Original subtitles

With gold prices high, there's a lot of new people

and new faces trying to go mining.

One of them is this guy

who's coming here today. He's flying in.

He was very successful in the hard-rock mining world.

I think he sold his company for a boatload of cash.

Curious to see what he's doing up here.

Hello.

-Hey Parker, Greg Gibson. How you doing? -Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you. I left a message.

You don't return your messages,

but that's OK, you're busy. -Oh.

Uh, there's a lot going on out here.

-How are you finding the Yukon? - The Yukon's fun.

Yeah, you got some ground on Bonanza?

Yeah, I have the three hills --

Trail Hill, Cripple Hill and Ophir Hill.

And I bought another property farther up Bonanza.

Right.

-Your background is in hard-rock world, right? - Yeah, yeah.

I'm curious, is part of the reason you're up here

that it looks simpler?

Yeah, it's just an earth-moving exercise.

Like, you put a bucket in the ground, you get gold.

You're not sinking a 7,000-foot shaft.

You're not doing what you have to do underground.

OK.

The reason I'm here, I bought a couple of loads

of 8-inch pipe.

And no idea where it is, somewhere between

here and Alberta. - Got ya.

Could be another week and a half.

So, I was hoping you might have some pipe for sale

laying around. -Right.

So my helicopter is gonna take off, so we got to roll.

OK, well, we can run up to the plant yard

and have a look at what we've got here.

You can just hop in with me.

-So, I think this is 8-inch. - Bob's your uncle.

Um, there's a fair bit here.

You want to part with it?

Um, sure.

I don't know what it's worth, you know.

Yukon at $5,000-an-ounce gold, everything's worth a lot.

You know what I like about the Yukon?

Yesterday it was junk, today it's gold.

And if you don't, you know, I'll try to get

as much money for it, and if you don't take it,

I'll sit here for the next decade and then get buried

in a hole. - Grow roots.

-So what's your de-root price? - Um...

I would say probably like 500 bucks a stick.

-$500 a stick? - And 50-foot, yeah.

Are you on glue?

It moves water just as good as anything else.

25 bucks a stick, and it's out of your way.

You don't have to deal with it.

Oh, no, I, like -- no. I don't --

I'm a poor miner, Parker.

You're wealthy, you're rich, you're successful.

I'm starting out, man. Tripping over myself.

I've done enough research on you.

You're all right.

OK, how much did you say?

- Uh... - You said $50 a stick?

No, I said, $500,

which would be 20 grand. - Oh, $500 a stick.

Um, I'll do 10 grand for the whole batch.

Done.

-All right. - Cash.

- Perfect. - We done?

I'll bring you back to your ride.

You're a legend.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

No worries. Best of luck.

Greg seems good, yeah.

I don't know why somebody would want to start placer mining

when they were in the hard-rock world.

But yeah, see if he can go find some gold.

It's what we're all trying to do here.

This season...

It's gonna be a good year. I can feel it.

...gold goes galactic...

...$5,000 an ounce.

-Whoo! -We're making money!

Yeah, buddy!

...bringing in new players...

Well, go! Start digging!

...and sparking shootouts.

We just need to not get beat by Tony Beets again.

Let's just try to keep the peace.

The old guard...

...fly dangerously close to the sun...

Risk is something that I'm addicted to.

Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!

...to bank.

Yeah!

...record hauls...

Gonna need a bigger pan.

- That's wild.

...in a season...

I'm just spitting dollars out

my asshole. -No, no, no.

-...that sends everyone...

...in new directions.

What the hell is he doing here?

Stop wasting time. Stop wasting money.

Just get the out of here.

-Man! -The ability for us to grow

depends on us finding more dirt to move.

This is awesome.

If we can't find it up here in the Yukon,

then we have to find that somewhere else.

Let's go, let's go!

Get going, get going, let's go!

We gotta get all the trucks out there to get the dirt.

If we don't get the dirt, we don't get the gold.

If we don't get the gold, we don't get paid.

King of the Klondike, Tony Beets, is determined to

take his family empire to new heights.

Last season, he pulled in a record 11,000 ounces,

$43 million in gold.

Tony's invested $20 million across his mining empire.

150 miles south of the Arctic Circle,

in the heart of the Klondike gold fields,

Tony's kingdom is split between two sites.

Paradise Hill, the home of the Beets operation for over

four decades, where Tony's mining two cuts.

40 miles south, Tony's most profitable ground,

Indian River, where the king is opening a massive 60-acre cut,

hoping to haul in a record $65 million in gold.

For his master plan to work, Tony needs a strong crew.

But in the off season, he lost one of

his best foremen.

Yeah.

Hey!

I want to be Nick.

-Ah! -Ah!

Born 10 years apart, the Beets brothers grew up on

a dairy farm in the Netherlands.

In 1981, elder brother Tony and his wife Minnie left

their families behind to seek their fortune in the Yukon.

Working for over 40 years,

Tony built a multi-million-dollar family empire.

If my dad were to croak,

I'd be the one to take over.

For years, Tony's kids have been jockeying for a piece

of the operation.

I'm feeling a little shafted.

He's kind of running it into the ground.

With son Kevin now working ground leased from Tony...

We made the right call of getting away from Tony.

...Mike and Monica are the only two kids working with him.

Uh...

Eventually, I'd like to make it off the bottom of the list.

