Original subtitles

The Yukon River is huge.

Nearly 2,000 miles long, and for 6 months of the year, it's frozen solid.

When it starts to crack, that's the sign.

You know it is time to get going.

The gold rush starts again.

There's a war for ground in the Yukon.

All the good ground is tied up.

That's why we're digging deeper than ever.

We're hunting for ground.

As soon as you start getting desperate...

- *bleep*, man. - People can smell it on you, and that's dangerous.

We need ground.

We got to trust something, and we got to trust somebody.

I'm 38 years in the game,

and I've never seen anything like this.

I spent a *bleep* whole lot of money in the offseason.

I'm making this my year.

Let's crank it up.

This ain't like any other season.

Right now, it looks like we're dead in the *bleep* water.

Sometimes we have to force our way through something,

that's just what you're going to have to *bleep* do.

Out on the Indian River, Parker, Tony,

those guys are battling for the last bits of good ground.

I seen that coming and I got the hell out of there.

I'm doubling down and I'm going for 2,000 ounces.

Bigger the better.

That thing's massive.

I've got no crew, but I'm coming out fighting.

Whoo!

You've got one *bleep* job, why can't you do it?

Well, that's on you.

This is what I've been waiting for. This is next level.

For me right now, mining is more than just gold.

Oh, yeah!

Whoo-hoo-hoo!

Two Green Beret's leading the charge.

I'm on a mission to make a better life for my all-veteran crew.

It's about living the American dream.

- You guys made it. - How's it going?

Good, how you been?

It's a treasure hunt.

Who doesn't love a treasure hunt?

Everybody that's looking for ground is competition, right?

Finally, sluicing gold. This right here is what it's all about.

I will not fail again.

Klondike legend, Tony Beets,

once a farmer in the Netherlands,

now stands at the top of a gold mining dynasty.

At an age when most people would retire,

Tony's primed to make big moves.

Well, I'm never surprised by your plans anymore.

Don't count your chickens till they hatch.

- Yeah. - Yeah. Piece of cake.

Day shift, night shift?

Here and the Hill?

For nearly 40 years,

Tony snatched up gold-rich ground in the Yukon.

Now, with gold prices holding at historic highs,

he's looking for a monster payday.

To get his $16 million payout, Tony's reopening his Indian River operation,

where he hopes to bank 5,000 ounces.

40 miles north, he's counting on his Paradise Hill claims

to deliver the other 4,000 ounces of gold...

...but there's one massive problem.

Let's get going.

Leading the charge

to push the first dirt of the season at Paradise Hill,

a brand-new massive 850 horsepower D11 dozer

that can shift 45 yards of dirt in one push.

And a 100-ton 950 excavator, the biggest in the Yukon.

All good.

Okay.

Okay.

Tony's first target on the hill, an 8-acre cut

he discovered 30 years ago, filled with big gold nuggets.

We need to move a absolute crap ton of dirt this year

if we're going to reach Tony's goal.

Gold is high right now, so *bleep* strike while the iron is hot.

When Tony discovered the prime piece of land,

he didn't have big enough equipment to get down to the pay layer

80 feet below the surface.

Even last year,

it would have taken at least three weeks to get to pay.

But with his new arsenal, Tony wants it done in just five days.

It definitely is nice to have the 950,

3 1/2 scoops to a rock truck, then it's full.

As the Beets race to transform the family's future,

daughter Monica has the biggest role of all.

My father likes to pretend he's not excited, but he is very much excited.

Tony can look so scary and intimidating but just melts for dogs and kids.

Yeah, you know, I'm happy to be back up here though.

It's been brutally cold, but it's just finally starting to warm up.

In just eight seasons in the Klondike,

Parker Schnabel has gone from an 18-year-old

mining prodigy to one of the region's top producers

after clocking record gold totals year after year.

Now this seasoned 26-year-old is at a crossroads.

I don't know where we're gonna be mining this year.

We're just eating all the reserves faster than ever.

Last season, Parker mined a record $14 million in gold,

but he chewed through so much ground,

he's now running out, and the future of his operation is in jeopardy,

forcing him into survival mode.

And with gold prices going up, it's a terrible time to be looking for ground.

Like, landowners are in complete control right now.

And that means doing a lot of hunting because all the good ground is tied up.

And that makes... that makes me stressed out.

I don't know that-- A good friend of mine, you know,

he's been here before, Liam Ferguson.

And Liam's in the area, so I might just see

if he'll come over and talk to me a little bit about it.

Liam Ferguson drills for gold all over the Klondike

and knows just about every landowner out there.

- Hey, man. - How's it going?

- Good. How are you? - Not too bad.

How's your spring?

- It's been going good so far. Pretty busy. - Yeah.

What's up?

We're just about done, like, around our camp,

and there's very few pieces of ground left.

Well, I drilled some ground for your neighbor last fall

that turned out pretty good.

He was looking to lease it out.

And what's your opinion of it?

It's really good ground, yeah, but we got a very clear defined channel.

The holes range from mid-40s up to mid-60s.

The neighbor's ground sits a mile east of Parker's Airstrip Cut.

Liam's drill result show unique pay streak in an ancient riverbed.

The tests show five times more gold than other claims

on the Indian River,

but it's covered in a layer of sticky black glacial overburden

60 feet thick, deeper than any Yukon ground Parker's ever mined.

It's a lot of dirt to move.

It'd be expensive to strip.

We haven't mined much ground like that.

Yeah, well, I mean, I can at least tell you that the results

are real and that we're confident in what we found there.

It's up to you to work out a deal that makes it make sense for you, I guess.

It's not gonna be an-- A particularly good deal

because he is a gold miner and he knows what he's got.

- Yeah. - Yeah.

*bleep*

Can you give me some resource insurance?

- No.

A case of beer if there's no gold in it.

- Perfect. - Call it-- call it even.

It's a rare chance to mine such a gold-rich claim

and Parker's only hope of securing enough ground to keep his operation running.

I'm gonna go see if we can make something work with him.

In this industry, as soon as you start getting desperate,

people can, like, smell it on you.

Right.

Very close to being desperate.

He is, you know, not too interested in being involved in TV stuff.

And, uh, I definitely won't get anywhere with him if you're with me.

His camp's just up here, so I'm booting you out here.

There's a car behind me that'll pick you up.

I think that's your guy. Yeah. Get out. Please.

