Original subtitles

(Transcrito por TurboScribe. Atualize para Ilimitado para remover esta mensagem.) Darren's dream here, that it's going to be a family business.

And I can't see that happening in the far future

unless we find something better here.

On this episode of Mine Rescue.

Right now, I'm really nervous.

I'm starting to shake a little bit.

A desperate miner.

Oh, when I saw that first nugget, that was it.

It was game over.

Reliant on his aging parents.

I've spent over $200,000 myself.

I really don't like him up on the high stuff.

He is getting older. So am I.

Gambles everything they have on gold fever.

If we don't hit something this year,

it's not going to be feasible.

I would really feel like I let them down.

All right, coming in.

To rescue both a mine and family.

I never actually realized that was bedrock.

Like, I had no clue.

It's a race to get them on the gold and back in the black.

Oh, wow.

Like, for real.

I just cannot believe we did that in two hours.

You must be Jeff, huh?

Yeah, Juan.

Hey, Jeff.

Nice to meet you.

Likewise.

Sophia.

Nice to meet you.

Yeah, there's no replacing Freddy, but we'll do our best.

Juan arrives solo in central British Columbia.

After a distress call from Freddy as he deals

with an emergency back home.

Hey, Juan, I've got some bad news.

I'm not going to be able to make it up there.

The flooding at the house has wiped me out.

I've got to get this fixed.

In his place, he sends in his trusted father-daughter

prospecting team, Jeff and Sophia Bond.

You know, that's great that you guys were able to come

out and give us a hand.

Let's do it.

Thanks.

Their destination, the Caribou region,

and the Dirt Fishin' Mine, where a gold drought has a family

on the edge of financial crisis.

From what I understand, you know,

this guy's got 700 acres out there, big claims.

You know, hopefully we'll be able to get in there

and do some prospecting.

Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, that's our specialty.

I spent many years with the Yukon Geological Survey

working with placer miners, trying to help them find gold,

and just really helping them be successful.

I've had my eyes on the ground since I could remember.

I just love finding gold.

It's just the treasure hunt is just so exciting.

It's really nice having Jeff and Sophia here.

I was a little worried coming out here without Fred,

but honestly, being able to get them here

in such a short notice, it was a lifesaver.

Hey, how you doing?

Must be Darren.

I am.

How you doing?

Good to meet you.

Hey, Juan, Rob.

Rob, nice to meet you.

How you doing?

So, Freddie wasn't able to make it on this one,

so we got Jeff and Sophia.

They're both geologists.

Okay, that's awesome.

We've been around a lot of mines, seen a lot of ground,

so we can hopefully get a better sense

of where the better ground has been,

where it's been not so good.

Oh, that's great.

This is the whole crew, huh, or do you have other guys?

My parents are just over there.

They're cleaning the gold from the last run right now,

and I love it because me and Robbie will go dig pay,

my mom and dad will run the plant.

Everything keeps moving.

Nearly two decades ago, Darren and dad Jerry

took their first steps into the world of gold.

Back in 2008, me and my dad would go up on the Fraser River,

and we'd do some panning, and oh,

when I saw that first nugget, that was it.

It was game over.

I had to go find my own claim.

The Caribou region has been extensively mined,

so they spent seven years prospecting

before they finally made their pick.

There was some workings, but not a crazy amount.

We did some high banking

and just picked a random hole out of nowhere,

and it turned out pretty good,

so it was just convincing my mom and dad,

who are in retirement, if they wanted to do this.

Darren's firstborn, knows it all.

That's coming from a mother, but yes, he's a hard worker.

The story is, I have a son

that decided he would like to try this out.

I quit my job to do this,

and I lost two years of wages putting here,

and we never made any money back, never did.

Yeah, that's what we run this morning,

and so there's about, I think, he said he did 60 yards.

Oh.

Did I want to come? Not particularly,

but they needed a third hand.

I've spent probably over $200,000 myself.

My mom and dad came up here

and didn't make a penny the whole time they were here.

And, you know, to be honest, I need to pay them back.

If we don't hit something this year,

it's not going to be feasible.

I would really feel like I let them down.

None of this would have been even possible

without the two of them, so at the end of the year,

I'd love to, you know, give them a 10-ounce bar

and send them on a vacation to Europe

or wherever they want to go.

What about you?