Now, Tony's brother joins the fray.

Hey!

What's up?

Yeah.

Tony's Indian River cut is surrounded by water.

To the south, melt water from thawing ice and snow

is pouring down from the mountains.

On the north side, the Indian River.

And to the east, a vast expanse of melting ice

in a frozen pond.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

I will. No problem.

Will do.

To get rid of all the water and dry out the pay,

Tony and Nick need to place the pump's intake hoses

in a sump hole below the cut's water table.

Tony's first task for Nick is to start breaking through

the bedrock floor with the dozer's ripper blade.

I worked for Tony before, so I know what it is out here.

It's not totally new for me, but then I was an operator

and now I'm more of like a foreman.

I was up for a new challenge, so that's why I'm here.

I am Tony's brother, but that doesn't mean I get

away with everything. So, I have to prove myself.

But Tony is not always the easiest one to work for.

You want to give this a try, Tony?

Yeah, that looks good.

Oh, is that right? Oh, well.

No, I didn't. No, but that's a good name.

Yeah, we'll go for it.

Ten miles north

of Tony Beets' Indian River claim...

, I've never seen mud like this.

...the Schnabel crew wage their own war

against Mother Nature.

Holy .

It's treacherous.

As the spring thaw turns the gold fields to mud.

muddy soup.

I thought last year was big. This year is just insane.

More trucks, more people.

It's gonna be absolute chaos, dude.

I'm excited about the year.

I think it's gonna be a good one.

Gold price is 5,000 bucks an ounce.

We've got a really good crew. We've got good equipment.

And we're on good ground.

Gold-mining powerhouse Parker Schnabel is staring down

the biggest season of his career.

Three years ago, he bought Dominion Creek

and has already pulled over 17,000 ounces from

the historic claim, but he's heading for a cliff.

He's got just four years to mine another 60,000 ounces,

$300 million worth, he believes,

is still in the ground.

To get it all, each year has to be bigger than the last.

Dominion, it obviously was a very good purchase,

and we still have a lot of mining to do there.

The next bite should be good.

You know, every bite further into the center of the valley,

it's a little bit more of the sort of, you know,

main pay, main channel.

And we dumped a lot of money into the ground.

And, uh, this is the year we're gonna get a lot of it back,

and then some, I hope.

Last season was Parker's best ever,

but rival miner, Tony Beets, outdid him on gold.

I'd like to redeem ourselves

from last year's loss.

They found more gold than us, which is very irritating.

Bit of a pride and ego hit for me.

I don't like those.

To beat Tony and catch up on his seven-year mining plan,

Parker's invested over $14 million.

Got two brand-new D11s

and a bunch of guys that know what they're doing,

and we'll have all four wash plants up and going.

Because gold price is high, we're gonna sluice everything,

even low-grade gravel, because who knows

how long these gold prices are gonna last.

So, with that many plants running and being on hopefully

a good ground should put us

up there in the 13,000-ounce range, I'm hoping,

that this year is gonna be good.

Forty miles southeast of Dawson City

lies Parker's gold-mining empire.

At his main moneymaker, Dominion Creek,

he wants to run three wash plants non-stop.

And ten miles south, he'll install another plant

at a new cut on leased ground at Ken & Stuart's

right next door to Tony Beets.

To work through all this ground and bring in 13,000 ounces,

for the first time ever, he'll fire up a wash plant

every week for the next four weeks.

Give her, Princess!

To get his first plant running, Parker turns to

his trusted lieutenant, Tyson Lee.

-Hi! - What are you doing?

Working on wash plants with Alec.

So overall, how is the fleet?

It took a beating last year.

Yeah, we sluiced a lot of hours.

As far as the first wash plant to set up,

I think the Airstrip is

the best place to be, with the Golden Goose. -OK.

-There's a massive mountain of gravel there... -Yeah.

...that we need to find out if it has any gold in it or not.

Yeah.

Top gravels sit at the top of the pay layer and contain

smaller amounts of gold.

Normally, the cost to sluice the material would be too high

to make it worth it.

But with gold at $5,000 an ounce,

just 100 ounces could net half a million dollars,

so Parker is rolling the dice.

When are you gonna have us making money?

Or losing less.

- When do you want to be? -End of the week.

OK.

-All right, thanks guys. -Thank you.

-Take care. -Good to see ya.

-See ya man. -Yeah.

Tyson needs to get out of this yard and go set wash plants up.

We need to get the ATMs back in action.

Parker wants a wash plant running in a week's time,

so I've got to get out of this wash plant yard,

get to the Airstrip cut, and get Goose moved.

Tony beat us last year, and the way how he did that

is by firing up early, so

let's see if we can beat him this year.

We've definitely got our work cut out for us.

10 miles south...

- Welcome back. - Thanks, buddy.

cold down here.

Parker's foreman, Mitch Blaschke,

runs his operation on Indian River.

So what's the plan for the year, buddy?

Gold prices are high?

Gold prices are high, and we just need to not get

beat by Tony Beets again. - All right.

There's a lot of ground. She's a big pit.

It's all pretty good looking gravel in there.

You know, like I look at that and I'm like, "Oh yeah."

As far as the lay of the land, I think this is probably going

to be one of the toughest cuts we've ever done.

Yeah, it's a brutal one.

Last season, Mitch started stripping the largest cut

Parker's ever mined at Ken & Stuart's.

