Original subtitles

This year's same rain that caused huge slides down in Haines,

also moved a lot of gold.

But the mine site might be completely obliterated.

I need to find out if all my stuff is smashed or slid off the hill.

This is a dangerous trip. There's more snow than we've ever seen here before.

There's really no other options at this point.

And we're gonna get up there and ensure that we get another season.

Here it comes.

Woo! Yeah!

Well, that's our ride.

I wanna be able to start mining early this year.

I've never had to compete with this many people

for the little bit of ground that's out there.

The clock is ticking. I need to find some ground and I need to find it fast.

After disappointing prospects

at Chino Valley and Gillette mine,

Dave's gone north

to meet claim owner an amateur prospector,

Chris Chrisman.

The guy that I'm meeting actually comes up here on his time off

and he's getting a lot of gold.

Dave plans to prospect

an 80-acre claim in More's Creek, Boise County.

The Idaho City claim

is packed with a gold-rich history.

Despite almost three million ounces of gold being mined in this area

between 1863 to 1959,

it's estimated there's still life-changing gold waiting to be found.

Dave has scheduled just four days to prospect the huge claim.

To keep on schedule, he's called in some help.

Dave! - Juan, good to see you.

You know, taking this thing off road voids its warranty, right?

- Nice to meet you. I'm Chris. - Chris.

Kind of a remote little place, huh?

Look what you're standing on.

Oh, yeah. All the tailings, huh?

Yeah, there's definitely gold here.

Yeah, the average is about a gram a yard.

[bleep], that's getting hard to find. That's getting real hard to find.

Well, I'm excited, man. - Yeah.

Let's get out there and check it out.

So, what do we got here, Chris?

The bucket dredge came back here

between the early 1900s to about the 1950s.

They worked the valley basically from bank to bank.

Those bucket dredges,

- I've been in behind them and they're pretty good. Yeah.

But why didn't they mine right here?

From what I found, is there's that big shelf right here

and it comes up really steep.

I think they stopped at that.

- Okay. - Yeah.

So, there might be bedrock up this high that they couldn't get to?

Yes. And they also got the bench up there,

which is even richer than this stuff down here.

There's bench gravels?

And the best part about the bench up there is that

there's virgin ground up there.

You're sure they didn't...

they didn't hit that up there, too?

I'm positive.

Virgin, like, but is it... Does it pay?

Yes. Yeah, that's where the best gold we found is at.

Why don't you take the excavator up there,

pull some samples? Let's take a look.

Sounds good. - All right. I'm gonna talk to Juan.

- Let's go. - See if he's got the plant going.

I'm pretty confident about the land here

because I've always found a piece of gold.

I think it'd be great if Dave and I work together.

I think the equipment he has and my experience and equipment,

We could... I think we could really make something work up here.

So, what do we got, Dave?

- You think you can work on it here? - Perfect spot for it.

What would happen when we ran the beetle in Arizona,

I got into some real heavy sticky stuff...

Yeah. -...and as we dumped it in there, it would stall out.

So, if we have a bigger sprocket, it should take care of that.

Earlier this season,

Dave and Juan built a pioneering prospecting plant,

"the beetle," designed to bulk test ground more efficiently and accurately,

but it ran into trouble when it lost power on its maiden outing.

Nathan!

It stopped turning! - We don't have enough RPMs.

The motor uses a gear chain between two sprockets

to turn the conveyor,

but the system is underpowered.

By replacing the large sprocket with an even bigger one,

it will increase the gear ratio

and boost the power needed to turn the conveyor belt.

If we could run this tomorrow, it'd be great.

It's not gonna be show quality, but it'll work.

As Juan gets to work,

Dave's right hand men, Jason Sanchez,

hunts for the first test site.

Right now, I'm gonna follow Chris

and we're gonna go and try and check out

this bench that he was talking about.

Up here, Jason.

Are we going left or right? - Going straight up.

This will be the fun part.

This is probably the sketchiest spot on the claim,

especially with the ice and snow.

Look at it dance.

Almost!

