Original subtitles

The more that the world gets, the higher price folks go.

On this gold rush.

Come on, big cat. You at least ought to be able to do the work of two people.

On a mission to build a massive war chest of gold, Parker Snavel expands his

crew. We don't have enough people. We need some more bodies.

Good nerve -wracking.

To make up for lost time, Tony Beats resurrects an old beast.

And Rick Neff takes a huge gamble.

In a bid to run more pay through his wash plant.

Holy, what was that?

Right now, the only plan we have going is Mike.

And it's important to keep that one on the go.

It's the main source of income, so to speak.

The king of the Condite, Tony Beats.

is battling to make a comeback after failing to hit his target two years in a

row.

Anyway, everything is running right now.

My plant seems to be doing fine.

So for now, yeah, we're trying to tickle things, so to speak.

To catch in on high gold prices, this season Tony's pushing for at least 3

ounces.

If nothing else breaks down, we should be just fine.

Like they say, it doesn't work, right?

They hit their goal. Daughter Monica is feeding gold -rich pay from the mega

-cut into the family's only working plant.

This pandemic has been affecting a lot of things.

It's hard getting parts in, everything takes longer.

And that's saying something because things already changed forever here in

Yukon.

At the end of the trommel, Ruby Mahoney in the loader clears the worthless

tailings.

I think this season is going quite well.

With gold prices being so high, Tony has been going after every piece of land

that has gold in it.

To stop tailings bucking up and hitting the plant, Ruby's forced to gut it down.

So something is in there.

The engine blew up.

Kaboom. We only had one loader going because we just had a string of bad

Pretty much every 988 we tried has gone kaboom, kablow here.

It's not a day project.

It's a can't take weeks.

Because we need bards.

It's the fourth loader that's died in the last week.

Now the entire fleet is down.

Jeff had another 88 breakdown.

Yeah. Where are we with the parts for the other one?

Back in the office, Kevin's girlfriend, Faith, is scrambling to source parts.

Because of COVID -19, it's going to take at least a month.

Before we get done. A month?

Yeah.

I mean, that's the last load?

Yeah.

So we better come up with something quick.

But that ain't gonna cut it, right?

The pandemic has already shortened Tony's season.

Now it's shut down his operation.

costing him precious time to bank gold at record high prices.

The bigger our operations get, the more behind the game I feel.

This isn't really sustainable long term.

This season, 25 -year -old gold miner Parker Schnabel is racing to earn enough

money to buy new ground and expand his mining business.

This year for us, it's really about trying to build a good war stack in

to find new ground and fund exploration.

To make up for the late start to the season, and take advantage of the high

price, Parker splits his operations to run two watch plans.

But with the pandemic closing the border, it's a battle to bring

miners into the Klondike.

This year, we've struggled with crew a lot.

It's definitely an issue, and I don't have a solution to it.

All I've got to offer is a job.

like training new people that much.

But in some ways, a bad economy is good for us in that fuel prices are low.

And the more that the world gets, the higher price holds to go.

Parker has most of his crew working at the promised land, helping Tyson Lee

prepare Lucifer for a move.

Moving to L 'Occitane, no one really enjoys this stressful time.

Over at the last cut, Parker's top miners, co -foreman Mitch Blaschke and

Brennan Ruot, fight to keep Big Red running with a skeleton crew.

Come on, Big Cat, you're falling behind out there.

Yeah, I know, man. It's brutal here. You're right, my bad.

You always tell me how good you are. You at least ought to be able to do the

work of two people.

Brennan rips ground in the dozer.

while Mitch digs and stockpiles gold -rich pay to keep the wash plant fed.

We've got to do something here, man, because I'm getting this dirt dug up

than what you're opening.

Oh, I hear you, buddy.

Trey moves dirt from Mitch's pile to Big Red, which needs 180 yards an hour to

keep running.

Parker said, you know, the most important thing is to keep wash plants

That's what he wants Brandon and I to focus on, but right now we've got, you

know, nobody over opening up new ground.