The 30-acre cut has high benches

and deep troughs with overburden in some areas

20 feet deep, in others, 50,

making it hard to follow the pay layer

and find the gold.

To make matters worse, the big thaw has flooded

a large section of the cut, covering the pay dirt

with six and a half million gallons of water.

We're just getting thrown literally right into

the deep end. - Oh, yeah.

- Have you named it yet? - The Quagmire Cut.

You know, identifying your problems is what,

the first stage of solving them or some bull?

Admitting you have a problem, right?

We definitely have a problem.

All right, bye.

It's really nice to be back in the 550 here.

I had a great winter, spent a bunch of time

with my wife and kids and, you know, now we're back at it.

I want to just focus on getting our ditches in,

getting rid of this water.

This is a huge cut.

Somehow it seems like I must have got the short straw here.

But I kind of take that as a compliment that Parker

wants me to come down here and be the one

to take on this challenge.

I'm gonna do everything I can to get this thing dried out

and get some gold cranked out of it.

100 miles east in the Keno Mountains,

mine boss Rick Ness is nowhere to be seen.

It's a lot of stress and anxiety and what-ifs

and questions right now.

Mine managers Heather and Jason Folster

are the only ones on site.

We don't have a crew and haven't heard from Rick.

We definitely need Rick here with some sort of plan.

But in the meantime, Jason and I'll keep just doing

what we do every year in opening camp.

How are you guys doing?

Good.

Good. We've been here a week now.

-Camp is slightly opened. -Has anybody heard from Rick?

I mean, I've been trying to call him, and I haven't been

getting any answers or replies to text messages.

Just been a ghost town.

- Same. -I mean, I -- I --

We've been texting this week.

-OK. - Um, so...

From what he said, he's full-on board for mining.

He has all intentions of doing that

and intentions of being there, so...

So, who's coming?

That's very fair.

We look to Rick for leadership.

I need Rick to be present.

I don't want to go up there

until we know what the hell's going on.

I don't know, man. It's going to get going.

I imagine it's gonna get going.

It's a little bit later this year, I get it.

I guess I won't count him out until, you know, can officially

count him out. You know what I mean?

-For this year. -I do care about Rick.

He's a good friend to all of us, and I would really do

anything for him.

But there's also a point to where it's tough for me to want

to come up there and see everything succeed

and fight for it when I don't see the guy

that owns it want to fight for it all the time.

Yeah. That's fair.

All right, well it was good to see you guys.

-Yes. -Sounds good.

And I do hope we get to see all you guys.

OK, OK.

Yeah, stay in touch, Jason. Let us know.

-All right, goodnight. -OK.

-Goodnight, everyone. -See you guys.

-Take care. -Good night.

-Good to hear from you guys. -It was good seeing everyone.

I'd like to think that we still have hope,

but at a certain point, we are gonna have to pull the pin

and take some other offer.

We'll wait it out till the snow is gone,

and if he still hasn't shown up, I think we're gonna have to

probably hook up and pull out.

We're kicking this season off full steam here.

At Ken & Stuart's, Mitch Blaschke is on a mission

to drain six and a half million gallons of melt water from

the flooded Quagmire Cut.

So, we got to start somewhere, and step one is getting

this place dried out.

Brennan, how's it going over there, buddy?

Going good, my man.

To prep the cut for sluicing, Parker's top dirt mover,

Brennan Ruault, rips sections of exposed but frozen pay,

breaking it up so it thaws quickly.

Buddy, it's nice to have you back down here at Ken's.

We got a lot to do this season. This cut's going to be tough.

Oh, man, I know, right?

Like, there's a million obstacles this year.

Yeah, I think that's why Parker wanted you down here.

So, there was just, like,

make sure we have absolutely every obstacle.

Yeah.

Well, thank you. I try real hard at that.

What's up, dude?

Bosco!

Is he so pumped to be back up here?

He seems pretty excited.

That's great.

How are things going?

It's been interesting.

We've got this cut dewatering.

Has it pulled that down a fair bit?

Yeah, quite a bit.

It's definitely been a challenge here,

but my biggest concern right now is just our water situation

when it comes to sluicing.

And, you know, Tony's working on trying to mine over there.

The first thing everybody wants to do is get rid of water.

And, you know, our ponds are right against

his property line.

So hopefully he doesn't get rid of our water in the process.

Water in a cut makes digging pay difficult.

But when it's time to sluice, Mitch will need millions of

gallons of water from a holding pond.

Is he in there right now?

They're working their way along that side.

-Got ya. - Yeah.

We're gonna lose all our water if he's dewatering.

What's Tony always say?

Like, "I come first, I come once more,

it's still not your turn?" -Yeah.

He's gonna dewater that and us.

Parker's Quagmire cut sits at the top of the valley where it

naturally drains into Tony's Indian River claims.

The problem is Parker's wash plant's holding ponds

sit directly alongside the boundary

of Tony's Midas cut that he's now draining.

If Tony drains his cut rapidly, water from Parker's ponds will

drain with it, leaving Mitch with no water to sluice with

in the future.

OK, what do you think we need to do?

I don't know.

I can go talk to him about that.

I'll probably go do that right now, he's probably there.

-All right, I'll let you know what Tony says. - OK.

All righty.

This is like the perfect case

of what you don't want to happen.