Yeah, yeah, there we go.

- Oh, yeah. Yeah, buddy!

- Yeah! Ooh, that was heavy for a minute, but...

Yeah. - We made it, man.

Chris has brought Jason

to an area at the top of the valley called "The Bench."

These areas hold deposits of gold left behind by changes in the river.

Over thousands of years, water flow erodes the riverbed

and cuts downwards,

leaving rock and gold on the banks known as bench gravels.

All right, you can even see a color change there.

Oh, yeah, there it is.

That makes for really easy mining. Oh, yeah.

- Nice find, buddy. - Thanks.

Very nice find.

I gotta get in that hole.

What's up, Dave?

Nice little zone.

Look at this. There's our bedrock.

So, we pulled three samples.

Three different levels from that bench gravels.

Let's see if it's got some gold in it.

That's pretty damn good for a first pan.

For a first pan, yeah.

This is two feet above.

There's, at least, 20 there.

Oh, wow. - That's even better.

Yeah.

That's minable, Dave.

I'd mine that.

This is a great start to a prospect.

It was some pretty damn good gold

sitting up on that bench gravel.

Well, I'm excited to run some material through there.

Yeah. - I am too.

I mean, this could be the land. There's virgin ground here.

Now, the hard work comes tomorrow when we start running it.

I hate helicopters, dude.

You agreed to come out here.

Gold divers Dustin Hurt and Carlos Minor

are on a midwinter mission to reach their isolated McKinley Camp,

which lies high in the snow-clad Chilkat mountains.

Last season...

That's some good-looking gold, man.

they struck a rich streak of gold, earning them a big payday.

Record winter floods bring promise of even more gold.

But if the recent storms and landslides have damaged their cabins and equipment,

there might not be a season at all.

So, we gotta go up and check see how much snow is on top of the cabin.

If it's completely smashed, we're screwed,

and we won't be able to mine.

After a failed attempt to reach the site on a snowmobile...

It's not moving.

Oh, you are not gonna like this.

That is your drive belt.

they have a new plan, snowboard into camp.

They pulled in a favor to get them as close as possible.

Hey, Jag. How's it going?

Thanks for saving our ass yesterday.

Without the helicopter, would have been stuck out there for sure.

Looks like you're all ready to go.

I can pop you out there, give you a little bump as the boys say.

Okay. We're gonna take a ride, see what we see.

Let's load up.

Jag will drop Dustin and Carlos

on The Chilkat Mountain Range.

Then, they'll snowboard roughly one mile down to McKinley Camp.

If the cabins are secure and the mine site checks out okay,

they'll make a mile-long hike down the mountain

where though radio Jag for pick-up.

The helicopter won't be able to land after sunset.

If they don't make it by then,

they'll be forced to stay the night.

Oh. There you go.

Let's rock and roll.

All right. There it is right there.

and there's so much snow, I cannot tell what's happening.

There's no way for me to know what kind of damage has happened.

Oh, man, look at that. Up ahead, man.

- That's buried, bro. - Oh, yeah, that's an avalanche right there.

That's scary.

This is why you don't work up here during the winter.

Looks like there's a spot over here I can get you guys in.

This is your go, no-go situation.

- Are you both in? - You all right, Carlos?

Not really. But yeah, let's just do this, man.

I'll drop you.

You're pretty much on your own unless you can start a signal fire.

But if I don't hear from you for two or three days,

I'll come looking for where your tracks stop.

Yeah, I don't need to hear that stuff, man.

Woo-hoo!

Whoo!

Yeah!

- Look at this place. Okay, yeah.

Yeah! Wow.

Look at this. Wow, man.

Look at this place.

Look here, camp is down there.

We couldn't pick a better route, man.

Dustin and Carlos have just six hours to complete their mission

before it's too dark to be picked up.

Watch out for holes, trees, underground stumps sticking up.

This powder stuff, dude. This is a whole new frickin' animal, bro.

- I... I'll go first. - Okay, yeah.

I'll follow you, dude.

Come on.

Oh, man, that's nice.