When I got here this morning, we had about, oh, 40 minutes worth of dirt

Well, buddy, I just don't know if we can keep going at this pace.

I don't know what the answer is.

Well, I can tell you what the answer is. We need to get a stripping crew going

here because, yeah, you and I, man, that's...

Not enough.

If we keep going at this rate, we're going to end up having to shut the plant

down, so we're just going to run out of dirt.

Yeah, I don't know why they always make sluice for such a priority. We go

through just about as much dirt as they do, you know.

I'm trying everything I can do here. I just can't do the work. It's three or

four people by myself.

This definitely isn't working.

Well, buddy, I think that's probably all we're going to get for now.

Without a full crew.

Probably your last shoot for the day, man.

They can't dig enough dirt to keep the wash plant fed.

And have no choice but to shut it down.

You know, it's frustrating right now. You know, this is the prime of the

This is when you should be closing in on these plants around 24 hours a day.

We've got to cut this thing down. It's frustrating, but it is what it is. We've

got to get some more help.

Everybody should spread juice in right now.

We'll have a chat with the boss, see if we can figure this out.

Hey, man. We just had to shut down Big Red because we ran out of pay.

We don't have enough people. We need some more bodies. I mean, right now, you

know, with everybody having to go through quarantine and all that, it's

make it tough. But the sooner we can get somebody up here, the better.

Yeah, the big problem here is somebody with no experience is almost worse than

nobody. Man, I don't care if they have lots of experience, no experience.

We can train them, whatever. You can find us.

I'll do what I can as quick as I can.

We're trying to do more and more every year with, you know, less time, less

people, and, well, there comes a point where that just doesn't work anymore.

I know it's hard to get people up here because of the whole COVID situation,

but, you know, we need to start looking because we want to have any chance of

having a decent season this year.

We need some help.

We're still suffering a bit from the late start, but we are on good ground.

This year, Rick Ness' future as a gold miner hangs in the balance.

I just want to make sure that we're doing absolutely everything to maximize.

I want to make sure we're not leaving anything on the table as far as what

doing.

After two years barely breaking even, he needs a 1 ,000 -ounce season or he'll

have to quit to hit his goal.

He needs almost 70 ounces a week, but so far he's averaged less than 40.

We're around a bucket every minute.

Rick sets up a time trial for the crew to see how he can increase production.

We're losing too much time.

New operator Mark Doberspite feeds the plant with the excavator.

I've been running his numbers, and I mean, we're really only doing about 80

yards an hour through this thing.

And I think it could do more than that.

There's a fine line between too much and not enough.

Now, you don't just dump it.

You know, you just kind of feather it in.

Not enough dirt, and the sluice runs too fast, and the gold will go at the end.

Too much dirt, the riffles will plug, and the gold will go at the end.

It demands your full attention all day.

Rick's hometown pal, Chris Cruz, has also spotted the bottleneck.

Yeah, I think you could have probably the best tow operator in the world

dirt into the plant.

There's just really no way to...

To keep it consistent.

But Rick has a plan to speed things up.

It's a well -built, simple plant. It's made for this ground.

It does a great job.

But I know that a hopper feeder right now would just maximize its potential. I

know it would.

A hopper feeder can process larger loads of paper.

Bars known as grizzlies.

filter out big rocks.

Conveyors then take the pay dirt and feed it evenly into the wash plant.

With a constant feed, the wash plant Rick leased from claim owner Troy could

catch 25 % more gold.

If we could get this thing up to 100 yards an hour.

And with current prices, that's a quarter million dollars a month.

But hopper feeders don't come clean.

I definitely wasn't planning on making any big purchases.

I don't have it in the budget at all. You know, I owe Troy 100 ounces by the

of this week.

Hey, Rick. How you feeling, buddy? Good, how are you? When Rick arrived in the

Yukon, claim owner Troy Taylor...

needed a guarantee that the late start would not affect his royalty payment.

We're hoping you can pull out 100 ounces in a month or so and then I'll feel

more comfortable that we're going to be okay.