You do not want to be in a circumstance where

you've mined right up to your property line,

left no virgin edge between you and your neighbor,

and then you're using their virgin wall

as a pond wall, and then they start

mining that ground and want to dewater

because they just take your pond out.

And they have every right to do so, and they should do it,

and every time I've been in that circumstance,

I've done it.

So I'm just gonna go have a coffee with Tony,

see what kind of mood he's in, see if I can get a slight idea

of what's going on with...

our sort of shared claim lines.

Got gold underneath the ground.

When 18-year-old Parker set out to conquer the Klondike

more than a decade ago...

I'm looking for the best dirt not just any old dirt

...under mentor Tony Beets...

...he proved his mettle...

Thanks, Tony.

...built his operation from the ground up...

This isn't a little mom-and-pop show

anymore, you know?

...and got a ton of gold.

I can't afford to pay 25%, 30% royalty.

I just can't keep mining under Tony.

I've got to keep looking for ground.

But as Parker stepped out from Tony's shadow...

You got a deal.

This maybe pick a big old battle with Tony Beets.

...his old mentor became his rival.

I'm on a lease with Ken & Stuart on the ground

right next to you.

You've done a pretty good job of us over,

is what I'm saying.

Is this Tony's desk?

How are ya?

Nothing.

Figured I'd come check in, see how the neighbors doing.

How's he doing?

Yeah.

Big pit.

Yeah, it's a big pit.

We're not gonna do a repeat of last year.

You took the throne.

I think we've had the top gold total for like

12 years or something.

I was waiting to set a goal until

I heard what yours was, so, mine's 13,005 ounces.

Is this gonna work out with us being

that close to neighbors?

It's always worked out so well in the past, Tony.

The biggest problem I see is, you know, you have a pit

next to a pond that we need for sluicing.

Yeah, no, and I'd like to figure out a way to

make it work if we can.

Let's just try to keep the peace...

if possible.

It's a recipe for disaster. It's a nightmare.

Hi Mitch!

- Was it sketchy? - Yeah, we're screwed.

At the Quagmire Cut, Parker's dealing with

the fallout of being denied a favor from rival Tony Beets.

Sorry that this happened this way.

-It's a show. - It's what it is.

What do you think we need to do?

Your guess is as good as mine. Just figure it out.

OK.

Pretty simple.

No water, no sluicing, no sluicing, no gold.

We got to fix that in a hurry.

Hey, Brennan. Hey, park that thing, buddy.

OK.

-Everything all right? - Not really.

-We got to take a look at something here. - OK.

-We need a pond to sluice into, and this is it. -Gotcha.

And Tony's trying to get that cut opened up and dry that up

as fast as they can.

But the issue is there's nothing separating our water

from Tony's property line.

What I'm thinking here is there's been many great walls

built to separate empires.

We need something to separate our pond from Tony's side.

We need to build the Great Wall of Parker.

, that's a long stretch of build a wall, eh?

Yeah. We got to build something

there quick or we're not gonna have a pond to sluice.

I'd say we best get at it cause he's not stopping

over there. - Let's build a wall, man.

-Whoo! -Yeah!

To build the Great Wall of Parker,

Mitch will truck 15,000 tons of overburden

from the Quagmire Cut,

half a mile to his side of the boundary line with Tony.

Then, dump load after load to build a 1,500-foot-long wall

to protect their ponds.

And do it all before Tony

drains their only water source for sluicing.

-Go, go, go, go, go. - Tick tock, tick tock.

The clock is ticking here.

Right now, it's a race.

We are going up against an army of trucks over on Tony's side.

With Tony working right next to us, the chances of our pond

disappearing is very high.

Parker made it very clear that it's my responsibility here.

And at the end of the day, if I don't have any water,

I'm gonna be the one down here with a big problem.

Across the border from Parker's,

despite Tony's efforts to drain the massive Midas cut,

water is still flooding in, threatening his plan to get on

the gold by the end of the week.

The king is counting on brother Nick to get the cut

dry enough to dig down to pay.

We want to start sluicing

pretty soon, but there's too much water in there.

I'm not sure where it comes from.

We can't have any leakage water

from outside into the cut.

If we do, then we might as well forget about sluicing in weeks.

We might as well tell Parker he won.

Tony, he ain't gonna be happy.

What the ?

That doesn't look good at all.

You know, there is a lot of water coming through here.

But as soon as this is melting, everything from there

floods the cut. I'll better build the dike up.

I'll fix this.

Upstream of the Midas Cut, a giant frozen pond

is melting fast, causing the banks to erode,

allowing water to leak into the cut.

Nick's plan? Build a dike

reinforcing the pond wall before millions of gallons

of melting ice water completely drown the cut,

ending Tony's mission to sluice by the end of the week.

Let's go.

First, Nick needs to haul a 50-ton excavator to the pond.

-Hi, Len.

I'm going to load up this excavator.

While I load it up, can you give me

directions to put it on there?

Ah, no, no, no, no.

Living on the edge there, Len.

So we'll drive it on there from the back.

Hey-oh!

Back 'em up a little bit.

Yeah, there we go.

All right, keep on going.

There you go.

Yeah, keep on going, keep on going, it's good.

Lift up a little, oh yeah.

Whoa!

Yeah, keep on going, keep on going, it's good.

Whoa! .

I thought it was OK, but it's a little bit too wide

for this low bed, I guess.

