Original subtitles

We got to catch up.

On this "gold rush"...

You're in charge over there.

This isn't working.

Get your hand off that lever.

You guys need to get with the program here.

Seriously been an amateur hour.

It's a disaster.

Clear back!

It exploded.

Definitely the worst condition

I've ever seen any of our equipment.

Worse, every time somebody asks me that.

♪♪

♪♪

Hey, look, a tree!

♪♪

... Captions by vitac... www.Vitac.Com

captions paid for by discovery communications

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

Got a lot of dirt to mine.

Hopefully, we'll get it together,

put some more gold in the bank.

Five weeks into the season, Todd Hoffman is coming up short.

Throwing everything at it.

Then we can get back on track

to that 5,000 ounces

and try to kick Parker's ass.

He should have 1,000 ounces,

but he's got less than half that.

Just not getting that gold.

You know, and I got this bet with Parker.

That's not funny.

Todd's running 300 yards an hour through double trouble.

I don't want to lose to that kid.

And son hunter is doing the same with monster red.

We've been running super hard here in Sacramento.

We're running a lot of yards right now.

♪♪

- Hey, hunter? - Yeah, what's up?

Can you come by the gold room here?

I've got something to show you.

Uh, okay. I'll head over.

Jack Hoffman does daily cleanups

to keep a close track of their progress.

What's up?

What is it? What is this?

That's a whole day's run.

- How much is this? - 4.05.

You need at least four times this.

- Yeah. - That doesn't pay bills.

We're basically running for no reason at this point.

Well, hunter, you know, you're in charge now.

But this isn't working.

♪♪

- Okay. - All right. See ya.

At 4 ounces per plant, per day,

the Hoffmans would have a 1,200-ounce season,

little more than last year's disastrous total.

Hey, we need to shut down monster red.

♪♪

Hey, Brian, kill it.

♪♪

♪♪

Over at double trouble,

Todd is running dirt from the same cut.

My dad's gonna be pissed.

♪♪

Hey, dad?

What do you need?

We got to shut the plant down.

You're kidding me.

We just had a 4-ounce cleanup, okay?

And that was from thousands of yards running.

I'm not gonna shut down.

Let's just push through it.

It could just be a bad layer.

We ain't gonna get any gold if we ain't running.

♪♪

♪♪

Get your hand off that.

We're burning fuel.

We're losing time.

We're wasting days getting no gold.

Get your frickin' hand

off that lever.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

You better have a damn good reason

why you shut that plant off.

I did you a favor 'cause whatever we're running

right now, it has no gold in it, okay?

You have bad days. You got to run through 'em

- no. - To get to the good days.

But I just got 4 ounces.

That's nothing. That doesn't count

towards our 5,000 at all.

It doesn't make a dent in it, okay?

We've been running

This is overburden.

Unlike most of the ground the Hoffmans have mined,

Sacramento is an ancient glacial deposit.

Millions of years ago, a receding glacier laid down

a layer of gold-rich dirt and rocks.

Over the next hundred thousand years,

a layer of worthless dirt formed on top,

until the next glacier came down and left a new pay layer,

which, in turn, got buried.

So what do you want to do?

We have to strip.

We need to shut down for 2 days,

strip that crap off, and get down to the pay.

Two days?!

With all the trucks we have,

we can peel that off in 2 days.

That's crazy, man.

It's gonna take money and time.

All right.

I'll give ya 2 days,

but I'm telling ya it's on your head.

Get on it now.

Go.

You know what?

You've got the balls to come shut my plant off,

you better have the balls to follow through

on this stripping.

Let's hope and pray he's right.

You know, I'm not gonna work all day for 4 ounces.

He's wrong. The biggest thing I can do

is just learn from all the mistakes

my dad made in the past

and, you know, this is the right decision.

We have to strip. We have to shut down

for 2 days, but, whatever.

♪♪

Between sluicifer and big red,

we've got two very hungry mouths to feed,

so hopefully we can make that work

with the people and the equipment we've got.

♪♪

2,000 miles north,

Parker schnabel's pushing ahead of Todd

with two wash plants working hard towards his 5,000-ounce,

$6 million, goal.

Consistency is the key, so, we do our damnedest

to be running 24/7 all the time.

Running the plant nonstop

has created a flood that Mitch is trying to fix.