My role up here is whatever it takes

to get the pay to the plant and run it through.

I run the rock truck, run the loader,

run the excavator, whatever I can.

He's absolutely a big part of everything

that goes on here, for sure.

So how long have you guys been mining here?

This is season 11.

We've had it as good as an ounce every 40 yards

and as bad as an ounce every 400.

Every piece of ground is different here.

The claim is so big, I have no idea

how to even understand the geology of it all.

You had mentioned you had some of the gold

that you got from your last cleanup.

Can we see it?

Yeah, you bet.

All right.

There's not a lot of fine in there.

Now, how much have you gotten so far?

We're sitting around 12 ounces now.

Okay.

Now, what's your goal for this year?

My target's going to be 150 ounces.

Wow. Okay.

In the few months remaining of Darren's season,

he needs close to 2 ounces per day to hit his target.

I really need to get 150 ounces

so that I can make everything viable.

I've got all my money invested in this,

and my mom and dad's as well,

so that that's where the stress is.

It's a big deal, very big deal.

Okay.

Well, you know, what we want to do is,

we want to fire her up.

We want to do a two-hour test run.

Okay. You guys good with that?

Yeah, you bet.

All right, well, let's do it.

All right.

All right.

First bucket.

First bucket.

There it is.

Hope this goes good.

I'll stay up here, take a look at the plant.

If you guys want to get your things together

and start taking a look at the cut.

Come on, baby.

Show me the gold.

Rob loads pay into the 8-foot hopper,

where it funnels into a 24-foot-long trommel.

A spray bar washes the rocks in the drum,

pushing finer material into a 20-foot sluice

where gold should be caught.

Yeah, this pay looks pretty good.

Hope there's some gold in it.

The way that he's feeding the plant right now,

he has to go so slow,

because all those bigger rocks right now,

so that way he doesn't drop them into that hopper

and clog it up.

Test underway.

This must be where Darren's getting his pay from, up here.

Jeff and daughter Sophia sneak a look at Darren's cut

to assess the quality of dirt.

That's not a bad-looking gravel there.

Yeah, good amount of clay.

What I noticed, though, just coming down here,

this is what the gravel's sitting on.

It's a full-fed rock.

And what concerns me about this

is this is likely a glacial lake.

Laid down by melting ice,

sediment from a glacial lake forms into a hard surface

known as false bedrock.

Gold may rest on this layer,

but far less than on true bedrock,

where water has had millions of years

to re-concentrate the deposit.

On a glacial lake surface like this,

it's probably just one event that's happened.

So we're looking for something

potentially accumulated gold over a longer period of time.

Okay, so where do you think we should take our pans?

We'll take one from the false bedrock contact.

Yeah.

Being able to find bedrock for Darren

is just incredibly valuable for him,

so it will definitely provide some higher grades

and some more knowledge for him.

Back at the plant, Irene takes up loading duties.

To get as much pay as they can through the plant.

You can tell that they're screening really big.

Look how big that is.

The problem with that is you start screening that big,

you start losing a lot of your fine gold.

So you can see a couple pieces in here.

There's quite a few.

So that's more than what's acceptable.

We're going to have to figure out what we can do there

to be able to help him with that fine gold recovery.

Well, guys, it's a 2-hour run.

Want to tell your mom to shut it off?

Shut it down.

Right on, guys, thank you.

Last bucket.

You know, Irene, you're actually a pretty decent operator.

If you want, you know, I can offer you a job in Reno.

You know what, I might take it.

Be careful what you ask.

You guys want to clean it up, and I'll be back in the morning.

We'll do it Goldway.

Sounds good.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thanks, Juan.

One thing's for sure, you know, I know they're losing gold.

The plant needs a lot of repair.

You know, between the hopper, the sluice box,

and also the spray bars,

there's a ton of work that needs to be done.

I feel for Darren, and I want to help him pay his parents back.

Coming up...

This has to be the big thing.

It has to be.

All hands are going to be on deck.

Prepare to shot.

Okay.

Oh, s***.

We're going to try to get as much done as we can.

How's it going, Kev?

We found a spot.

The test didn't turn out at all.

Right now, I'm really nervous.

I really want this to work.

Let's wait, huh?

You ready?

Let's see what it is.

Oh, holy s***.

There she is.