Nick needs to get the excavator upstream to build

a dike before melting ice water

completely drowns Tony's Midas cut.

If you park that close to the bank, and I'll drive around

there crosswise. -Yeah.

And then we'll drive over there, and we'll do the same

thing over there. It might be a lot safer, right?

So it was a little bit of a miscalculation, I guess.

I'm a little bit in a hurry. Then you do like that.

Good!

Yeah, keep on coming, keep on going.

Keep on going.

-How's that? - Beautiful!

-Better, eh? Yeah. - Better, yeah!

Safer.

You should have done that right away!

Yeah, well, yeah, I know, you're right!

Well, we better get over there.

- Yeah.

How does that look, Len? Is that OK?

Perfect.

This was a lesson.

I should have been smarter, so I have to smarten up so that

this will not happen again.

These kind of moments that makes you keep alive

a little bit.

Good, we got her!

I better hurry up.

Just get that ice out of here and build my dike.

A couple more scoops of dirt in there.

That looks good.

That's to keep the ice and the water behind that dike.

Very happy how this turned out.

Could have been worse in many ways.

Oh, there is my brother.

Ah, not too bad. Not too bad.

Ah, I had a little bit of a drop.

Yeah, there was a lot of water there at that glacier,

so I had to fix up the dike, but otherwise it would have

been go all towards the cut.

And then I went for the 349,

and I put it on a low boy and I slid off.

Oh, that was OK. That was OK.

Too much in a hurry and I up, I guess.

So, but, uh, no. Nobody hurt.

There you go.

250 miles away...

Oh, .

Right on cue, there's the yawns.

...Eight-year mine boss Rick Ness

and best friend Zee Zaremba

are on the last leg of a 3,200-mile journey

from Arizona to Dawson City.

I'm just worried.

This year you seemed a little bit more distant

in the off-season, so it's kind of how I knew something was up.

It was definitely worrisome.

Rick finished his season with a mighty $7 million in gold.

But over winter, he's not spoken to his crew,

leaving his plans for this year up in the air.

I mean, dude, it's obvious.

I know this off-season was bad, but yeah.

Dude, anything you need.

It's not that hard to ask for help, man.

-Like, honestly. - Yeah, it's just,

I don't know what's so difficult for it --

for me, you know? I just...

I have no idea where to start.

Oh, I love that sound. Love it!

Rick Ness...

-Oh, baby! -...is a force of nature...

- How many loads are you at? -70.

...a quick study.

Nice job.

Wow. Keep doing your thing.

You got it.

He worked with Parker for six years.

-Whoo! Back in business. -Good job, man.

Pulling in huge amounts of gold.

-Shooter!

When he struck off on his own...

So they call this Duncan Creek.

I've been calling it the Rally Valley.

...is roller coaster ride as a mine boss began.

Holy !

We are making money.

With highs...

That represents victory right there.

-Yeah. -I don't know how to top it.

I mean, I will. I'll top it next year.

...and lows.

I can't guarantee you'll have the license next year.

Without the water license, you can't mine.

And a missed season.

Why aren't you mining?

I don't know, man. it's just depression, and I...

That's tough for me to accept,

because I didn't grow up like that.

Last year, despite a good haul...

We're just going to go big. We've got to blow it wide open.

We've got a lot on the line here.

...the job weighed heavily on Rick.

This whole endeavor could be the thing that...

makes my entire life great,

or it could be the thing that ruins it.

Leaving his crew doubting his leadership.

I don't know what you guys think about it,

but would you come back?

I'm gonna be honest, man. I'm in limbo.

Are you good this year? Like are you ready to do this?

Like get into it?

I can tell you I don't feel good.

I can't concentrate.

I can't pay attention to anything.

I can't stay awake.

This winter it got scary. It really did.

I started, uh,

you know, I started sleepwalking. - Yeah.

I mean, like, I woke up, you know, on the floor of

my bathroom three times, you know,

bouncing my head off the toilet.

Somehow I walked in there and just fell and,

you know, split my nose open,

split my head open one time and just...

, what's next? -What are you thinking?

Just all the pressure in the off-season?

It was just getting to you?

Yeah, stress, stuff like that. Sorry.

Can't just...

Now I'm not -- I can't stay awake.

I fell asleep standing up a couple times this morning.

Man, ain't no joke anymore.

We've gotten lucky so far,

like, eventually that luck's gonna run out.

You're gonna hit your head on something that might do

something major, major.

Honestly, I think you should go get checked out.

I haven't been to a doctor in over a decade.

I avoid it at all costs.

But I know I can't be like this.

No, no.

It's just I don't understand what the hell is going on.

I ain't the same person anymore.

I just can't piece it together.

It's been a long time since I've been to a doctor.

I don't really enjoy it.

My blood pressure always goes up.

I start sweating.

- It's a natural thing, I think, actually. - Yeah.

Worried about Rick's health,

Zee has persuaded him to seek medical help.

I'm a little nervous today, though.

What if there is something wrong?

I've got to deal with it right away.

That's another thing, you know?

Yeah, but it's better to find out earlier than later, so...

See what they say.

Ugh...

All right. No use talking about it. Might as well do it.

All right. Sounds good.

Thanks, buddy.

It's tough.

With him having his whole life invested in this,

this is kind of one of those years

where if it doesn't work out,

it might take everything from him.

You look taller. What'd they do in there?