How awesome is this, man?

Look at this place. It's beautiful.

Woo-hoo!

Do you think you can get up?

You got a track and everything. It scared me, man.

It's a few spots here that's just not steep enough to get down.

We'll get trying to get to the steep stuff.

So it's hard...

navigating this because it just doesn't pack down.

- Carlos? Yeah?

Pack everything. Pull it in, pack it

- so you push it under and stand up. Okay.

This sucks.

You are not having fun, are you? No, not having fun.

I'm going.

Wow.

No, no, no... Come on.

You're not steep enough.

Oh, that sucks, man.

Come on.

Oh,

Oh, that sucks, dude.

Come on.

Oh,

Oh, dude.

Anything broken? No, no, no.

I'm glad you're okay 'cause there's nobody gonna help us out here.

In Alaska, Dustin and Carlos are snowboarding a mile

to McKinley Camp on an expedition

to check their cabin is safe after heavy rain

and snow triggered landslides and avalanches in the area.

It'd be dark before we make it to the cabin, man.

- Are we gonna make it? I have no choice, right?

If they can't make the heli evacuation point

before sundown, in four hours' time,

the team will be forced to stay overnight

on the mountain in subzero conditions.

So, I'm scared for you right now.

It's trees.

You're gonna have to show a little more control.

[bleep], yes, man. I'm miserable, dude.

Focus up, man.

Be... Be careful, man.

Getting real. And all this was funny.

This ain't funny.

Just get your breath, man.

After four hours on and off their boards...

Ah, it's good to be home.

Dustin and Carlos finally reach McKinley Camp.

Dude, that was the roughest track ever, man.

That whole thing is sagging.

It sure is, isn't it?

But the cabin is completely buried by snow.

- I can't tell if the roof is smashed in or not. Can you? No.

The only way to know if their cabin and equipment is safe

is to get inside.

If we just dig out the doors and if it sloughs off, it'll pen us in.

So, we gotta get this snow at least off from over the top of the doors.

And it's gonna get dark soon,

so let's not get caught in subzero degrees.

I am cold. Started getting there.

Well, you know where they hide the heat?

- Yeah. Shovels.

All right, man. Let's start digging.

What I was worried about was this whole hillside falling off the mountain

and it's still here, but, hopefully, it's not destroyed.

We've got a lot to do, a whole bunch of digging.

It's a... It's a little bit scary.

Oh, man.

You know what? It's hard, too. It's iced over.

Oh, man, this is gonna be a long day.

Whether or not we open the door to mining or close it forever,

there's everything riding on this offseason.

If we do pull this off, it's gonna be frickin' huge.

In the desert of Arizona,

Fred Lewis is on a mission to secure his mining future.

After striking out at the Lovelock in Dun Glenn claims,

he must find gold-rich ground before next season

or his career as a miner is over.

Kyle, you on the station?

I think, like, going crazy. We're on the road too long.

We've been on the road for weeks now? Months? Years?

I don't even know what day it is. Where am I?

On the team, our fellow military veterans,

Kyle Pletzke and Fred's wife, Kara,

joining them is Fred's father-in-law, Fred Miller.

So, this area it's called the Big Bug and the spot we're going into

- has produced some good gold. - Sounds pretty interesting.

One thing I hope this place doesn't live up to is his name of Big Bug.

Fred's team are pinning their hopes

on a nine-acre claim called Big Bug

located just 12 miles from Dave Turin's old claim, Lynx Creek,

where he mined 170 ounces last season.

Before Big Bug turned into a ghost town,

it produced over 50,000 ounces of gold,

worth upwards of $90 million.

And the team's hoping the old timers left some behind.

Here we go. For sale.

Hey, Fred. - What's going on, brother?

With the claim too small for team Turin,

Dave's let crew member and army vet, Casey Morgan, share it with Fred.

Welcome to Arizona, guys. Lots of gold here.

But the main reason it didn't get all mined

is because there's not a lot of water in this state.

I got this property from Chris Matherne and Big John

that wouldn't be big enough for the operation we run,

but it might fit your needs.