I think we can manage it.

Rick's banked 107 ounces this season.

Now the royalty's due in just six days.

If he can't pay it, he'll lose the lease.

That's the only thing I'm struggling with.

It's a lot of money to pay off by the end of the week, but I don't see how I

can't do it.

Instead of saving his gold to pay Troy, Rick is putting it all on the line to

upgrade his watch plane.

I heard there's a nice hopper feeder for sale. It's just a couple hours away.

This guy Porter's yard.

I'm going to go see him.

There's a bit of a gamble, but I got to do something. We're definitely not

maximizing what we can do right now.

Got to go look at it. Hopefully it's the one.

Hey, Dom.

You friendly?

How you doing, Rick? Good.

Nice to meet you. I'm Porter. Right on, man.

Mr. Peter?

Betcha.

He's a beauty.

Yeah, pretty nice unit.

Yeah.

What do you mind if... $5 ,000 is almost 43 ounces of gold.

I think we got a deal.

I'm right on. You got some paperwork for me? I'll write you a check. Sure.

Sounds good.

But Rick is now 36 ounces short of his royalty payment to Troy.

Well, that's good news. We've got a hopper feeder. That's really going to

out my operation.

The bad news is I can't give Troy his 100 ounces and pay for this, so we're

going to have to bust ass, get more gold out of the ground.

Tony Beat's entire fleet of loaders is down waiting for parts.

His operation is at a standstill.

And he's losing almost $60 ,000 a day in gold.

This year he had nothing but trouble.

But the king of the Klondike has a plan.

On the other side of Paradise Hill, he's left a loader with a seized engine that

he wants to bring back to life.

You can't get no parts anywhere else, everybody.

Yet.

But there's a problem.

The loader is on a narrow access road.

On one side, A sheer drop.

And on the other, a dirt wall.

And there's no easy way to get it onto a truck.

Tony

has

a radical plan.

Lift that boom up.

Instead of hauling the loader back to the mine, he harvests an engine from the

boneyard. Keep it square.

And plans on dropping it into the dead loader. Good.

Then drive it back.

You can't get beside it.

You're lucky to get behind that piece of equipment.

It's kind of like stuck on top of a hill.

We come with a side boom. We just drive up there, sit there.

Lift the engine out with it, and then we can drive it out.

The side boom is designed to lay heavy pipes in rocky or uneven terrain.

But it's the perfect machine to change an engine where there's no room to move.

Down three over here.

This is a really handy machine to have.

This is going relatively smooth.

The old engine removed.

Monica lifts the new one into position.

The most important thing is you always want to watch people directing you

because you can't see. You don't know where those fingers are.

I'm clear on this side.

How about you? Are you good?

I'm good on my side right now, as of right now.

As long as we keep her straight and... Nope, nope, nope, nope.

Oh, we're... Hang in, buddy.

Cool.

It went really quick, the way you had it scheduled.

I mean, that's always good.

So basically, all they got to do is right now hook it up, hook up a couple

hoses, hook up the radiator, the fan, And they fire it up and take off.

It's been five years since this engine was last turned over.

Okay, fire in the hole, gentlemen.

The king of the Klondike is back in business.

Keep going.

Keep going.

Hold it.

Hold that. Hold that.

Something is loading up the engine.

And it only can be hydraulics and it can only be the transmission.

And neither one of them, I can see them do it.

So just by putting in a new engine doesn't mean the transmission shouldn't

in. So it's that all together, I guess.

Tony's failure to resurrect the dead dozer has left his mining operations

down.

Next time I have a bright idea, I'm going to see a doctor.

left Mitch and Brennan in charge at Big Red.

And everybody here is working their asses off.

Parker Snavel's gunning for a record -breaking season.

To get back to running the full operation, he's brought in two new

Trying to find people this time of year is really difficult because good people

are working, you know?

We have...

Two new people.

But no promises on where we end up.

In the last cut, Big Red is up and running again.