I tell you, I feel a lot better now that I went in there.

-Yeah? - Surprising.

Yeah, just unloaded everything that was wrong with me.

I've never really done that.

Is he in shock in there right now?

-Huh? - Is he in shock in there?

Yeah, he's in there shaking in the corner.

- He's going to talk to a doctor himself now. -Yeah.

Oh, man.

So my heart's good, my lungs are good,

blood pressure's good, all that kind of stuff,

so that's a good sign.

But he thinks it might be sleep apnea.

The sleep apnea's

kicking my ass. - OK.

I think he's pretty convinced that the sleep apnea's causing

a lot of these problems.

Seems weird to me, but I guess that's why.

If you don't get good sleep, you...

everything up. But I'm not unfixable.

Well, that's good. Not unfixable.

Rick's given me permission to chat about his condition.

Rick's not sleeping very well at all.

He struggles most nights and he's tired through the day.

You know, there's lots of things that could cause that,

but given the assessment that we've done for Rick,

it seems like this might be sleep apnea.

Sleep apnea is a condition that affects your ability to breathe

while you're sleeping.

Throughout the night,

you have periods where you stop breathing.

So you don't sleep well, you don't rest.

It can cause longer-term health problems, increased risk of

diabetes, stroke, heart disease, dementia.

So, I'm recommending that Rick

goes for an overnight sleep study.

I should have taken care of this a long time ago,

but instead, I was stubborn and I fought it and it just,

it did me no good.

And I'm sitting here feeling pretty stupid,

if I'm being honest. I gotta get my ass going.

No matter when I was supposed to take care of this, I take care of it now.

And now I can only move forward

and try to make something of it.

I'd say we're ready to go mining.

- Let's get in the truck and get going. -All right.

Dani, you gotta give me some room here.

-Come on, let's go, man. - Dani, you driving?

She's like, "I just want to get to camp."

Well, you know what?

There's different degrees of success.

I've had some success to a degree,

but you can always be more successful.

Hard-rock gold miner Greg Gibson

is buying up claims all over the Klondike,

driven by the rocketing gold price.

Gold's at an all-time high, and I can certainly see it

going past 7,000 bucks.

It's not my first barbecue in mining, but I burnt a few

steaks along the way.

I started underground drilling.

That's pretty much how you used to start in hard rock.

You just got thrown into a hole and away you went.

From underground driller, Greg worked his way up in

the hard-rock business, spending 43 years mining gold

all around the world, becoming CEO of a company that

sold in 2012 for over half a billion dollars.

You know what?

I let the players play. I don't micromanage.

When I ask for something, I want it to be done.

You know, I just got a grizzly.

You skin it, and I'll go get another.

Now he's moving into the placer mining business,

looking to make another fortune.

The Yukon, last frontier, bit of an adventure.

You just look at this, you look at the history in

the area, and you go, wow, you know, the thousands of

ounces that have been pulled out of here,

and it's the wild, wild west.

And my guys and myself, we tend to work better in

a wild-west environment.

Greg has bought the historic Trail Hill claim

on Bonanza Creek, the epicenter of the original

1896 Klondike Gold Rush.

Mined for over a century, Bonanza has delivered half of

all the gold found in the Klondike.

At today's prices, worth a staggering $35 billion.

And Greg's gambling the old-timers

didn't find it all.

Trail Hill.

Wow.

There's an awful pile of yards in there that could be

big scale. We'll see.

To help bring in the gold,

he's counting on some local knowledge.

I don't know where the this placer guy is.

I come from Ontario and I'm here before him.

Really?

I can see where he and I just might not get along already.

Buzz Legault, you're late on the first day.

Buzz Legault, you're late on the first day.

Good to meet you. How are you doing?

Good, good.

In search of a foreman, Greg Gibson has turned to

journeyman Buzz Legault.

What do you figure it's gonna take?

Buzz has mined with many mine bosses in the Yukon,

and Greg is banking on him having the knowledge

to make him millions.

You seem to be a bit overwhelmed looking at that.

Within the 150-foot cliffs of Trail Hill lies some of

the richest white channel pay dirt in the Klondike.

You're gonna have a task ahead of you.

We got you two 470s, two 350s, we got you a D8,

couple of loaders.

We got a brand-new Macon 400 coming.

I think once you meet Tyler and Neil,

Neil is very strong mechanically,

Tyler's more technical.

They've been with me a long time.

I just want a real systematical approach as to how we go in

here because we're relying on you.

We haven't dug in this before.

You know we're dealing with rocks falling on our heads

here, we're dealing with sand sloughs.

Just a sec, you say, so it's new to you, like,

what's new to you?

OK, the claim, not the material.

OK.

I want to be...

full on sluicing, flat out like a lizard drinking

by the 1st of June.

But I'm in the gold mining business, and I want to see

gold, and I want to see lots of it.

All right?

Because at the end of the day, money does have to come back.

Right?

I want to come out of here with as many bags of cash

as I can come out of here with. Right?

And if I'm making it, you're making it.

I've given you an opportunity, man, so make gold.

Right? It's all about the gold.

Let's go get her, boy.

Buzz seems pretty laid-back.

I think he's going to be scratching his head driving

down the road how he's going to make this work.

You know what? It's up to Buzz to it up

or hit the jackpot.

And I really hope he hits the jackpot.

Later, Buzz.

All righty, let's do this.