At the Champ Mine in British Columbia,

it's the moment of truth from the two-hour test run.

Well, let's weigh it up.

Okay.

To hit his goal by the end of the season,

this test must produce over a third of an ounce.

There it is.

A tenth of an ounce.

There's at least gold there.

But, you know, the one thing that I really am worried about

is I think we're losing a lot of that fine gold.

Oh, wow.

But also, one of the concerns they have is

I think we're sending the wrong material to the plant.

Okay.

I want to be ambitious with what we do here.

So give me a few minutes.

We're going to talk and see what we can't come up with,

and we'll go from there.

Okay.

All right.

See you in a bit.

Yeah.

The gold weight didn't go well at all.

0.1 of an ounce.

I think a lot of it, you know,

has to do with the ground that we were running.

We need to understand where the gold actually is deposited.

That's the hardest thing to figure out.

What are your thoughts on the prospecting?

So it's a false bedrock, what he's running right now.

What we want to find is a gravel underneath that lake sediment.

Something better at the bottom, got more gold in it.

Older gravel.

Okay.

That's a great time to be able to bring Darren down there

and teach him how to read the ground.

Yeah.

Because really, at the end of the day,

what we teach him now, he'll have forever.

Exactly.

Well, sounds like a plan.

You know, we definitely got our work cut out for us.

All right.

Sophia and Jeff are going to spend as much time as they can

for, you know, prospecting to try to help you guys

find areas and target zones to go after.

But as part of that, you know, Jeff wants you there also

so he can kind of start teaching you what to look for,

you know, and how to read the ground.

Perfect.

As far as the plant goes,

what I want to do is build a completely new hopper.

We're going to build a new set of grizzlies as well.

And then for your fine gold recovery,

I'm going to actually cut perforations

into your trommel drum,

build a new 24-inch sluice box that's 20-foot long.

That sounds awesome.

That's nice.

In a major rebuild to increase productivity,

Juan will fabricate a brand-new 2-ton steel hopper

topped with 6-inch thick grizzly bars

to separate out large boulders.

Fine gold will pass through 60 engineered slits

cut around the trommel

and will feed into a new 20-foot sluice

specifically for fine gold.

Jeff and Sophia's mission?

Give Darren invaluable prospecting know-how

and redirect him to gold-rich ground.

We're kind of in the realm of about $15,000 for material,

and then we're thinking about an ounce apiece

at the end of the season.

Well, um...

What do you think?

I don't think we have a choice.

I don't think we either.

No, let's do it.

No, let's do it.

Okay, well, let's do it.

All right, well, we'll get to work.

We've been fighting up here for quite a while.

It's becoming more and more difficult

to keep pushing forward.

So hopefully his fixes catch all that gold that I'm missing,

not only for myself,

but my mom and dad as well.

So what I'm working on right now

is getting the hopper designed.

Juan's first challenge?

Build a monster new 6-by-4-foot steel hopper

that will feed pay into the trommel.

I got some measurements on the framework

that we have existing on the plant.

What we have to do is we have to custom build

a hopper to go inside that.

Honestly, we're stretched really thin right now.

Hey, Trav.

Call him because I need you and Alex to head this way.

Yeah, leave as soon as you can.

We definitely got our plate full here.

At Juan's cut trailer,

a 40,000-degree plasma beam

cuts his designs out of half-inch-thick steel.

The hopper right now, the bottom,

consists of about five pieces.

The top is another six or seven pieces.

And then the grizzly is going to be another 150 pieces.

So really, it's like a jigsaw puzzle.

We got to get everything cut out,

and then we can start slapping it together

and get it all welded out.

Okay, here we go.

To make way for Juan's hopper fix,

Darren, Jerry, Rob, and Operator Davey

must first remove the old one.

Yeah, he's going to burn a hole

so we can put chain hooks in on all four corners

so we can lift this straight up.

I love my work.

That's why I'm still doing it at 75.

I really don't like him up on the high stuff.

He is getting older.

So am I, so there you go.

I was age 6.

My dad was a heavy-duty mechanic,

and my job was to watch everything he did

and handle the right tool for the job.

And if I didn't, look out.

That's the way it was.

Darren's my stepson,

but he's still my son.

We talked about mining when he was growing up as a kid,

and always kind of was a passion.

You're always on a treasure hunt.