On an urgent hunt for ground,

Parker Schnabel returns from a meeting with a neighboring claim owner.

Um, right now, it's just that it's a seller's market,

you know, price of gold is high.

He's offered it to us, not really in the most favorable of terms.

You know, I'm usually pretty open about drilling and mining

and deals and whatnot because I don't really care,

but he doesn't want much details on TV, so.

Parker believes the 9-acre cut could hold 8,000 ounces of gold,

a $14 million haul, but to mine the 60-foot deep cut,

Parker will have to drop over $1 million just to get down to pay dirt

and find out if the ground's as rich as everyone says.

They're willing to gamble and take big risks.

We need to keep the company running.

Everything else is just stupid details.

100 miles east of the Indian River,

Rick Ness begins his fourth year running his own mining operation

after two rocky seasons.

I don't know what else to do it right now, I mean, it's just...

it's getting out of control.

Shut the pump off, shut the pump off.

What did I drag all these guys into?

Shutting it down. They're going home. It's as simple as that.

Last year, he came back from the brink of disaster.

If we hadn't done this this year,

I don't know that there would have been another year.

This represents your guys' bonuses.

Now he's getting a jump on the season,

arriving early to his Duncan Creek claim.

Big strong handsome dozer.

And he's bringing out the big guns.

I've dropped a half a million dollars

on the biggest dozer money can buy.

This dozer is obnoxiously expensive.

This thing can push 60 yards at a time.

That's three of my 40-ton rock trucks at once.

The 200,000-pounds 900 horsepower Komatsu

makes quick work of stripping the first section of Rick's Creek Cut.

Where we're starting this year,

the gold is really good, and all it's gonna take is just, you know,

an hour to the strip.

You know, is the cost worth it?

I think we're going to prove that it is.

We're going to be able to strip so far ahead, so fast, it's almost, uh,

it's almost ridiculous.

The bigger the better.

This year's all about going big.

I'm gonna double what I got last year, we're going for 2,000 ounces.

2,000 ounces, worth $3.6 million, would move Rick's operation

to the next level and prove that his bold decision

to get out of the Klondike was the right one.

You know, having a dozer, especially a dozer this size,

is kind of one of the last pieces of the puzzle to putting,

you know, the entire package together,

being a legitimate mine boss.

Makes things pretty *bleep* real.

This season, Rick has also invested in a $1 million 750 excavator.

He needs all the horsepower he can get.

After starting his operation with a team of hometown buddies,

years of struggling to find gold have left him with just one, Chris Kruse.

As good as it feels to be back up here and doing our thing.

Being gone for six months, it's never easy.

Got married to my fiancee of ten years, Michelle.

Rick married Michelle and I in his backyard.

And then we went to a baseball game that night.

A pretty good day.

And I hope everything, you know,

plays out the way we hope it's going to this year,

because it'd make it that much sweeter being gone from my wife for six months.

Good to see you, buddy.

The wash plant's right where we left it.

Yeah, it didn't move itself.

No, and it's still half beaten to death.

She's looking pretty sad.

We're gonna have to get this thing running because

you know the name of the game.

If there ain't gold coming in, it's money going out the door.

Not a good business model.

Well, as usual, we've been plagued with problems.

I mean, Karla's... she's focusing on other things, man.

So she's... she's not coming back this year.

That's gonna suck. She's become my little buddy around camp.

You know, Carl, you know, he's going in for his surgery

and his health... I mean, his health's number one.

Without mechanic Carl Rosk or gold room operator Karla Ann,

Rick is a miner without a crew.

It's tough losing, you know, integral parts of the... the crew.

But we're gonna have to figure out a way to do it

because we've got 2,000 ounces to get this year.

There's definitely no way I can fill both of their shoes.

It would be nice to have another set of hands, though, I'll tell you that.

And I... I got... I will have some help for you, I think.

So, you guys can hit the ground running.

Yeah, there's a ton of *bleep* to do. Let's go, man.

On the road up to Duncan Creek,

Rick's newest crew member heads towards a fresh start.

Here I am on my way back up here to the Yukon.

I just knew it was time for a change.

A whole new crew, whole new blood

and a whole new way of mining, you know.

Mining veteran Brennan Ruault is jumping ship from Parker's claim.

Last year was, uh... it was pretty brutal.

Parker and I seemed to not see eye to eye anymore.

It's very draining and stressful when you're angry half the time.

Like, that's no way to work, you know.

Brennan met Rick on Parker's claim six years ago

when Rick was the foreman and Brennan a greenhorn operator.

Nice work today, boss. We did good.

Whoo!

Two seasons ago, he was promoted to co-foreman himself...

I guess the big question is if you are game for that.

I'll definitely step up.

...but after a series of run-ins with Parker...

I have hardly dug any of this.

I don't care.

Are you in charge, or are you not in charge?

...he reached the end of his rope.

So *bleep* over this *bleep*, man.

I'll pack my *bleep* and leave right now.

I don't give a *bleep* about any of this *bleep*.

Right there, I kind of knew, I was like,

"Well, this, I don't think is gonna go any further for me."

This year, I just want to run some big gear, move some dirt

and, you know,

go back to having a nice fun summer like it used to be,

and-- and kill it and hopefully find a *bleep* ton of gold.

Ricky, coming to see if you need some help for this season.

- How's it going, buddy? - Good to see you, pal.

- Yeah, *bleep*. Been a few fricking years, eh? - No, *bleep*.

- Man, I'm glad you're here. - Yeah, me too.

You know, Parker and I just seemed to, for some reason,

start butting heads a little bit more in the last few years,

and it's just made it--

Made it quite tough and draining at the end of the day and...

Yeah. Well, I certainly know that feeling.

- Yeah, yeah. - I know you know.

- Yeah. - So now we're reunited.

Yes, sir.

I can't wait to get out there and get started

and start learning some new ground here, man.

- Yeah, buddy. - It's gonna be fun.

I'm gonna throw my boots on.

Why don't you go throw your work clothes, I'll meet down there.

Yeah. Sounds good, bud, thanks.

Oh, boy.

- How's it going, buddy? - Brennan.

Kruse boy.

- What's going on, buddy? - Not much. Nice to see you.

- Oh, you look good. - Thanks.

Wow. We got a big crew.

- Right? - Yeah, huge.

I'm excited personally to start getting some gold, so let's get after it, buddy.