Okay. - So, let's go take a look.

So, there's a lot to determine when it comes down

to what claim is gonna be most beneficial in mine this season.

I think that a good 100-ounce season

would be really good for us.

But on some of these claims that aren't turnkey,

that require a lot more work, we probably have to pull in,

you know, one to five hundred ounces

to make it worth our... worth our effort.

When you know what kind of gold you're pulling up?

It's very similar to what we got at Lynx Creek.

Nice, good particle size from smaller nuggets.

- The purity is important. Right.

- 93 to 94% pure here. Really? Wow.

So, you may not have to mine as much as you would in Alaska

to get the same dollar amount.

So, there's a good opportunity here for you guys.

So, the best thing we can do now

- is find out where we're gonna do some test holes. - I know Big John

who owns the property, has an excavator.

- He can bring that down, rip us open a trench. - Might be able to save

a little bit of time and money

- if we started out using this hand auger. - How big is a hand auger?

This is a light hand operated unit

that essentially costs nothing to run.

Okay, if you've got something here that can help, let's get started.

All right. Let's do it. - Yep.

I do environmental soil testing.

We normally use the auger to dig down and find contaminants.

Well, it's no different than digging down

and finding things that we wanna keep.

For running the excavator it's gonna cost us money,

so this is an attempt to save on our budget and still get us

the look at the gold in the ground here.

With a budget of just $3,000 per prospect,

Fred hopes he can use his father-in-law's auger to pinpoint test sites

before bringing in a costly excavator.

This does exactly the same thing as a drilling rig.

Just the motor works off manpower.

All right, Fred, show us.

It's moving.

How long do you think it would take to get a...

10-foot hole at this pace?

Oh, three to six months.

The whole bull will try to use that. That's cute and everything.

But let's face facts, they need to get real,

and they need to get a big machine in here and start digging holes.

Fred, there's this unique device called an excavator.

It will get us down and get us the results we need.

We've got pretty much a full pan here. You wanna go and pan this out?

I think so.

[Fred #1] At least, we'll get a good read of what this surface stuff has.

I'm not disappointed that it didn't work.

That fully met my expectation

because that's not the type of soil

that the tool's meant to excavate.

[Fred #1] We're trying to be really frugal

and bring in different tools to save money,

but this auger is not gonna work here.

You just gotta try out things once in a while.

You gotta think outside the box.

So, here's the reality.

No one helped me in the beginning.

Most miners kept everything to themselves

and I know what that feels like to lose a lot of money,

and everyone turns their back on you.

But you need to be able to realize that you need to get in here with an excavator,

you need to dig down and start being able to read the ground.

Keep it simple, stupid.

Three, four colors.

Off a surface test? I'll take that any day of the week.

Heck, yeah.

I mean, you're already seeing surface gold. The auger attempt was cute,

but the reality is, you need to hit it hard.

Yes. - So, you start seeing what's in the ground.

Well, I like this kind of gold and I like what you're saying.

So, we should just basically move to the excavator.

You know, that's our first test site on this claim.

And we're already seeing better gold than we've seen in any test pan

we've done this trip.

So, punching some more holes obviously will tell us more.

We could be on to something here.

Two thousand miles north,

Dustin and Carlos are racing to free their cabin in time

to reach the evac point by sundown.

It's not looking good right now.

Hey, Carlos, this is taking longer than I thought, man.

We need to know the damage before the season starts.

I can't afford to go buy all new gear.

I think we're gonna have to stay up here tonight.

There's no way we're gonna be able to make it out right now.

Let's figure out if we can get in.

I just don't want this thing to collapse on us when we're in there.

If they are going to survive the plummeting Alaskan temperatures,

they will need shelter and heat.

But the only place that might keep them safe

is buried under almost 20 tons of snow.

Holy, jeez.

This is solid frickin' ice.

If we can't get this door open in time, we're gonna freeze.

This is a frickin' survival nightmare.

I gotta get this door open.

I got high hopes because, well...

if I don't get it open, I might just die.