At Parker's Airstrip cut, Tyson Lee is under pressure.

Gold we can't control,

but the yards sluiced we sure as can.

It's just a matter of how fast can we get sluicing.

He's on a sprint to get Golden Goose sluicing

by the end of the day and washing rocks

before Parker's rival, Tony Beets.

How's that look? Start pivoting?

Yeah, I give it a pivot.

A little more rotation there, chief.

And right there.

We're getting our feed bin in place here.

Keep coming, keep coming.

Keep coming, chase it hard.

10 feet, 5 feet,

3, 2, 1, stop.

The pad looks big enough until you start doing like this.

Well, shall we stretch her out and see?

And stop there.

Ready for the water line and the troughs,

and after that, we'll be firing up.

-One more of those. -OK.

One more of those. Yeah.

Beauty.

All right, let's get Goose fired up here and hopefully

we beat Tony.

Here we go!

I'm praying to there's no leaks.

So far so good.

These troughs look so nice. All that fresh steel.

Oh, !

The bank.

Shut her down!

Shut the pump off, Alec.

Oh, for sakes.

Water from the sluices is eroding the pad,

putting wash plant Goose at risk of falling down the bank.

Oh man.

If the whole bank washes away, then we're dragging

a wash plant out of the hole.

We're gonna be around here for a bit.

10 miles south, Tony Beets still has a chance of beating

Parker to the punch and being

the first miner sluicing in the Klondike.

Tony set a new goal for this season, 13,000 ounces.

So that makes it more important to get sluicing.

Would be nice to beat Parker in the second year in a row.

I do believe that Tony is going to kick Parker's ass

again this year. Always for Team Beets.

I'm gonna fire the generator up and then we're sluicing.

Come on, come on!

Come on!

-Whoo!

Whoa!

The engine is fired up now, so I'm just going to let

it heat up a little bit, put on the power to the plant

and get the riffles lifted up, and then we should be

sluicing soon enough.

Our trough's just got to be skirted in a bit

because the water is not landing in it.

At Parker's Airstrip cut, Tyson and Alec are racing to

shift Golden Goose's runoff troughs and get sluicing before

the end of the day.

We have to push the trough towards the wash plant.

We don't have a lot of play because it's chained up to

the other troughs down the line.

We'll probably use the chain on it and try and drag it over.

See if it'll move any.

It might be pretty heavy.

I don't know if you'd be able to lift it.

-We'll see. - yeah, I will.

Either it'll lift or your chains will break.

It's moving.

OK, hold it there.

I'm tempted to try that right where it sits.

Well, let's do it.

Let's give in to the temptation.

If the water lands where it's supposed to

we're gonna add dirt, but if not,

we'll be going back to step one here.

This water is hitting the trough just perfectly.

-I think we can fire up here. -Roger.

Now it's time for the real deal.

All right, first scoop of the season

going into the Golden Goose.

Here we go.

Top gravel pay dirt from the Airstrip cut runs up

the conveyor to the wash plant, where water jets blast the gold

and fine dirt off the rocks.

A shaker deck vibrates a set of screens

to separate the larger rocks

from the smaller gold-bearing material, which washes

into the sluice boxes, where riffles and mats catch

the gold, while the water runs off into the troughs below.

Perfect.

Keep the material coming, my man.

We need every drop of it.

Hey Mitch, you got a copy? Mitch?

Yo, Tyson, what's up man?

Can you see if Tony's sluicing yet down there?

-No, they're not sluicing yet. -Well, we are.

yeah, we beat 'em, man!

Ah, right on, man. That's awesome!

Right on!

Yo, yo. How are you?

- We're sluicing. -Oh, yeah.

Hey, we beat Tony.

-Good job, dude. -Thanks, man.

See if there's some gold in this .

Off to the next.

After a long cold winter, everything's getting rolling

again and we've got a wash plant washing

and clock starts now.

Yeah, hopefully it's gonna be a good year.

In the Midas cut, Tony's war on water is far from over.

After battling mountain runoff and a fast melting frozen pond,

now the sun has thawed Tony's frozen pay dirt,

flooding the cut, making the pay too sloppy to

send through a wash plant.

Go ahead, Tony, go ahead.

Copy.

And just like that, the fun is over.

It could be days before Tony's cut is dry enough to sluice.

- On our way to Keno. -Yeah buddy.

Yep, this is good. We're on our way.

In the Keno Mountains, Rick is finally en route

to his Duncan Creek claim.

-Who's gonna be there? - Uh...

Heather and Jason.

They're probably wondering what the hell's going on.

Yeah.

Good people walk and that's where we're at, right?

I've had plenty of chances, but like, this is it.

Last chance .

Ah, .

That was a trip.

Get it over with.

Rick's mined this nugget-rich claim for five years,

scoring $20 million in gold

from deep, high-walled cuts along the valley.

Look who it is!

How are you? We haven't heard from you.

-You kind of ghosted us. -Yeah.

What's going on?

I know. I apologize for that.

I appreciate you getting here and getting things opened up,

getting things started.

I'll be honest, it come very close

to us pulling out.

If it's something you don't want to do anymore,

then let's do it right and shut it down properly,

rather than just walking away from it.

I apologize.

It's just, I don't know. It's so dumb.

We've been with you for so long.

I know. You guys are so good.

I love you. You're such a good friend.

-Yeah. -And we worry.