I've been through some pretty complicated scenarios in the military

where my life and my career was at jeopardy every single day.

And reality is gold mining is the most difficult thing I've ever done.

But I'm not a quitter.

I've never quit anything in my life.

If we can just find ground, I feel like we could succeed.

Special Forces veteran Fred Lewis

is on a 1,500-mile journey determined to resurrect his gold mining dream.

I've tried to settle in with the civilian lifestyle,

but nine-to-five job is just not in my DNA.

I packed up all my stuff. I'm driving up to the Yukon.

I need this freedom. I need the risk.

My mission is to find ground.

It's the only place I know where there is good gold in the ground for a fact.

Because last season, I would pretty much categorize as a complete failure.

I had a window of opportunity. I took it.

In Oregon last year,

Fred and his band of combat veterans

mined just $12,000 worth of gold.

That puts our total at 6.39,

which is honestly embarrassing.

Now, after striking out prospecting in the lower 48,

Fred's driving into the fiercest war for ground in decades,

hanging his hopes on a meeting with his only contact in the Yukon.

Parker is the only one in this game I know that I can trust wholeheartedly,

and he's the only one I know that will give me advice.

Maybe he has somebody I can go talk to, maybe he has ground I don't know about.

It's really the only option we have at this point.

It's a Hail Mary,

but I'd rather throw a Hail Mary than lose the game.

Fred Lewis has traveled to the Yukon

in a desperate last attempt to find ground to mine this season.

- Hello? - I'm in here.

- You want a coffee? - I'm good, thanks.

So how's everything going here, man, um?

It's going good. We just signed the lease on a block of ground that is--

Average depth is like 55 feet of mud.

- Oh, wow! - Yeah.

Man, so you just gotta go layer by layer on this, huh?

- So that's a big project. - That is yuck.

That leads me to something I was going to ask you about

because, the team, we put a lot into this offseason looking for ground,

and it's just... there's nothing that was viable.

So this is like my last hurrah to come up here

and see if I can find something.

Right.

And so you're just out looking for ground right now.

Yeah, I don't necessarily want to ask you for help, but I know you might know--

Aren't we all looking for ground?

Yeah, right?

It is a little conflicting for me because, like,

there's a very finite number of ounces of gold in the ground...

And at a certain point, everybody that's looking for ground's competition, right?

Now, I'm like trying to ask for a favor,

but we look for different things, though.

We don't need a big piece of property.

I think property you would probably not even look at.

So I was kind of hoping you might be able to point me in the right direction.

Hmm.

You'll have no problem finding ground.

But good ground.

- That's the difficult part. - Right.

Very hard business, and it's a difficult community to break into.

The Yukon will punch you in the face pretty hard if you're not careful.

What would you do if you were me, honestly?

I don't know.

I was in your shoes when I met Tony Beets. Probably go talk to him.

You think that would be wise just to show up and try and get his number

and call him and see if he'll meet with me?

Yeah, just show up at Paradise Hill.

- Yeah. - Yeah.

All right.

You know, if you're into it and, um, you know what you're getting into,

then more power to you.

All right, man, I'll get out of your hair. I know you're busier than me,

so that's pretty busy, but thanks, dude.

Oh, no worries. It's good to see you.

- Appreciate it. - No worries.

Let me know if you need anything.

Yeah, you know I will.

I wasn't expecting much, but I was expecting a lot more than that.

Definitely not comfortable right now with what Parker said.

It does not lead me to believe this is gonna be easy.

You don't have time to eat, except for at lunch.

Don't have time to, like-- barely have enough time to drink water.

Now we're in kind of a rush mode.

We are doing a big push right now to expose the cuts, get them all ready to go.

That'll allow myself and Tony to focus out on the Indian.

As the Beets Family wait on a water license for their Indian River claims,

it's all-hands-on-deck to strip the Nugget Cut at Paradise Hill in record time.

Now, Ruby and I are at home, everybody's is gonna have to work extra hard

to make sure that we get the 9,000 ounces.

That's Tony Beets for you. Go big or go home, right?

Balls to the walls all the time.

With Tony's new D11 dozer and 950 excavator,

they've removed 80 feet of overburden in just four days,

revealing a massive 40-foot wall of pay dirt.

We have hit gravel and pay in the back.

Yippee ki-yay.

Monica's school friend Ruby Mahoney

pulls down the pay dirt to load it into rock trucks.

You know, it's crunch time.

We have to get this dirt moved.

Holy *bleep*, it's *bleep* solid.

Oh, I... I'm just wasting time here, I cannot get through this.

This is just not working.

Tony, do you copy? Tony, do you copy?

This wall is completely solid.

We are at a *bleep* standstill.

Can you please come and talk to me?

This wall is completely frozen.

Yeah, she's solid.

To rip through the frozen section, Tony plans to take his brand-new

$2.7 million D11 dozer to the top of the pay dirt cliff.

He'll then go right to the edge of the 40-foot drop

and use the 10-ton ripper shank

to break up the frozen layer so the excavator can get to the pay dirt beneath.

The D11 has arrived.

You get high enough, sink the ripper in, pull the whole *bleep* cliff down.

Tony maneuvers the 120-ton machine

right to the very cusp of the 40-foot drop.

Tear the *bleep* out.

As Tony busts through the permafrost,

Ruby removes the pay dirt beneath.

Tony has pay dirt ready to run a full month earlier than last year,

a vital head start on his mammoth 9,000-ounce goal.

Huh?

You want to say that again?

I'm finally, uh, almost to the claim.

Parker Schnabel's foreman, Mitch Blaschke,

arrives at Scribner Creek for a milestone season.

You know, I can't believe that this year is my tenth year of mining.

You know, when I started this,

I was just a young guy coming up here

trying to figure it out and wanting to work on stuff

and, you know, now I'm helping run Parker's mine site.

Mitch first came to the Klondike

as a fresh-faced mechanic for Todd Hoffman with no gold mining experience.

For the last seven years, he's worked for Parker...

He's gonna be coming right through here, so watch yourselves.

rising up the ranks

to become his most trusted wingman.

Whoo!

But now he's without his co-foreman,

Brennan Ruault.

He's my go-to guy, I mean, we're bro-men, you know,

we do all this together and we work so well with one another.

To try and find another guy like that, um,

it just doesn't come around that often.

It is what it is, you know.

