bad.

No, but two straight weeks of decline.

We'll get those numbers back up there, hopefully.

You guys have to pump those numbers up.

I'm gonna bag this stuff up.

Try and keep them running.

See you guys at dinner.

See you at dinner. Bosco, come here.

In you get. Nice try.

Man. We've got a long ways to go, Chris.

- Yeah, we do. - And a short time to get there.