Right now, we're just trying to clear the culvert

that drains our settling pond.

All night, we were pumping thousands of gallons of water

into our settling pond, and none of it was going out.

Now, it's caused some flooding in the cut.

To wash the gold, sluicifer pumps

nearly 200,000 gallons of water an hour into the settling pond,

but the water is not draining properly.

Instead, it's seeping back through the berm into the cut.

It's collecting in the lowest part of the cut,

but if it gets into the dry pay dirt,

it could wash the gold down deep in the fractured bedrock,

where they may not be able to recover it.

If we don't get this water to drain,

then we're gonna be digging in a pond

instead of digging in nice, dry pay dirt.

The pump that usually drains the cut can't keep up.

It's really not looking good in the cut.

The water's coming up way too fast.

And if it reaches the pay, then we're

We need a more long-term, good solution to that.

Maybe have them have it drain overnight.

Maybe at the end of the day today, just crank that pump up

and leave her running wide-open.

All right. Cool.

Well, this thing's capable of doing 4,200 gallons a minute,

so I think it's time we crank her up and get this cut dry.

Should be good to go by morning.

Next morning, the floodwater is beginning to cover the pay,

and the dewatering pump is spewing smoke.

Stand back!

Rest in peace, little pump.

Sometimes it's hard to see what's wrong.

This one, it's pretty clear.

It blew up pretty hard.

You can see right here, I can put my hand inside the motor.

And here's what's left of our piston that exploded.

Hang on. There's the rest of the connecting rod.

It's pretty bad when you can disassemble an engine,

and you don't have to remove any of the parts.

You know, this is a very catastrophic failure,

definitely the worst condition

I've ever seen any of our equipment.

There's no coming back from this one.

This motor is junk.

This pump's moved a lot of water for us,

but we've got a bunch of scrap metal now.

Till it broke, the pump was draining

a crucial 4,200 gallons of water a minute,

equivalent to over 33,000 water bottles.

What the

Did it just die?

She smoked.

You heard the term of an engine grenading?

It looks like somebody dumped a whole case

of grenades in there, not just one.

Holy

Unfortunately, we don't have any spares.

We're gonna have to figure something out real quick.

This water level is already rising quite a bit.

Oh, good

Yeah, it's just contaminated already.

- Oh, Yeah. - See, it's a Disaster.

- What's the plan, then? - Not sluice.

♪♪

Like, we aren't dredging here, so as much as I hate it,

we have to shut the plant down.

It'll cost Parker $2,500 an hour,

but sluicifer's torrent of water

is threatening to flood his pay dirt.

We're in pretty rough shape right now.

♪♪

♪♪

6 trucks, two 700s.

We should get this done pretty fast.

Let's kick some ass and move some dirt.

In Colorado, after a disastrous four-ounce day,

hunter has shut the Hoffmans down.

You know, four ounces a day, that's bull

That's not worth it.

Hunter's decided to close both plants down, just strip.

He wants to get gold, and he wants to prove himself.

I understand that, as a dad, but it's scary for me.

Once you've closed the plant down,

you ain't making any money.

You know, this is my first year being in charge.

Dad is counting on me to get this job done,

get this dirt moved.

Hopefully we can get in here and get it done.

Hunter has vowed to remove this worthless layer of dirt

and hit another gold-rich pay streak in just two days.

You know, Todd's got pretty high expectations,

like any father would over his son.

We need to get this done,

we need to get it done quick, and get back to sluicing.

Best way to do it is come together as a team,

put all resources together, and get rid of this material.

Hunter's commandeered the entire crew,

including all the greenhorn miners

Todd's taken on this season.

Got a lot of new guys here.

I think I'm the only person rock trucking

that has actually done this before.

It's pretty crazy driving a 40-ton truck.

Super nervous about this, just getting used to backing up.

Lord.

Pull forward some more.

Pull forward.

I can't reach the front of the truck.

Roger.

You know, I get that these guys are new,

I get that it's their first year,

but, you know, they need to pick up the pace

'cause, you know, they're costing us money right now.

The greenhorns aren't understanding basic signals.

Holy

When I give it a double tap, you're good to dump.

You guys need to get with the program here.

Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.

It's seriously been an amateur hour.

♪♪

♪♪

What the frick?

You are not loaded. Good lord.

That was a freaking four-wheelers side-by-side horn.