I'm back here and just gonna have to try and make the best of it.

Here we are.

Oh, I see he's got a golf cart.

- What's happening? - What's up?

Now see I might go for a ride with you in that.

- How you been, man? - Good. How are you?

Not too bad.

Good to see you.

- How are you doing? - Good.

I'm sure you heard about Brennan.

I talked to him just a couple of weeks ago there,

said that he wasn't going to be here this year.

I'm just pissed off that he didn't tell me until March.

You know?

I mean, we've been working hard to get this system running good.

Then you take a guy like that out of the mix and--

It's a-- it's a pisser, but that's all right. We'll be fine.

Yeah, we'll just have to figure it out.

See what we can do, I mean.

What's the game plan for the season?

We picked up a new block of ground.

Go Tuesday, we had the first meeting,

and on Saturday, we signed the deal.

Oh, wow! How deep is it?

Average is... about 50.

Well, it's got a lot at the bottom.

Just want to make sure we don't *bleep* it up.

Well, I guess, uh, yeah. I'll go get settled in.

You can show me your big project here,

and we'll figure out a game plan.

For sure. I'm glad you're back.

I hope you're glad to be here,

'cause, *bleep*, do we have a lot of work to do.

If I didn't want to be here, I wouldn't be here, right?

Right.

- That's usually-- Whenever I--

Whenever I say that, that usually means I don't want to be there,

but I don't want to answer the question.

And, you know, we definitely need some new dirt here,

but it sounds like it's pretty deep.

So I'm pretty interested to go take a look at that,

see what we got going on there,

and just see what we're gonna have to do

to make this season work.

And, you know, without Brennan here, uh,

it's definitely not gonna be easy.

As the lone foreman,

it's on Mitch to figure out how to tackle the new cut.

What's happening there, young man?

How's it going, Mitch?

Oh, not too bad. Well, I see you guys found this place.

Yeah.

Tyson Lee, last year's rookie plant boss,

and gold room expert Chris Doumitt joined Mitch at the new ground.

So what we got here is this section of ground through these claims here.

This stuff with the way it's drilling, if the math is right,

might be 10 ounces an hour with just one wash plant.

- Seriously? - Yeah.

So we're talking like 8,000 ounces possibly, then?

The only problem is 60 feet deep.

Oh, geez!

I've been doing it for ten years now up here

- and we've never gone this deep. - No.

We're looking at a million square feet of mud to move.

So we're gonna have to mine this a lot differently than we've done anything else.

We've never had to tackle a project like this.

So once we do get it opened up, we're gonna gut shoot

this thing right through here.

We're gonna take just the best because

when you're going 60 feet deep, you can't hit marginal ground.

It's going to look like a crater. It's going to look like

the Grand Canyon by the time we're done.

To get down to the pay layer,

Parker's crew normally strips around 10 feet of overburden with dozers and excavators.

Mitch will have to dig a narrow canyon to follow the course

of the ancient riverbed and its deposits of gold.

He'll open a small section first to find out

if the ground is flush with gold.

He wants to do it in just 30 days.

Yeah.

Should we name it Mud Mountain?

That works, because, like I say,

you're gonna have a mountain range by the time we're done.

It's gonna be tough.

There's no part of this that's gonna be easy, not to mention that,

you know, we don't have...

you know, we don't have Brennan here.

We don't have, you know, a lot of people

who have a lot of experience with moving material like this.

I mean, if we have issues with any of the machinery in this,

we're gonna end up a couple hundred grand into this cut real quick.

- Yeah. - Let's hope it pays out.

I'm gonna get back to the yard

because we've got a ton of gear in the yard that needs work.

'Cause the last thing we want is *bleep* breaking down out here.

- All right. Let's do 'er, boys! - Solid plan.

To dig out the first section,

Mitch taps rising crew member, Tyson Lee.

How's everyone doing this morning?

- Never been better. - That's good.

Parker was saying that he wants this cut opened up

by June 1st when we started it, so that gives us 30 days.

Just be careful. The roads are slick and we just gotta try and move

as much mud as we can and try and keep the trucks from getting stuck.

- Drive safely fast. - Yeah, exactly.

Okay.

- Awesome. - Let's get to work!

Tyson and his crew are up against the toughest dirt moving operation

in Parker's mining history.

When the melting snow mixes with the thawing find glacial silt,

it creates a toxic combination, a slippery surface

riddled with quicksand-like holes.

We're gonna have three excavators swinging,

five rock trucks, four Cats ripping and pushing day and night.

Short on crew, Parker pitches in.

It's definitely gonna be a difficult block of ground to mine.

You know, some of the more deep ground that--

That's on the Indian River, it does have some high royalty.

For sure it's gonna be a challenge.

I wouldn't be moving 60 feet of mud if I thought there

wasn't a hell of a lot of gold down here.

This is only the second time I've been in a helicopter

without a parachute, jumping out.

Greenhorn miner Fred Lewis

is hitching a ride with Klondike legend Tony Beets in search of a claim to mine.

Last year, the Indian River produced

over $30 million worth of gold.

High gold prices now make leasing good ground almost impossible.

You would come up here, and you would think there's so much, like,

hard-to-reach spots, but I'm seeing houses

up in these little valleys where people have already come up.

Makes me wonder how much work's gonna have to go

into finding something that I can actually mine this season.

Yeah, and I don't have a lot. I like a challenge, though.

Yeah.

Right.

If you had a small group here, how... how would you hit it?

Yeah. Well, after the doctor?

Okay.

I definitely want to look at it.

All right. Well, I'll get out of your hair.

Appreciate it, Tony.

Fred finally has a lead for a landowner

who may lease him ground, but it's 45 miles east of the gold-rich Indian River.

I'm gonna go and talk to Paul Phillips and see what he has to offer.

You know, people may think that I don't know what I'm doing

or that I'm over my head here. You know what? I am over my head.

Went up against a lot of odds in my life, you know,

just becoming a Green Beret, the attrition rate is over 90%.

So at this point, I'm all in for gold mining,

and I don't see anything that's gonna stop me.

This thing is ready to *bleep* go. It's turnkey.

At the stripped Creek Cut, Rick brings Kruse

and new crew member Brennan up to speed.

Well, we're going for 2,000 ounces this year,

so we're gonna have to seriously up our game.

I mean, the gold that we got out of this creek bed last year was good.