And seasoned operator Monique Stone stockpiles gold -rich dirt.

I'm totally up for any challenge.

I love this work.

Portuguese rookie miner Tatiana Costa has been hired to drive a loader.

But this is the first time she's ever fed a wasp plant.

This is my first season mining.

This is all very new for me, so learning the machines, learning how to operate

them. Every day is a learning day.

See how it goes.

Is it now wrecking?

Start lifting.

Okay. Steer to your left just a little bit.

Okay. All right.

Start to step forward. I'm forward.

Nice and easy. Nice and easy.

Okay. Keep going forward.

Lift as you're going forward.

Just one smooth motion.

Good. You got the first one in without crashing anything out.

Hardest things for a mechanic and a foreman is to, well, turn over your

button to somebody that's new.

And we definitely, you know, don't want to see anything bad happen here. But,

you know, nobody's ever going to learn unless you give them a try.

There you go. Now stop.

Keep tipping.

Now back up to grab another screw.

But thank you for not hitting the hopper. You're doing great.

You hold up right there. I'm going to give you the remote.

Okay, so this is the control for dumping the grizzlies.

I'm going to start digging some hay. If you've got any questions, follow me on

the radio.

And we'll see how it goes.

I'll give it my best. All right, you're doing good.

Thanks for the help. No problem.

We're digging some more so we can keep this thing running day and night.

Mitch gets back in the 480 to help Monique build up the pay pile.

You know, this year with being behind schedule and trying to make up for lost

time, we're certainly wanting to run everything just as fast as we can.

And, well, that definitely makes it tough for new operators, but we'll do

Give them a chance here and see what they got.

up with the launch plant but you just got to watch your surroundings there be

real careful yeah sorry about that yeah oh it'll be all right like i said i

think it's pretty tough but that would have been one of the pickups it'd be

pretty well smashed so yeah just be careful all right you know parker's uh

got us help here for running big red but uh you know nobody's uh come with a

resume so it's gonna make things real tough You know, I really hope that, you

know, Parker's decisions here, how we're doing things, you know, don't just

bring this whole operation to a shutdown.

At Lower Duncan Creek, Rick Nass is taking delivery of his new $75 ,000

hopper feeder.

that he hopes will increase his gold haul by 25%. Let's go, buddy.

Excellent.

In the lay -down yard, mechanic Carl Rock prepares it to run.

And at the wash plant, Chris Cruz builds a path for the new hopper.

Yeah, I know we've got a deadline to try.

Spending this extra money right now.

It's a little bit scary.

The copper feeder is going to make it so we can feed a consistent amount of dirt

and figure out how rich this ground really is.

How's this thing looking besides how obvious that is?

Yeah, it's in good shape, but it needs some love, right? Yeah. Well, I really

wanted to have this thing perfect before we put it in service. Yeah, me too. But

it's just not going to happen that way.

I mean, I got Troy coming at the end of the week for his money. Yeah. And guess

what? I gave his money to the guy for this. Okay, buddy.

Rick needs to get the hopper feeder to the wash plant on the other side of

Duncan Creek.

But it's too wide to use the bridge.

Rick and Carl have no choice but to drag it through the fast -flowing water.

Got an idea what we're going to do here?

The only vehicle on the claim that can haul the 13 -ton hopper is the 220

loader.

But Carl must fix the towing hitch to the bucket first.

Got the hitch on here. We're going to drag this thing down there and hopefully

have this thing in and run it by length, eh?

Feel pretty good about it? Oh, yeah.

You'll be fine.

All 13 tons of the hopper feeder now rests on Carl's quickly fabricated tow

hitch.

It's looking all right.

Like I said, the creek crossing is going to be the big thing for it.

It hasn't broke off yet.

This is basically the national spot. It's real steep, right?

I'm going blind. I can't see.

We're doing a good job right now. We still want to pop it off, right?

If Carl's hitch fails now, Rick's $75 ,000 machine could end up

in the creek.

Just a little nerve -wracking. That's all right.

Nice and easy.