I can't quite understand what you said.

You guys have got to start paying attention

to what horns are honking.

Lost my concentration there.

I don't know why it's so difficult.

My fault. I'll try to work on that.

A crew of six rock-truck drivers

should move 15,000 yards of dirt a day.

Hunter's crew of rookies has only moved half that.

Hopefully, we all learn from today,

and hopefully tomorrow we get a lot more work done.

♪♪

Yesterday was a pretty long day,

and today is gonna be about the same,

but you got to do what you got to do sometimes.

What the

Damn it.

Juan ibarra, do you copy, Juan?

I just lost a hydraulic hose.

This thing is

Literally the last thing we need.

Andy battles on in the remaining 700 excavator,

but they can only shift half the dirt.

Every time we got to have these little set backs,

it just takes everything that much more time.

Every minute counts.

Every load counts.

It all adds up at the end of the season.

- Hey, how are we doing? - Not good.

- What happened? - Lost a hose on that 700.

How bad?

I can't even find where it goes,

so it's gonna be another long night.

You've got to be kidding me.

Hey, hunter.

Copy.

We need to talk... now.

Yeah.

You know, the dynamics of father/sons are always tough.

I'm sure Todd's not gonna be happy.

He's costing him a lot of money

when things are shut down every day,

as well as everybody else.

This is kind of putting a damper in our production,

and I'm not very happy about it.

You know, we're a long way through the season

to not have equipment running.

♪♪

Dude, you said two days.

Why are we not starting?

'Cause, we had breakdowns, and we didn't get it done, okay?

We're not done. We're not down to the pay layer yet.

Dude, you said two days.

- Would you... - what do you want to do?

We lose a few days running, okay,

or we run dirt that has no gold in it, okay?

Ugh, dude, really, come on.

You're killing me.

Bottom line... we have to get this crap off,

otherwise it's a waste of our time.

All right. Tomorrow, bingo.

You better strip the hell out of that place.

- Okay. - Okay?

♪♪

You know, I know my dad's pissed off, but, you know,

if my dad would have hired more experienced guys,

we'd probably be done by now.

You know, hunter, he needs to prove himself.

Can't afford any screw-ups.

I have everything timed out.

I feel like I'm on a schedule for 5,000,

and every time that we have a delay,

it just feels like that dream

is just slipping away farther and farther.

♪♪

At his second dredge in thistle creek,

Tony beets is in full teardown mode with his foreman,

sheamus Christie.

Tony, come look at this.

Pontoon's really bulged.

The hull of the 500-ton dredge

is made of massive steel pontoons.

Totally deformed, twisted, warped.

Not only round, they're splitting, cracked.

Take these apart, they'll never go back together.

Absolutely.

What are we gonna do, Tony?

We can't float a dredge without pontoons.

That's that one that was in pieces, though.

So these pontoons are sitting out in the open, Tony.

What's to say they didn't fill up with water

and have done the same thing?

Tony beets is leading a convoy along 30 miles of dirt road,

Deep into the Southern klondike.

It's a little squishy here, guys.

Geez, this road's rough.

Whoa.

Today's gonna be a big day.

Tony's second dredge has a twin

that mined this ground at Henderson creek

over 60 years ago.

When the gold price dropped, it was abandoned,

and the parts have been sitting here for decades.

♪♪

Bits and pieces here that are really weathered.

It's really a lot of damage done.

Yeah?

Really good.

Yeah, and there's another one of those over there I noticed.

I could see all these being very useful.

In the boneyard, Tony has found

all the pontoons he needs to float his second dredge.

What's your plan for getting all this stuff out?

You?

♪♪

These pontoons are in almost pristine condition.

They almost look brand-new.

It's exactly what we need to put the dredge together.

Hey, look, a tree!

Extreme trucking here.

Come ahead. Turn to your left. Turn to your left.

In just four hours, Monica has all the pontoons loaded.

Now the beets crew has 30 miles of bush roads

to get them back to Eureka.

Going back down that road might be interesting

with some of that stuff.

There are some pretty tight, hairy corners,

but that's all part of the fun.

♪♪

I found another engine.

In the klondike,

Parker schnabel's creek cut is flooding,

and the engine on the dewatering pump has exploded.

He's had to shut down sluicifer and is losing $2,500 an hour.

The good news is, it's the right horsepower.