It got us to our goal.

That was where we found that 1 1/2 ounce nugget at the very end, so--

That's crazy.

From what we left last year in the Creek Cut,

I figured we got 600-700 ounces to get started sluicing with.

And that's just money in the bank.

That gets us the money we need to start stripping these deeper cuts.

It's early in the season, but we really got to get moving.

So the wash plant's where we left it last year, it's got to get moved over here.

That distribution box we've been working on, we got to slam that thing on.

And we're ahead of the game from last year, so.

We are, yeah, exactly.

I basically-- I want to be sluicing by the end of the day.

It's kind of a time crunch thing.

Let's keep it that way.

Short of time and manpower...

Let's go, you *bleep*!

...Rick's skeleton crew must first attach

the 1.5 ton distribution box to wash plant Rocky.

Why don't you guys wrap your nuggets around

how the *bleep* we're gonna get that thing in there.

To help out, Rick's tapped local heavy load truck driver Nathan Thornington.

- How's it going? - Good, buddy.

I heard you guys needed help out here this season.

- Oh, yeah. - How's it going, Kruse?

Always good to see you.

Buddy, you showed up just in time.

Really happy that we got Nathan to join our crew.

I've trusted him for years to move my wash plants,

my heavy equipment. So compared to that,

moving this distribution box should be easy.

I've been around this sort of stuff all my life.

And so hopefully we can get this in on the plant.

Rick plans to maneuver the ten-foot box into the heart of the wash plant

using the 480 Excavator, then winch it into position.

Keep going.

Yeah!

We might be able to slide it right in.

- All right. - If you go underneath.

If you just go real slow, Rick.

Whoa!

We'll blame it on the new guy.

That's you.

- Oh, *bleep*!

Haven't you guys ever moved a couch into an apartment?

Just think of it as a real heavy couch.

Okay, come in.

Down, down, down, down.

Okay.

There we go.

It's really nice having Brennan here.

You know, he does have several years of experience now.

We're not gonna let him think that that gets him a free pass.

If anything, that's going to get him picked on more, gonna have to keep him grounded.

Get ready with that chain, I'm gonna try and lift on this end, Kruse.

- All right. - You ready?

- Hurry up.

I got to crank it up.

Hold on.

- Easier said than *bleep* done. - I know.

All right. All right.

I think I blew blood vessel in my brain there.

You mean a blood vessel where your brain should be?

Good job on this. *bleep* hanging off it.

Distribution box is hanging from the chains now, that's how it's designed.

Everything else is pretty much ready to go.

Like, we get this thing over here, plumb it in and we're good.

I'm just gonna *bleep* go.

Next task, drag the 25-ton steel wash plant 500 yards to the Creek Cut.

It's always nerve-racking moving a plant.

Anything else that we destroy, break,

or whatever, we can survive, but not the one machine

that gets our gold, so.

Just gotta try to take it slow and smart, which I'm not good at either of those.

All right, that worked about as perfect as we could have asked for, I think.

I haven't ever showed up on the first day and been ready to sluice.

Can you believe Nathan is pulling that pump and that loader

with just that little ratchet strap?

This is the sweetest plant move ever.

Yeah.

Waterline and generator hooked up...

Yay!

Here we go, man. High five!

...Rick is ready to fire up for the first time this year.

But, for me, there's always a certain amount of excitement,

but also a little bit of, you know, anxiety because the fuse is

lit as soon as the button gets turned on that thing

and our pants are on fire until October.

You guys ready? It's go time? Yeah?

- I'm ready, man. - You betcha. Let's give her.

All right. Let's fire this thing up.

Shake it up, brother. Shake it up.

Pull big rocks up there that are gonna come tumbling out.

Get the water pumping.

Ready?

First bucket of dirt.

Looks good.

We're ahead of the game this year.

I've never sluiced in May before, so, this is pretty awesome.

See, if Rick wants to shoot for 2,000 plus ounces,

you know, we got to make sure we get every *bleep* damn nugget

and flake of gold out of this ground.

Yeah, it's actually kind of cool to see it up and running, eh?

It's actually amazing.

Despite the bare bones crew, Rick's sluicing earlier than ever before.

You know, we haven't been here for long

and my plan is always, when we get here,

we want to be sluicing as quick as possible,

so we are gonna get *bleep* gold coming in right away.

A full month earlier than last season,

Tony's ready to fire up his massive 8-foot wide trommel

and start sluicing Nugget Cut pay dirt.

But his whole operation now rests on firing up

one 900 horsepower, 1,500 gallon a minute water pump.

I'm here for my looks.

- At least one of us should be good looking. - Yeah.

I'd put more in.

TB's tried to turn over the generator.

Batteries are just clicking.

Yes, I do.

To jumpstart the 900 horsepower water pump,

Tony needs an engine with a bigger battery.

So we're gonna run in the 349 and boost it off of that.

Yes, he does.

Hey, Monica, I need you to hold these for a sec.

Thank you.

Sounds like me trying to get up in the morning.

Everybody clear?

We did it. We're back in business.

Wow!

This is the stuff you think of when you think of like the old Gold Rush

and people coming up here and the frontier and vast unknown.

Definitely not comfortable right now with what Tony and Parker said.

I'm not expecting to walk in and just fall into something,

but there's got to be something here.

Special Forces veteran Fred Lewis heads to Clear Creek,

a remote and little known area 45 miles east

from the Indian River in a last-ditch attempt to find ground

to mine this season with his band of combat veterans.

The guys I put together, you know, we're a really close team.

We're brothers.

So if I'm gonna drag them all up to the Yukon to mine,

it's gonna have to be something that's gonna put money

in their pockets and pay back the debt the company made last season.

Tony said not to make those mistakes twice, and we're not doing that.

It's not just about fighting the first chance I get.

But time is running out,

and all Fred has to go on is the name of a smalltime family mine owner

given to him by Tony Beets.

Trying to find this Paul Phillips guy in hopes that he has ground

that has water rights and has permits, so we can actually mine this season.

- Paul? - Hello.

Fred Lewis.

Whoo. You said you were far out here.

Yeah, we're a ways out.

So, uh, am I catching you at a good time?

Oh, yeah, we're just starting to get stuff out of retirement for the winter.

Well, I'm really kind of cold calling you, I know.

Yeah.

But Tony mentioned your name, and that was enough for me to come out and talk to you.