It's a little scary here, but it's nice and easy.

I'm hearing some metal breaking.

That thing coming off there.

Oh.

We're finding out how tough our welds are right now.

Still holding.

Just keep straightening out. Let's turn it a bit, just like that.

Just keep going.

Straighten that out, yeah.

It's working, buddy.

It's working.

This is great.

Thinking to myself that I probably should have done more than one class on

now, but nothing broke, so.

Maybe I'm going to redeem myself for a problem at 12, right?

Once Rick gets the new hopper into position,

Good stuff, boys.

Fire it up.

It's finally ready to run.

But he now only has two days to haul in at least 36 ounces of gold.

Yeah, magic.

Perfect. Exactly what I was looking for.

Running about 100 yards an hour right now.

This is definitely worth the money. Now we've just got to get enough dirt

through it to get Troy his 100 ounces.

We don't have much luck with that 988.

Tony's whole operation is at a standstill until he can get a working

He's in the boneyard with welder Cody Hunter.

Why don't we build a tow bar for that thing?

Sure. All of that, like we do with everything else.

Nice.

After swapping out the engine on a 988 loader, it seized up.

Tony now wants to get it back to camp to try one last fix.

You said you had some steel here in the boneyard? Yeah, I got some stuff over

there, Tony. Well, what is it? Let's have a look at it.

So I think that would be the answer

down there.

We're just going to have to make it work. Sure.

Get it home. That's the only way to go.

Tony's plan.

is for Cody to fabricate a steel tow bar. The ton, 520 horsepower, D10

dozer.

Well, we'll find out if Cody did a good job with that tow bar.

But they... They say all the other ones have people build work, so there's no

reason why Dickman wouldn't.

Tony brings in his son.

heavy load specialist, Mike Pease.

Good.

While Mike hauls the dozer around Paradise Hill, Tony fits the tow bar to

loader's bucket.

Yeah, I'm all set, so I'm done.

Lift up, see what happens.

This should work.

And we'll find out in a second, I guess.

Got to lift it up a little bit, Mike.

It needs to hold all 48 tons of loader.

Hold it, hold it.

A little bit at a time.

Hold, hold, hold, hold.

Okay, pull it.

If you get a D10 in front of things, not many things are going to argue point

with it.

It takes four hours for Mike to get the loader six miles back to the yard.

It pushed slightly going downhill and a grunt slightly going uphill, but other

than that, barely anything.

Skeeters. Oh, come on. The great big guy like you know takes people and eat you.

Tell all.

This letter has been kind of a...

Next morning, Kevin found the problem.

I think it should go now.

What's happening is that a couple of the valves were a little stuck.

I had to pull some of them and they were a real pain to get out.

This should mean that the transmission is now free to move, which should allow

the engine to move, which should allow the whole thing, you know, to run.

Yeah, she should be good to go at this point.

After four days of downtime, the beach crew has a working loader.

They can finally get back to mining.

Thank God that we got the loader. We could finally have a steady run time

the problem, get back to saluting. Maybe this day didn't tell me to streak back

around.

Get off my lawn.

What's up, man?

What's up, guys?

At Lower Duncan Creek, it's time for Rick Ness to find out if he's mined

gold to pay his claim owner 100 ounces in royalties.

How are you?

Well, I'm a bit nervous.

I told you guys that Troy, he wants their minimum royalty up front, and he's

coming for it today.

Well...

You were right.

So far this season, Rick has averaged less than 10 ounces a day.

Now, just two days after fitting his new hopper feeder, he needs 36 ounces to

pay his royalties and stay on the claim.

All right.

Here we go.

It's going to be close, I think.

19.

30, 40, 50.

Oh, man.

Yeah, dude, 55 .32.

Yeah.

Worth $96 ,000 and giving Rick enough to pay his royalties.

That's a good -looking number there, buddy.

You just made it. That's a good clean -up, man.

The hopper feeder has paid for itself and helped get Rick.

to a season total of 163 ounces.