The bad news is, it was designed for a generator,

not a water pump.

As long as the bell housing lines up, that's the biggest.

Yeah, that's the biggest deal.

One way to find out.

Yeah, time's the only problem, right?

How long until you're done here?

I'm not sure.

This could be a four-hour job, or it could be a four-day thing.

I would say six is what I'm shooting for,

assuming we've got all the parts.

Without the pump, the cut is flooding,

sinking gold deep into fractures in the bedrock.

My plan is to try to see if the bell housing

and everything matches up for the pump.

Hopefully, it's not too big of a deal,

but until we get this engine off here

and go to line up the new one, we won't really know.

We got some work to do.

Mitch's plan...

remove the destroyed engine from the pump.

He'll then offer up the new engine.

Only if the bell housing and drive mechanism fit perfectly

will the new engine be able to power the pump.

Bring her in nice and easy.

We'll just get her close, see what we've got.

I'll just swing it this way a little bit.

Please be close.

Winch down!

The moment of truth.

Is that up against that bracket?

Yep.

That won't live like that.

The couplings won't align.

The old mounting brackets are blocking the new engine.

So what we should do, cut all this clean

and see if we're remotely close on the bell housing.

How much longer will that take?

I mean, it's definitely a lot more work.

You know, out here, we don't have

everything we need all the time,

so we're just gonna have to make something work.

Let's get to cutting.

Worse every time somebody asks me that.

You know, the way we operate is that,

once we start sluicing, we don't stop, right?

Because that's the whole key to our season.

It doesn't matter if it's a day or a night or a weekend

or a holiday or whatever it is.

That plant not running is a major issue.

A few breakdowns, and it's just amazing

how easy it is to fall behind.

But I can't let it get me down.

I'm just baling up hay here down at sluicifer cut

'cause the water has backed up so fast.

Mitch has removed the old mounts.

Time for another shot

at marrying the engine with the pump.

Let's winch down!

♪♪

Hold!

- There it is. - There we go.

- That'll work. - Yes. Score.

Everything's looking really good here.

We're gonna bolt it up, hook everything else up.

We know we can make it work from here.

After losing 10 hours and up to $25,000 in lost gold,

Mitch and Rick finally move the frankensteined pump into place.

Hopefully when we fire this pump up,

it doesn't blow a hole in the side of it like our old one.

We're gonna find out here pretty quick.

♪♪

Whoo!

Yeah.

♪♪

We've been down most of the day, but thanks to Mitch,

we're able to fire back up right now.

Give me some dirt!

♪♪

Well, hopefully we can get some gold this week.

♪♪

All right. Roger that.

Tony and Monica beets pilot a convoy of trucks

laden with massive pontoons to rebuild his second dredge.

♪♪

We'll just have to go for it.

Sheamus is the first to attempt the 25-degree incline.

Here we go.

At the final switchback,

Tony waits to watch his precious cargo go past.

The hill is no match for the two 8-wheel-drive oshkoshes,

originally designed to tow 60-ton tanks.

Mike scriba is bringing up the rear with a normal truck,

hauling a trailer laden down with pontoons and spare parts.

♪♪

Yeah?

♪♪

Tony's vital dredge pontoons and parts

will be stranded on the mountain

unless Monica's tundra can help move

the 40-ton truck and trailer.

What, not enough power in this thing?

Just need to pull me up the hill,

and don't twist off the drive shaft.

Should be no problem with this thing.

Okay.

♪♪

You're pretty heavy, hey.

♪♪

Oh, my

The truck driver extreme.

With Monica's help, the convoy is back on the road.

The pontoons arrive at Eureka creek.

Tony is one step closer to his dream of running two dredges.

♪♪

We have a lot of trucks going really fast right now,

so hopefully we can get it done.

In Colorado, hunter Hoffman promised his dad

he'd get down to a new layer of gold-rich pay

in just two days, but he's failed.

Hunter needs my help. We're family. It's what we do.

Hey, hunter, I want to smash this out.

None of us know how far down we have to go,

but, you know, either way, we need to move dirt.

We've got a lot more to strip

than where we thought we'd be today.

Old hunter, he's a good kid. He shoots high just like me.

But you know what? He's got a lot to learn.

You know, every day that we're not running dirt,

we're just... we're losing gold.

You need to learn from this, hunter.