Yeah.

Said that you might have some ground you might be willing to lease.

We haven't really done much on Clear Creek

because we've always had the other places to work at.

We hadn't really considered it yet, but...

it's something we'd look at for sure.

Paul Phillips and his family used to mine in the Klondike.

But this year, they've left it behind to mine out here in Clear Creek.

I've got a real small operation, so I'm really trying to find

a piece of ground that's got that open space we're looking for

and, um, a relatively non-complex mining operation

because we're not the most experienced operators.

It's pretty much a team of greenhorns.

Well, this would be some of the easiest for your team

to handle until they get some experience, I would think.

It's quite simple.

The first time we... we washed down there,

I stripped for one day with the 400 by myself, and we had enough.

We sluiced for 6 weeks.

Holy cow!

It's lean ground, but there's lots of it.

- So just run it. - Yeah.

- And catch the gold. - Okay.

Well, I would love to see like how you have done it here, if you don't mind.

Sure.

We can walk down to the creek and show you where we've been.

Yeah.

So this basically is, uh, borderline the creek?

- Yeah, the creeks right there. - Okay.

So if someone were to come up in here from start to finish,

how long do you think it would take them to get into sluicing?

Hmm. Maybe an hour. Two hours.

- Are you serious? - Yeah.

So it's pretty much ready to go.

Back your plant in, turn the pump on.

It's definitely profitable mining.

Well, what do you think the odds of... of maybe getting

a test up here, um, just to kind of see what we've got up here?

Yeah, I don't have a problem with you testing.

Okay. That sounds good to me. That's more than, uh, no.

- Yeah. - I'll take that any day.

To come back from last season's failure,

Fred needs to be sure the ground has good gold.

Okay. Right on, I'll just fire this thing up.

Sounds good.

I think right now the treasure hunt begins. But if it's here,

we're gonna find it.

I'm really looking for 10 to 15 colors, that's really gonna be

the target for what I'm looking for.

A lot of fine gold, there's not any chunks in here but...

Oh, boy, I'm seeing some good color.

Oh, yeah.

So this is what we're looking for.

I think this pan I just did is sitting at about

a little under an ounce a hundred here,

'cause I'm not a professional.

I'm just-- I'm learning as well.

But I'm at least at 0.8, which is fantastic.

Fred calculates he needs at least half an ounce of gold

in every 100 yards of dirt to make his season pay.

This is our second hole.

It's on the left side of the valley.

I honestly don't know. Right now, I'm looking at probably 0.6,

maybe 0.7 per 100 out of that pan.

And this is exactly why we came to the Yukon.

If you can find a claim with a good claim owner that has potential,

and it hasn't been mined out, you're probably gonna find gold.

I know that there's stripped ground here.

I know it's easy for me to access.

I know the gold's here.

Depending on what Paul and I come up with for royalty, this could be workable.

At Parker Schnabel's Mud Mountain Cut...

Next truck come back in, right where my bucket is.

Tyson Lee is on a mission to get down to pay

and test what could be the richest ground they've ever mined.

But first, he has to strip over a million cubic yards of overburden.

You know, we're a week into Mud Mountain and we've made a hell of a dent.

And as you can tell, it's warming up

and definitely slowly sliding backwards as the mud gets ahead of us, so.

Thicker than regular overburden,

Mud Mountain's sticky wet black muck is a force to be reckoned with.

So far, we've had two rock trucks down for three days

at 100 loads each a day.

You know, we really cannot afford breakdowns right now.

Due to the mud, there's these big holes,

so I've got to drive really slow,

otherwise, I'm gonna slam the rock truck

and it can really damage the hydraulics. I'm sliding everywhere.

Although now we have a bit more space so we can actually fit in four trucks.

We don't have much time here, because as the snow melts,

all the water is coming down from the hill, so we are getting a lot of mud.

Um, so we got to be pretty fast here.

So we're just flying here.

It's very, very difficult right now, it's... it's tough.

It's advanced rock driving if that's a thing.

To keep on track with Parker's 30-day deadline,

Tyson's rock trucks need to dump at least 400 loads of

overburden a day at the waste site.

But with multiple breakdowns, Tyson is falling further and further behind.

I'm normally a sluicer, man. I don't move mud.

You know, Brennan could run any piece of equipment that was around here.

You can't replace that experience overnight.

Like anything in life, anything new is a learning curve,

and this is gonna be one hell of a learning curve.

Can I steal a truck here?

Can I have one truck, please?

Hey, Jordan, I got a copy.

Yeah, man, my truck keeps *bleep* going into limp mode.

Won't accelerate.

Won't really do anything in here.

Rookie Jordan Tatlow's truck is in limp mode,

a safety mechanism that slows it right down

when there's a mechanical problem.

Bring it up to the mechanic's up there

and let them know. That's their department.

One rock truck goes down, that's 100 less loads a day we're getting.

Or 100 loads a day that we're gonna have to get

out of Mud Mountain at a later date when it's warmer and when the mud is thicker.

Hey, Mitch, you got a copy, Mitch?

Yeah, we got another truck down here at Mud Mountain, one's coming your way.

Oh, wonderful, just what we need.

Already, two trucks down,

Tyson must send another to be fixed.

Mitch, he's in the yard right now

trying to keep the mechanics going,

you know, trying to get everyone caught up, but it's just tough.

I'd say it's Mud Mountain one and our crew zero.

In the yard, foreman Mitch is back where he started nine years ago,

wrenching to keep up with broken equipment.

We're out here doing everything we can to get these trucks fixed.

All that permafrost muck that just keeps getting into everything.

And, right now, we're not even keeping our heads above water.

- Hi. - What up?

Are you deep in the middle of something?

- What do you got going on? - Mud Mountain.

Do you want to bump down there?

I know, we got a ton of work to do out in the cut,

but we got way more to do right here.

If we keep stopping, we're never gonna get any of it done.

- Okay. - But we're just trying to get that crashed out

and so we can get on to the next one here.

I know, as a foreman, probably not the best, you know,

use of my time to be in here working on stuff.

Right now, we need to be thinking about moving dirt, not working on trucks.

But we have no other option right now.

We've got to get these machines to where we can rely on them every day.

They can go out and do their job.

I can't be both places at the same time.

And it seems like that's what Parker expects every day.

Jordan's truck reaches the yard.

If it's not one thing around here, it's usually ten things more.