This has to happen.

I don't wanna take no deep freeze sleep.

With the temperature dropping like a stone,

Dustin and Carlos's recon mission to their mining camp

has turned into a fight for survival.

To make it through the night,

they must get shelter in the cabin.

I've never been so happy.

Hitting the bottom of the door, man.

It's like hitting bedrock. Just gonna open it up.

This is ice, man.

Come on.

You're not gonna give up that easy, are you?

We have to bring shovel, it's iced in on the bottom

and I can't get that lift to come loose. Can we break that ice away?

Yes. So, I get that lip out, maybe?

The wooden security board across the door

is frozen in place.

Yeah, no. It's real ice. Like solid ice.

Let's see.

Come on, ice. Just won't let go.

So, it won't come out this way unless we break it.

Push up. - Let me catch my breath.

Can you put your leg right there?

Break it.

There it goes. There it goes. Here it goes.

Yeah.

Okay.

you. - Oh, [bleep], dude.

I'm running out of steam, dude.

Whoa, whoa, whoa...

All right.

Home sweet home.

Come on, baby.

Yes!

Oh, my

That was a lot of work.

Way better than gold at this point, man.

Way better than gold.

It looks like the roof is intact.

I am glad that we took off a bunch of that weight, though.

I'd hate to be in here sleeping, and it crushes me tonight.

Ooh, come on, baby. Oh,

This is our main base.

We work here.

If it went down, we just simply wouldn't be able to mine.

We need it for the season to happen.

And what it would end up doing is stopping us for a season.

I thought it would be smashed by the time I got here.

And I'm glad it wasn't.

You can't pay the bills if you don't get any gold at all.

When I get back home, man, I can't tell them what's the truth, man.

I'm gonna say, "Hey, man. It was awesome. You know, we were eating s'mores

and it was a good time."

- We got some heat! That's luxury.

I feel better already.

Damn, man.

Did you snowboard in jeans today?

Well, yeah. Man, you are just not a snow guy.

Chili mac with beef.

I'm glad that we keep that emergency food.

Mmm. Yum.

This is a successful day, man.

We didn't die.

We got food, we got heat, we got shelter.

We'll check out the dive site tomorrow, man.

My goodness. How did the snow get so frickin' deep?

One and a half thousand miles south,

a new day has brought Dave and his crew a fresh problem.

We got a lot of snow this morning.

Kind of cold, frozen. Not ideal.

Deep snow has made traversing the steep valley

to the bench site impossible.

The team must push on with prospecting other areas of the claim.

This snow is such a pain.

We can't see under the snow

to even read where to pick a hole right now.

I'm gonna have to open up probably, you know,

more holes, more consistently to be able to read it.

Well. Yeah, remember, we can only dig three holes.

What do you...? What do you mean?

So, I know like, we had the idea that we could dig a hole

and then do another hole. But like, rereading the permit,

we can only dig a total of three holes.

But...

there's 80 acres here.

Just... So does our hole that we already did up there count?

Yeah, I think... Yeah. Pretty sure.

That's... That's considered a hole?

Yeah. - We didn't take any out the sample with it, though.

Yeah, we only got a little bit out. But, yeah, we can't do them.

So, we've got two shots on 80 acres.

Yeah, that's unfortunate,

-'cause there's some good stuff up there. - Yeah,

we're in trouble right now.

I didn't anticipate that.

By scratching down, digging a trench,

that was considered a disturbance.

And the snow is really making it difficult to determine what I'm looking at.

I can't see where the virgin ground is.

We're allowed at this point three holes.

It's only here that I've ever experienced that.

And after discussion with Chris,

it's not everywhere in this state that that's the way it is.

Just happens to be in this particular county.

We've got a lot of snow. Jason, you gotta find a place to dig

'cause I can't go to where we found the pans.

I can't... I can't get up there in the snow.

We gotta find a place to dig here.

A place where we can actually pick up the dirt and deliver it to this plant.

Looks to me like you got a waterway down there, hand working.