Well, we live to fight another day. We got the minimum royalty.

And a good part of that, too, is they're paid off royalty -wise. Now the rest of

the gold are.

That's awesome.

That's fantastic, man. That feels so good.

For once, it's like we're rolling.

I like it. I want to thank you guys for busting ass and getting that thing in.

as quick as we did because that was going to be key, right? Like, it was a

of money up front.

She's good, buddy. Yeah.

Man, the Hoffer feeder is awesome.

He spent the money.

Things are completely different than last year. I can't say nothing bad about

it. I'm excited we're on the gold.

Do some more solutions, get some more gold.

Well, there it is, right?

Wow, look at that.

100 ounces. Nice.

Well, I've got to say I'm happy that I'm able to do it, but it's never easy

handing somebody 100 ounces of gold.

Nice looking stuff.

That settles us up for the minimum royalties, so it's out of the way. And

long as you're happy, we're going to keep on rolling like we are, and

you're going to have a lot more jars of that. All right, I don't know. Good for

you. All right, Troy.

I'll see you again. Okay.

Gamble paid off.

Troy's paid off. The royalties are paid off. Now every ounce we get.

Going right in our pocket.

After a difficult week at Paradise Hill, the Beats family gathers for the Gold

Way.

So that was quite a week, huh?

Yeah. Loader, loader, loader problem.

Anyways, do you want to do another way here?

You do the honors. I'll read it all.

You can read? I got 20 -20 vision, pal.

To hit his 3 ,000 -ounce goal, Tony needs a weekly average of 177 ounces.

You got 20, 40, 50, 60.

You got 85, 90. You got 100, 120.

What the hell you got?

128 .30.

Still no... 128 ounces is worth almost a quarter of a million

dollars. But it's not enough to hit Tony's goal with the shortened season.

A ridiculous amount. We should have at least double.

If it wasn't for the gold price today, we wouldn't be running it.

Could have been a lot worse.

It could have been a lot worse.

I mean, without finding that loader, without getting... Together getting it

fixed up, getting it out of there.

We did the best we could, I think.

Between all of us, we pulled it off.

Good.

Back up and running.

And on that note... Oh, we've got to go back to work, don't we?

Well, somebody's got to bring in the bacon.

At Scribner Creek.

Parker's crew gathers to see how much gold the new crew members helped to

in.

And give them some time, see if they can work their way in.

Get accustomed to it.

Well, how'd we end up doing with a little bit of downtime?

Well, I'll tell you what, Junior. Even though you guys lost a shift, Big Red

really well this week. It did, did it? Yeah.

Holy. Yeah. Got the big jar.

I got the big jar. Ready? You betcha.

So far this season, Big Red has averaged 200 ounces a week.

60.

100, 130, 220, 270, 280.

Keep it going.

340.

You're joking, right?

Nope, that's it right there.

355 .65.

Wow. Well done. That's unreal.

Good job, partner.

Half a million dollar win.

Yeah, that's pretty good.

Big Red's just crunching it. That last cut you guys are into.

We must have hit a hot spot or something. That's a lot.

Yeah. Well, actually, Lucifer did really well, too.

20, 40, 80, 160, 220,

272 .95.

Finally, we beat him. Yeah, that's awesome.

So, for the week, it's 629 .5 ounces.

And our season total is 2 ,303 ounces.

Not bad.

Holy smokes.

That's one of the bigger cleanups Big Red has.

You know, that's a good week, Parker.

Really good.

629 ounces is worth $1 .1 million.

Parker is well on his way to a record -breaking season and building the war

chest he needs to buy new ground.

Free? That's not a bad place to be right now.

On the next Gold Rush.

There's a load of free dirt. All we got to do is pick it up. Oh, you see that

wooden thing there? That is the sluice box.

They did that 80 years ago, so I think it'd be more defensive.

Oh!

Woo -hoo!

That is not good. Shut it down!

Watch your fingers.

Trying to do all this with two people, it's pretty ridiculous.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Holy. This could be the usual.