-We don't hear from you. -I know.

I just want to know that you're OK.

I appreciate that.

I feel it's so to put people through that.

But a lot of things progressed this winter to kind of some

scary levels that are just

can't ignore things anymore.

I started sleepwalking,

waking up, bouncing my head off .

And it's basically just dismantled

everything in my life.

It has just gotten so bad that...

I'm borderline narcoleptic.

I mean, I am baby proofing my own house

so I didn't kill myself.

It's gonna change.

It has to, you know, I don't want to die.

Obviously, we're concerned

to make sure that you're OK coming back. - Yeah.

I do have some bad news, though.

We cannot mine until we employ an engineer

on this site.

That's no matter what we want to do?

We can't do anything, nothing.

We cannot move any dirt until

the engineer has given us a mining plot.

Oh, .

We cannot mine until we employ an engineer

on this site. -She said, "Zero dirt moving."

That's bad. That's really bad.

At Duncan Creek,

Rick has just learned that due to his deep high-walled cuts,

his operation is shut down.

A safety inspector has stopped all mining until he employs

an engineer to make his high-wall cuts safer.

She wants us to focus on

the report that needs to be prepared for the engineer,

the mining plan, and we need to stick to that.

And until that's in place, we cannot move any dirt.

So, yeah, that's where we're at.

We have no people and we can't mine.

-We need to figure out how we're gonna survive. -Yeah.

We've got a lot to do

to make this work this year, but I know we can do it.

And I know that I've got a lot to fix.

I'll go get my health checked out.

It's time to do something about it.

Honestly, the first step is

having you here and you're here. - Yes.

So let's move on to the next one.

Yeah, check one.

Let's keep going.

The sun's a-shining and the snow's a-melting.

-Yeah. -Yes.

I love the guy and he's very good at saying sorry,

but you need the actions to back it up.

He needs to be responsive, not just to Jason and I,

but to the government officials,

the inspector of safety.

Once we have the engineer on board and a plan,

I'll feel much less apprehensive...

that this isn't, you know, a closing chapter.

We've got a long ways to go, but we are here.

We've got to face and, uh...

If I die taking a header into a toilet in my own house

because I sleepwalk, that's not the way I'm gonna go.

So it's time to tackle all this .

That's the last bucket and the last truck

going to finish the Great Wall of Parker.

After a three-day, earth-shifting blitz,

on the border of Tony's Midas Cut,

Brennan has completed the 1,500-foot-long

Great Wall of Parker to preserve their holding pond.

Hey Mitch, you got a copy?

Hey buddy, I don't know if you want to roll down here

and check it out, but we're done the wall.

This is a very nice wall here.

Sure would have been nice if we wouldn't have to do all this,

but that's not the case, so... - I know.

Well, buddy, you know, I was thinking all those,

you know, great walls.

They all got the flags flying on the top of the castles

and everything else, right?

I don't have a flag, but I got something better.

Right here, buddy.

-For sake. -There he is.

And there's no better way to complete it

than with Parker himself.

They're gonna be like, " dude, Parker's watching."

Get back to work!

Beat it, punk!

-All right, buddy! -Awesome, buddy!

-There it is! -That's wicked!

-Hi Doumitt. - Hey, T.

-How's it going? - Help yourself.

Fully stocked, look at that.

In the race with Tony Beets to 13,000 ounces,

Parker is first to weigh his gold.

How do you guys feel being back?

Good, man. Yeah.

We built ourselves a big wall.

This could be interesting summer down there, isn't it?

100%.

We definitely got a lot ahead of us down there

in the old Quagmire cut.

There's a lot of ground everywhere to get through.

The sooner you guys can get going and just get that done,

then the better off we'll be. -Absolutely.

We'll see what we can do.

But we got a wash plant running in the Airstrip.

We're just running top gravel, though.

I wouldn't imagine that we came up with much.

But anyways, let's see how the old Airstrip did.

Yeah.

-Tyson? -Yes, sir.

Here we go, ready?

Golden Goose ran top gravels from the Airstrip cut.

Parker's hoping it will deliver at least 100 ounces.

40, 80...

100, 130...

145.5.

Worth over $720,000.

- Hell yeah. -Yeah.

-For top gravel, that's sick. - I was shocked.

I was surprised to get that much gold out of top gravel.

I mean, that's really relieving for that pile

we put up.

But, you know, if Goose is producing these kind of numbers

on top gravel and you guys got a pile of it,

they'll start to add up.

Whatever you guys got, if it looks like it has gold in it,

run it. -Sluice it all.

Yeah...

There's a lot of sluicing to do.

So this week is 145 and a half ounces, and for the season,

it's 145 and a half ounces. -Easy, easy.

-Yep. -And I think it's gonna be a good year.

It's a good start.

All right, well, guys,

thanks for coming back for another season.

For sure, thanks for having us.

We're one percent of the way there.

Do this every day and we'll be done in four years.

100 more times.

This was a shocker.

I think it surprised everybody how much gold is in that ground

that would have gone to waste.

But with the price of gold the way it is,

every flake counts.

And this early year is going to

give us a little bit of a jump start on Tony.

It's good to be on the board, but then you're like,

"Oh , we're 140 ounces into a 13,000-ounce season,"

and it's just like so much

work to do and so much dirt to move, and...

So much chaos is gonna be had, but we're on the board.