If you tried to get in there and see if you see some river gravels,

maybe to the left to that... those two trees.

Okay, that makes sense.

- If I find pay, we'll wash it. - Okay.

If I dig two holes and there's no pay,

I've ruined this entire prospect.

No pressure.

At the beetle,

Juan has swapped out the sprocket,

giving the plant more power to bulk test pay efficiently.

That looks good.

Just floated down.

That looks a lot better, Dave.

Oh, yeah.

It's ready to run. We gotta move it into place

and hopefully they'll be able to start testing this afternoon.

With the plant all set,

it's down to Jason to find virgin pay.

I hate to fail.

Your boss is looking at you going,

"Go find us a place to dig."

And you're looking at snow.

And knowing you only got two shots of finding that place

doesn't build a lot of confidence.

The worst thing that can happen during an offseason

is that you don't find a property to go to.

If you're not bringing in the gold,

you're not bringing in any money.

That's how I pay my bills.

Wait, that looked...

it might be virgin in there.

Is that virgin or is that tails?

What the hell? No way.

I got real problems.

We're rolling the dice to see if we can find gold.

Dave Turin is prospecting the Idaho City claim,

but heavy snowfall overnight has made reading the ground almost impossible.

This snow is about the worst I could get

'cause everything blends together

and it's hard to distinguish between what's been mined what hasn't been mined.

Jason is hoping their gamble in the second hole

has led them to virgin ground, and more importantly, gold.

I got bedrock sitting on the bottom of the bucket from my dig.

So, I know I'm down deep enough.

Now, I just gotta crawl in, find out.

That's overburden? Tails?

It's just looking...

I don't know. I better get closer.

This has rock.

I don't know what it means yet, but I have topsoil, clay.

But this is old school virgin, I think. Like, deep virgin.

It's hard to tell.

The only way is to run a pan.

Jason takes two pans of dirt,

one from halfway down and one from the bottom.

Absolutely no gold in this pan.

That bottom pan is the one that I'm curious about

'cause I'm willing to bet that that's virgin.

But we'll see.

This prospecting trip

is pretty much our last Hail Mary.

If we can't lock down a good piece of ground,

then we're dead in the water.

Fred Lewis and his team

are prospecting Big Bug claim.

After striking out twice in Nevada,

everything rests on this third and final planned prospect.

My team all has families.

They all have personal lives that they're depending on this to work

so there's everything riding on this.

Helping fellow vets on the prospect

is Turin team member, Casey Morgan.

Let's look at this real quick. You gotta dry creek bed.

So, what happens is that water's flowing,

imagine that's just hauling ass.

The gold comes in, where it calms down

and slows down, the gold drops out right there.

Your heaviest gold is always your inside bed.

This hasn't been mined and you can work all the way down here.

Casey's walking the excavator in.

We're looking for gold and water in this hole.

To increase their chances,

claim owner, John, is letting Fred use his 30-year-old excavator...

There she comes. She's running.

to investigate an old creek bed.

For the ground to be minable,

it must hold good gold, but also have a steady supply of water for the wash plant.

She's flowing in, boys!

That's what I'm looking for. Hey!

We got a sample out of that,

but I'm gonna need it down where he just can't dig anymore.

Yeah. - And that's where we're gonna find the good stuff, baby.

Right now, we're seeing that the pay level's not too hard to get to

and we've hit water.

We can let this fill up and see how fast the waters slow once we're done

getting the material out we need.

So, we're right where we need to be, a little deeper.

With just the right amount of water showing,

all Fred and his team need now is for the hole to pay.

I get so excited. I see ancient river gravels...

Like that... That gold fever moment just kicks in.

It gets me so pumped up.

I love this

Let me go look and see how deep he is.

- Oh, That's a lot of water. Oh, wow.

I've been waiting to see some good gold here.

All trip we've been waiting to see water.

And right now, we've got both, but the tough thing about it

is you don't really wanna have to run wet pay there.

It's gonna screw up a lot of your machinery.

So, one question answered, but another problem arises.

We're just gonna do the best we can in the pans we got

and give a fairly as accurate read as we can.