So Darren's dream here,

that it's going to be a family business,

and I can't see that happening in the far future

unless we find something better here.

Tough nut to crack.

We'll move the crane over here in a minute.

We're all done?

All done.

There we go.

Nice.

Almost there.

It was welded in more than we thought.

I just wanted to make sure that they're doing okay,

see how far along we've gotten.

How we doing, gentlemen?

Hey, Guy, how's it going?

Good.

Coming along?

So what are you going to do,

just cut it and then lift it out the top?

Give her a rip and see what happens.

Then we'll know where it's attached.

Just yank it?

Just pull as hard as you can.

Just keep on yanking until it sounds expensive, huh?

Yeah.

And that's usually what I get told too.

That's exactly how it goes most of the times.

Darren's idea, to wrap a chain on it

and pull until she breaks free.

I don't think it'll let go.

I think there's too much weld still holding it in place.

Operator Rob Benjamin

has been mining with Darren for 11 years,

but takes other work to keep his head above water.

At the moment, we're just scraping by.

If this were to succeed,

that would give me the opportunity

to move up here, work full-time,

and support my family.

Give her a shot.

Try it?

Yeah.

Nice and easy.

Yeah.

There.

It's coming.

Give it a jerk.

Okay, what is it attached to still?

It's like it's stuck on something.

Got it.

Back up.

There.

Get it out of here.

There it is.

Yeah, we got it.

Oh, my God.

Beautiful.

Let's try over here.

Old Hopper removed,

Darren joins Jeff and Sophia

half a mile up the creek...

Let's have a look here.

...for his first prospecting master class.

Man, it's hard.

Yeah, I think that's bedrock.

Yeah, this is a good spot, Darren.

It's really quite a consolidated gravel down here,

and then you get into this more of a sandy layer.

I can go show you the contact, if you'd like.

So, just up here.

It's quite loose at this surface.

It's actually quite flat right here.

That contact is quite even, quite flat.

Bedrock is much, much older, and it's harder,

and so that change in hardness is really what we're looking for.

Yeah, that's super obvious here.

That'll be where you get your best gold.

And then this is still quite soft.

But that's your bedrock.

Over time, the weight of gold makes it sink through the ground,

but once it reaches bedrock, it can't fall any further.

This is exactly what we're looking for.

This is your bedrock, and the good news is

it's outcropping here, it's exposed,

and it's really not far below the surface.

I never actually realized that was bedrock

until you guys were here.

Like, I had no clue.

Like, I just thought it was just more gravel,

just dig it up and keep going.

One of my biggest things of struggling is

trying to identify where all the gold is

and understanding the geology of the land.

The process, yeah.

You're looking for a lot of volume to make it pay,

but we can't mine this close to the stream.

Despite the promising bedrock find,

environmental laws prevent any mining

within 33 feet of the river.

So we've identified bedrock here.

We know what it looks like.

So we need to go identify something like this

elsewhere on your property.

It's very unfortunate that I can't mine it

because it's too close to the creek,

but they explained everything so very well

that I can actually understand

what I'm actually looking at now.

Looks like it.

Oh, yeah.

In British Columbia, at Darren Champ's dirt fishing mine,

Juan's rescue reinforcements, Alex and Travis, arrive.

Good thing you guys are here.

We got three weeks' worth of work

that we got to cram into just a few days.

So let's get going, guys.

Their first task,

help join the two pieces together for the new hopper.

Good, good, good, good, good, good.

It will help Darren and his family up their production.

Hit it.

That closed it up.

Well, we got this on its side now.

What we're going to do is we're going to put the ribs

that go across here.

That way it supports the side,

so when we get material, they don't bulge out.

That's good right there.

Ah, look at that.

Now we're talking.

This looks interesting, Darren.

We got boulders here.

That's a good sign, though.

We should sample this.

Going to see what's in the bottom of this hole.

Hopefully, something testable and something runnable.

If it isn't, I'm in trouble.

It's not looking too good.

Really not much better than what they're getting up there.

No.

Based on our initial findings,

the gravel, it's just not carrying a lot of gold,

and what gold is showing up in our pans,

he's probably losing in his sluice box,

so those two things are discouraging.

Poor results and short on time.

Jeff makes a call.

Hey, Freddy, how are you doing?

How's it going, Jeff?

We found a spot that looked really good.