Every hour it's down makes it harder

for Tyson to hit Parker's 30-day deadline.

Whoa!

What is going on down here?

First, we have to try and get rid of some mud

so we can actually get to the bolts.

Really not what we're wanting to see down here.

This hydraulic pump completely encased with this, well,

pretty much mammoth *bleep*. This stuff is like concrete here.

It flowed in as a liquid.

Well, it set back up and this stuff, it's brutally hard here.

You can barely bust it apart.

The hydraulic pumps power the truck's suspension, brakes and steering.

Without them, the truck is useless.

Mechanic Taylor must remove them and assess the damage.

We know the pumps not building pressure.

You can see damage on the plate here.

We'll take the guts out of this one, and we'll have a look.

More than likely the pistons-- The pistons or the slippers are toast.

You can see here these grooves in here are why we're not building any pressure.

The oil can just go wherever it wants.

It's not forced through the output ports.

Mud Mountain's fine black silt has worked its way inside the pump,

breaking the pistons and damaging the precision engineered plate

that seals in the hydraulic fluid.

Okay, um, there's a curve ball.

Getting a spare up to the claim could take weeks.

Man, the only other thing

I'm wondering here we could do and try in the meantime.

So if we can get this to all look like this outer portion here...

Yeah.

And maybe with the new pistons here,

and if we can get this flat again.

Without a working seal from the top plate,

the pump leaks hydraulic fluid and is unable to gain pressure.

Mitch's Hail Mary bush fix, remove and replace the damaged pistons,

then take the top plate and grind out the grooves to create a seal

so the pump can regain pressure and power the truck.

So we've polished up this piece here, so hopefully this will seal.

This will make pressure. And if it does, this truck can go back to work.

If not, we're gonna be waiting for a new part.

I'm gonna roll the dice on this thing. See if she works.

100%.

We just got to fire it up and see if it works.

You ready?

- You ready? - Yeah.

Here we go.

Come on, baby.

We just need our pump to build enough pressure

to raise the machine all the way up to the top.

Before we took it out, it wasn't building any pressure.

100% lift.

- There it is, buddy. - How about that!

You know, we've been working on trucks all day,

but this is the last one right here heading back out to the cut,

and everything's good to go again.

Hopefully, it lasts a while.

With the full fleet back in action,

Tyson has a fighting chance to hit Parker's deadline.

Hey, Jordan, yeah, it's good to see you're back, man.

You know, we need every truck going here at Mud Mountain we can get.

That's one step closer to getting me the hell out of the mud

and back around a wash plant in my happy place.

How's it going, guys?

- Hey, Fred. - How you doing?

Fred Lewis' chances of getting gold rest on striking a deal

with Paul and Diana Phillips to mine their pre-stripped claims in Clear Creek.

How'd it go?

I got all my testing done

and I'm seeing the exact type of gold that you guys told me.

It's consistent throughout the valley, like you said.

So what are you guys looking at for a royalty?

It's probably the easiest ground you'll ever find to mine, go about 50%.

50%?

I never heard of that before.

Did a lot of time on that, and all you got to do is

just pick up the dirt and throw it in the plant.

Giving up 50% of every ounce of gold could make this lean ground a loss maker.

To be able to give my guys their gold bonus at the end of the year,

so they're not working for free,

that coupled with last season's loss,

I'm not sure that the 50%-- Well, I know the 50% is--

Is something I just can't... I can't bite on.

This ground here is already set up, stripped and ready to mine.

- We can't give it away, Fred. - I know.

- We can't. - And that's my... That's it right there.

But it's still below that line where I told myself and my entire team,

"I won't bite unless I find this for you."

If I'm being painstakingly obvious,

I don't feel like there's a...

there's a ground that we're gonna come to that both of us are happy on.

It's just not a good option for us.

- Thank you very much. - Thanks for stopping by, Fred.

Thanks, Fred.

- I'll talk to you guys. Yep. - Take care.

50%? There's no *bleep* way I can make 50% work.

What do you think?

You know, Paul, no miner has the opportunity to walk in on ground

that's already stripped, ponds in place,

literally bring your machines in and start sluicing.

Once everything's all hooked up. I mean, it's very rare.

It doesn't happen that often.

He made it sound so easy.

But, you know, if it sounds too good to be true,

it probably is.

Really sucks, because I had my hopes up.

And it's not just give me some ground, let's go dig.

The very minimum is I've got to put money into the company

and my guys' pockets, or we're a failure.

I'm pretty much back to square one.

The best part is we fired up my first week here, you know.

We're already washing the rocks, so that's pretty sweet.

Let's hope there's a whole load of gold in here.

Rick Ness and his bare bones three-person crew

are gunning for 2,000 ounces,

banking on a fast start sluicing Creek Cut pay dirt.

Shut it down.

After three days of washing rocks,

it's time for the first cleanup of the season.

I don't know why I'm so nervous.

It's the first one of the year. I--

You seem a little giddy.

I am.

All right, I can't talk anymore. I got to go look--

- Let's do this. Let's make it rain, boys. - Whoo!

Yeah, look at that pile right there, Brennan.

- Yeah. - Look at them all there.

- Yeah, buddy. - *bleep* yeah.

Oh, there's one. Look at that, buddy.

Look at that nugget right there.

Oh, buddy.

It looked really good.

- *bleep* - Oh!

Holy *bleep*, man.

- *bleep* - Does it feel like the first time again?

It does.

Look at these chunks coming out of there.

It's amazing.

Pretty *bleep* excited, like, we had a big fat first clean up.

You know, this is gonna make everybody feel pretty good

for the season and what we're having to look forward to.

I hate to make guesses, and I won't, but I will say that it looks good.

It looks really good, like, some of the best I've seen in that box, so.

I see some gold in that pan.

A lot of gold actually, right?

You know, the cleanup looked really good.

Yeah, it does look good.

And actually, I mean, that being said,

why don't we just weigh this out?

- Let's do this. - Sounds good.

To his 2,000 ounce season goal, Rick needs around 100 ounces a week,

so this 3-day run needs to deliver at least 50.

5, 10, 20, 30,

40, 50,

60. What... *bleep*

67.50.

- Buddy. - Oh, man!

How does that feel, huh?

*bleep* awesome.

Well, that's evidence of all our hard work right there.

Yeah.