You know, we put a lot of time and effort into this trip,

and I feel like this right here is where it's all worth it.

Getting that gold fever feeling back in my fingers.

The three of us are gonna walk up in and...

pan it out and see what we got.

So, we have a lot of priorities,

we're focusing on these prospects.

Number one priority is we've got to look at ground

that has one ounce a hundred, $8 a yard.

If we can't do that, we're just wasting our time.

- Look there. That's a good size one.

- Oh, there's a bunch of them. Three. Yeah. Right there.

- Oh, four. - Four.

We got four colors in here.

It's about $4 a yard.

To make this mine viable,

Fred and his crew want, at least eight bucks of gold a yard,

but the team are running out of time.

They need the final hole to pay,

or Big Bug and their mining future will be a bust.

The ground here looks right,

but we're just not seeing the results.

Put the excavator downstream. We're starting to see our larger boulders come out.

Bigger boulders means bigger gold.

That's what we're looking for.

I felt myself change a little bit on this trip,

I feel a little more pessimistic than I usually am,

but it's important to keep your mind focused on the end goal.

We've gotta find ground that is viable for us to mine.

I want you to grab one from around over there.

This is more of a blended test.

Last season was a dismal failure

and we're not doing that again.

I've sold a lot of things I own to make this happen,

so I've got more skin in the game on this offseason

than I've had in anything in my life.

Yeah, I'm really excited that we get to have this opportunity

to actually prospect this year,

but it is a possibility that we don't find ground.

We're seeing gold here, but so far not enough.

So, we need to see a good result.

Let's not let gold fever go to our brain, okay?

It's more failures than successes in this business.

You get that gold fever rolling in your brain

and it can costs you everything.

I'm trying to give Fred Lewis and his crew

the advice that I wish somebody would have gave me

because if they keep going the way they're going,

they're gonna wind up completely bankrupt.

No doubt about it. It's a mathematical certainty.

And let's be logical here.

Our obstacles are, you're gonna have to clear 15 feet of overburden

and then you're going to get down to where the pay is and you're gonna hit water.

You could possibly seek machines.

I mean, be realistic, what's your season goal total you wanna hit?

Right now, I think our line is like $8 a yard.

And even at $8 a yard moving all that overburden,

having to set up from nothing, really $8 a yard probably isn't gonna be enough.

- You're gonna have to look at even higher. - Yeah. You might be right.

So, unless we see some great numbers out of this last pan,

I think we have our answer then.

Right there. Look at this.

One, two...

small micro fine particles.

That is not going to pay your bills.

Not the number we need. Definitely not the size we need.

No. - I don't think setup we want either.

No, I think right now, we should just call it.

So, got done testing the ground,

but I didn't see a lot of color in the pan.

I'm not gonna steer Fred in the wrong direction.

The worst thing he can do right now after coming off a rough season is have a...

have a another rough season.

We got some thinking to do,

and we have to sit down as a team and figure out we're gonna do next,

but I really don't know what the next move is for us.

In Idaho, Dave is off site, visiting local Grant Hawk

to find out if the old dredge could have left the team any virgin ground.

You know a lot of the history?

Well, I've been around here a long time.

And I remember coming here as a kid,

sitting in the backseat of my parents' car.

The dredge was down here by the highway.

They would have to move the road around,

keep it out of the way of the dredge.

If the dredge wanted to dredge somewhere, that's what happened.

So, is the city on dredge tailings?

The original town was never dredged.

When I first came here,

they dug the sewer line down the middle of Main Street

and when they got ready to backfill it,

they had to go get dirt because everybody from everywhere

come down and hauled gravel

because it was really good gold.

You think there's any gold left up here for me?

- Oh, yeah. You just gotta find it. - Okay.

This could be a home run,

but you don't know until you pan.

Team Turin are prospecting a mine in Idaho

that shows promising signs of gold.

But after snow made their initial test site inaccessible,

Jason is pinning all his hopes

on the second site paying out big.

One, two, three, four, five,

six, seven, eight little micros and three pieces.