It had all the elements of having good gold,

but turned out to be a bust.

I thought we'd give you a shout

and see if you could give us some pointers.

I've done quite a bit of work in that area,

but you know as well as I do, every creek's different, right?

Yeah.

Is there any Chinese workings in there?

Usually where they were at, there was gold.

I haven't seen any yet,

but we can certainly go look for some.

Most of the Chinese miners

who made their way to the Caribou gold fields

came from the Pearl River Delta region

of Guangdong province.

They quickly became invaluable,

developing simple but innovative techniques

to extract fine gold.

But working mostly by hand,

they struggled to reach bedrock

on deposits containing large boulders.

Yeah, just look for Chinese workings.

Okay, yeah.

Well, we'll keep you posted on what we find, so...

Talk to you later, sir.

Yeah, take care. Bye-bye.

Well, here she comes.

Look at that, Robbie.

Oh, that's beautiful.

Can't wait to chuck rocks at it.

At the wash plant,

the next question is if the refabricated two-ton hopper

will fit into place.

It's the moment of truth.

We're going to try to see if that fits in there

the way we had it planned.

Honestly, you never know until it actually goes in.

Hold it.

What are we catching on?

Have him lift it back up.

You got to go up.

It's caught in the bottom there.

There you go. There she is.

Boom out, stick out.

Slowly down, Dave.

There you go. Right there.

I like it.

That's perfect. Look at that, eh?

The first piece of the puzzle is perfect.

It's hard not to smile when you see something like that.

We're exactly where I wanted to be today.

I wanted to get that hopper in place

to make sure it fit, and it fits perfectly.

So that's a big relief.

Tomorrow's going to be a bunch more work,

but at least we kind of see a little light

at the end of the tunnel.

Let's try over here.

That's an old cabin.

Look at that.

Yeah, they were here.

Following Freddie's hunch, Jeff and Sophia

are on the hunt for evidence of methodical Chinese mining.

Looks like an old dam.

You're right. It is a dam.

That could very well be Chinese workings.

They would have impounded the water behind the dam

and then likely just let it go catastrophically

as a ground sluice.

Look at the size of the tree coming out of it.

That is huge.

1800s, probably.

So really good evidence of Chinese workings.

Looks like we're in the right place here.

Yeah.

Let's get Darren in here with the excavator

and dig a test pit and see what we can find.

Okay.

This is how I'm going to learn.

Yeah, if we hit a boulder layer right on bedrock,

that's a great sign.

That's good.

Oh, yeah.

There are some big boulders.

But we like to see.

Boydini.

Oh, man.

Oh, that looks good there.

I think it's a boulder layer right on bedrock.

Oh, okay, yeah.

If the boulders are sticking on bedrock,

there's a good chance the boulder is too.

Definitely, yeah.

You think about that flacer effect

and the reworking and the erosion of material,

you're always putting your heaviest stuff on the bottom.

Oh, yeah, that's a big one there.

Huge.

Wow.

Can you imagine the Chinese moving that stuff around?

No, you're not moving that.

Let's hope there's a lot of yellow down there with it.

Yeah, I got a color change down there.

It's changing to a more blue color down there.

Is that bedrock down there?

Boy, that looks good.

That's bedrock.

That looks really good.

So the color change is obviously from just different minerals

and stuff like that, right?

Yeah, so that bedrock was an old gravel,

and it's coming from a different source, rock in general.

And so I'm encouraged by that.

Plus, look at the size of the rock that's come out of here.

That's fantastic.

Some really good rock.

How much gold is through the whole thing, really?

So we need to take a representative sample.

So what we're going to do here

is we're going to take four five-gallon pails.

That's about a tenth of a loose cubic yard.

Okay.

And just so we're always sampling volume.

Testing four five-gallon pails of material

taken from multiple spots in the test hole

should give a better understanding

of how much gold is at bedrock.

This could be a game-changer.

That gravel, if it's got a lot of gold in it,

is definitely going to change things around here.

Today's a big day.

It's going to be a long day.

We've got a lot to do.

At Darren Champ's Caribou Mine,

24 hours remain before the final test run.

All hands are going to be on deck.

I've got all the guys here.

We're going to try to get as much done as we can.

Hopefully, by the end of the night,

we'll be ready to run.

First order of the day, start the new vehicle.