At over $120,000, Rick's pulled more gold in his first three days

than he did in the first three weeks last year.

Well, for now, it's the four of us.

Let's just keep doing our thing, I mean, that's a hell of a start.

In all honesty, the four of us,

I mean, we work really well together.

Like, I'm impressed with everybody.

- That's good to hear. - You know-- Yeah.

You know, you stepped up this year like you always do, get us started.

Brennan you showed right up, jumped right in, you know. Kruse.

I mean, you know, everybody pulled their weight

and the results are right here.

Let's go get some dinner and some sleep.

Get back at it tomorrow.

- Yeah, buddy. - Sounds good.

Eat, sleep, mine, bro.

Well, we definitely have a good start to the season,

but it's a long way to go to 2,000 ounces.

So I'm not gonna jump the gun and say this is gonna be easy,

uh, but I've got the right people here with me.

We did the right prep work over the offseason and last fall,

and we got a hell of a start, so onward and upward.

Find out if my little shack is still livable.

Let's go see what we got going on here.

I got water.

Sounds like I got heat, too.

Wow.

Everybody's been using my shower.

Oh, hammer and chisel and sand blast it, and it'll be good as new.

Somebody tried using steel wool on it to clean it up

and left the steel wool in the shower.

That's always good.

All right, I'm home.

Let's go.

This first segment is almost done. Once it's done,

then we can move on to the next piece.

Two weeks into digging Mud Mountain, Parker Schnabel's crew

is 55 feet down in the first half of the cut

and pushing hard to hit pay dirt so they can find out just

how rich the ground is.

Word on the street is that at the bottom here,

there's roughly 8,000 ounces.

When Parker told me that, I said, "Okay, so after we're done this,

we're going to Mexico, right?

'Cause we've hit our goal.

Or we've pretty much topped what

we've done every other year," and he's like, "Yeah, exactly, Tyson,

that's exactly what we're gonna do."

But I have a feeling that's wishful thinking on my behalf.

Looks like there's some bedrock.

Hey, Mitch, Doumitt,

do you guys got a copy?

Yeah, hey, Tyson, what's up?

Yeah, I think I hit pay gravel down at Mud Mountain.

You guys want to come down?

Oh, man, if you hit gravel in Mud Mountain,

there's gotta be pay.

Oh, yeah, it's pay.

It's been such a tough week.

We've been out here fighting, struggling to keep these rock trucks going.

Really excited to see what's at the bottom of it 60 feet down.

We're gonna go out, pan it up and, well,

hopefully, the pans look as good as the drilling.

What do you think, Chris, you ready to do this?

You bring a gold pan?

I know all you've been seeing is nothing but mud out here.

All we've been seeing is nothing but broken machines in the yard.

So I'm ready to see some gold.

How about you guys?

Yeah, for sure. Let me grab a pan. We'll go wash this stuff up.

After moving 60 feet of overburden, all Parker's hopes

for the season rely on a razor-thin pay layer less than two feet thick.

Let's see what we got here.

I wasn't expecting that.

What do you got over there?

A couple flakes.

What do you got Chris?

Not a hell of a lot, though.

Not even a flake.

Well, we're gonna need to show this Parker.

Yeah.

We've definitely invested a lot of money, tore up a lot of machines,

and what I'm seeing here looks like *bleep*.

Parker is already $700,000 in the hole,

and the first pans of Mud Mountain are duds.

How's it going? How are you doing?

- Hey, Parker. - I'm all right.

Getting in the swing of things.

What are you guys up to?

We got a little bit of a problem, I think, maybe.

What kind of problem?

Well, we've been down at Mud Mountain panning.

Our best pan had two colors.

It doesn't make me feel good.

It makes me a bit nervous, actually.

You'd think with how concentrated the material is down there,

and you'd think you'd at least see something, but...

It's not like we're just-- It's not like we're just going off

of a gut feeling like Liam drilled that.

What can we do about it?

Yeah. You can't.

I mean, you got the money invested in it.

We're going to sluice it, right?

There's nothing we can do about it now.

We've got to trust something and we've got to trust somebody.

Yeah.

You're either gonna come out of this, and we're all going to be smiling

and everything's gonna be good,

or it's gonna be a big learning experience so.

Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a pretty big gamble,

especially with how deep it is.

And if it mines the way it drilled,

we're gonna have a hell of a season

and should be able to beat last year, for sure.

All right, well...

We'll get it through a wash plant and see what we end up with.

- Thanks, Parker. - Thanks, guys.

In the Beets Family gold room...

We started sluicing everything from the Nugget Cut.

I don't know how much T Beets was expecting,

but from what I see, and I do think we'll have

at least a little bit of gold in there.

At the end of this week, Mom and I are heading

600 kilometers away to have a baby.

We're just really not set up here in the Yukon

to have babies anywhere except for Whitehorse.

Working for my family, I'll be able to bring my child in

and continue working.

She'll be in a playpen over by... probably the table

because that's a peaceful noise to listen to.

It is an exciting thing, but...

It's the moment of truth.

The Beets family's first gold weigh of their ambitious 9,000 ounce season.

- Hi, folks. - Hi.

That thing *bleep* runs basically a day on a half a tank.

I see what the 11 does. It's like, "What the *bleep*?"

Why do we have two jars?

Well, I figured it, it's called the Nugget Cut,

so I kept all the nuggets out and we'll put them on top.

Roughly 40, 45.

To hit his 9,000 ounce target, Tony needs 475 ounces a week,

so this 2-day run should deliver 160 ounces.

Are you gonna pour some gold for us?

5, 6, 14, 15, 18, 25,

40, 50, 70, 80.44.

82.72.

82 ounces is worth over $147,000.

Yeah.

It's more than the trommel produced per hour last season,

but still less than the 475 ounces a week they need.

Well, this will be your last gold weigh for a while.

Well, I mean, only if you don't have somebody else

cleaning the gold while I'm gone.

Oh, yeah.

She needs a job like a hole in her head.

Well, then you're gonna have to buy a playpen

and maybe a mobile and maybe an white noise machine.

I need a humidifier.

Clean it up, and let's go to work.

- Yeah. - I have stuff to do, too, so please.

Bye.

Now, Tony can expand to the Indian River

and easily double or even triple his output.

The water license, as you know,

as long as we get it in the next 14 days,

that's good.

We should have both operations up and running.

With all that, I think we should be able to reach the goal.