Well...

I wouldn't call this minable.

With the second hole of bust

and just one hole left on the permit,

team Turin now face a difficult decision.

- What's up? - We got a couple little pieces and a few finds.

Definitely not mineable.

This snow has screwed us.

I know there's gold here, but if you can't find it in the pan,

it's not gonna get into the wash plants.

Those regulations are there to protect the land. I understand that.

But when we're limited to, you know, three little holes,

I can't make a decision.

It's not an intelligent decision.

So, my back's against the wall right now.

All we got is one hole left and with this snow, I can hardly see anything.

Is it even worth sticking around?

I don't think so.

Financially to stick around and burn fuel might be best to just pack up.

Why don't you go down and talk to the forest service

and just see if you can get a clarification

on what is considered a sample hole.

So, you want me to go to the forest service,

- give them our procedure of how we do things? - Yeah.

All right. - I just think there's a difference between,

you know, scratching the surface, looking at the layers.

Okay.

All I wanna do is make a good decision

'cause we know there's gold up there

and, hopefully, we can mine it, extract the gold and move on.

We're at a point where we have to find ground.

So, I gotta get to the forest service office before they close,

hopefully, come back with some more holes.

One and a half thousand miles north,

after being forced to spend the night at McKinley Camp...

We're gonna get this whole thing to go probably.

Dustin and Carlos still have to remove

the remaining five tons of snow from the cabin roof

to ensure it will survive the rest of the winter.

Oh, there's movement.

Come on, you can do it, brother.

There it goes. Yeah!

That was awesome, dude.

All right, Carlos.

- You wanna call that good? I can live with this, man.

So, from here, what do we do now?

Well, being that we're up here already.

How do you feel about going over and checking out the dive site?

Ah...

Could be a ton more gold everywhere because of all this rain.

[bleep], you know, after Haines... I don't know.

I mean, it destroyed a whole bunch of stuff,

but it also moved a lot of gold.

Let's see if we can get over there at least.

Can we get to the launch point? Is it buried?

Carlos, I believe I'm over the top of the deck.

All right. Our starting point

where we hook up to the zip line. Frickin' buried.

The launch point Dustin and Carlos used to access the mine site

is covered by almost five feet of condensed snow.

To get across would mean stepping out onto a shelf made of snow.

Dustin, it's done, dude. Let's go, man. It's done.

I'm taking slow steps. It's okay, man. Just relax.

This snow is a frickin' thing.

Unpredictable animal, dude. It just wants to kill you.

Yeah, I think you're right, man.

Just to get hooked up,

I have to be over the top of a lip in the snow with a 450 foot drop under it.

It's actually pretty scary.

If this cornice breaks off right here,

you'll never find me.

They had what they're calling the 100-year flood this year.

Horrible things happen to town, but out here,

100-year flood pushed down gold that's been stuck places.

It probably filled Nugget Bowl right back up.

I would love to get eyes on it to find out what we're getting into next season.

But it is just too dangerous.

The gold's always gonna be there.

Let's go back home and get some frickin' coffee and hot soup, dude.

All right.

Maybe, in a couple of weeks,

I'll think that was an awesome adventure.

But right now, man, I'm done.

I'm beat up. I'm hurting. I'm cold.

But, at least, we have our gear.

At least, we have a fighting chance for another season.

So, this year, the same rain that caused

huge slides down in Haines up here

flooded everything out

and I'm curious to see what kind of gold it moved around.

And in the spring, we'll find out.

All my gear is safe, my cabin is safe.

Everything's good. We're gonna have another season

and we're gonna find some more gold.

Next time...

Rick's race hots up.

That's a dream combo. Mining in the summer

and racing in the winter.

Fred Lewis... - Told you I'd be back.

returns to an old spot.

I've had a gut feeling about this piece of property since we started.

That is a lot of gold in there.

And Dave Turin goes all in...

First bucket, Idaho gold!

to find his big money gold claim.

If there's no gold in this, I gotta pack up and get my butt out of here.

- No way.