You need to learn from it.

You know, thankfully my dad's here now,

and hopefully he can help us get this done faster, so...

But he is frustrating to work with.

Juan has fixed the 700 excavator,

so the Hoffman crew has all guns blazing.

All efforts are on Sacramento.

We've got to get this place dialed in.

At first, we had some issues,

but everything seems to be running

pretty smoothly right now.

I mean, this crew knows how to move dirt.

We're hauling ass.

They're finally shifting 1,500 yards of dirt an hour.

♪♪

♪♪

Todd to hunter. Todd to hunter.

Yeah?

Come down to the pit, because I think we're there, pretty much.

I'm starting to hit a layer of bigger rocks.

Okay.

Look at this.

I'm starting to get that cobble, the bigger stuff.

I think we're here, man.

I think we're right in it.

Go pan it. Let's go.

We're getting behind every minute.

I can feel it like a weight,

like a big, heavy thing on my shoulders.

I mean, we got to run.

♪♪

♪♪

♪♪

One, two, three decent-sized pieces,

a couple little tiny ones.

I like it.

That's a good pan.

That dirt has gold in it,

so I think we're at the right layer, finally,

so I think we run it.

All right. I got to give it to you.

You were right.

Good job, good call.

Call the guys in.

Let's start loading up trucks, okay?

- Okay. - Do it.

We stripped off that overburden,

and now we're about ready to get back into the gold, finally.

We're behind, and now we got to catch up.

Up ahead...

Do you have any idea where that puts us with the Hoffmans?

Oh, there's no way they're ahead of us.

I told you already.

Turn that thing off.

At scribner creek, Parker's in a bad mood again.

This time, it's medical.

Parker has got a bad tooth right now and he's miserable

and I cannot wait for him to get better,

'cause he's not fun to be around right now.

That's why I'm here.

♪♪

In the klondike, it's time for Parker's gold weigh.

Hey, youngster.

Goldie, how's that?

Whose is that?

That's sluicifer.

Got some gold.

- Question is, how much? - Mm-hmm.

Well, shall we weigh it up?

Yeah, throw it on. It's right behind you.

To stay on track for a 5,000-ounce season,

Parker needs at least 100 ounces from big red and sluicifer.

50.

70.

- Ah, 106.1. - Me.

Mitch's bush fix helped sluicifer mine

over $125,000 worth of gold.

- Well done, Mitch. - No problem.

I'm glad it all came together.

- Cheers to that. - Cheers to that.

Ah, it cost us 10 hours, so probably, I don't know,

15, 20 ounces of gold.

- But we'll get it next time. - Yeah.

- Yeah, go for it, Rick. - Oh, all right.

Next, it's Rick with big red's gold.

Feels good, but hopefully it's better than that last week.

We got 10...

20, 30...

40, 50...

70, 80...

90...

...90.5.

Yikes.

The number is going up.

What's that, 12 ounces better than last week?

It's not a huge jump, but...

Definitely headed in the right direction.

- In the right direction. - Yeah, keep it up.

If your numbers are going up, they go up next week.

- It's not bad at all. - All right.

So Parker, for our season total, it's 987.7.

987.7 ounces makes them the first crew this season

to smash the million-dollar mark.

All right, well, that's a lot of gold

- in not a lot of time. - Yes.

It was not the best of weeks, but we're putting gold in jars,

so that's good.

Do you have any idea where that puts us with the Hoffmans?

Oh, there's no way they're ahead of us.

There's no way in hell.

♪♪

♪♪

- How's it looking? - Well...

hey, it's better than four ounces.

I'll tell you that. Go ahead.

- Weigh it up, dad. - Okay.

After a disastrous four-ounce day,

hunter insisted on stripping overburden to get down to pay,

which means they've run the plants for less than two days.

Anything more than 16 ounces means hunter was right.

Here we go... 49.75.

Nearly 50 ounces of gold, worth almost $60,000.

Good call, hunter.

That's a good cleanup.

Thanks. I'm glad it, you know, paid out.

I know you guys were kind of at each other,

but you guys worked it out.

Keep doing that. That's the best way to do it.

Not all your moves are great, but that one seems to pan out,

so there you go.

I'll give that one to you.

You did good, you did good. Let's get some more gold.

You know, I've been put in position

where I have to make some decisions, so it's exciting.

You know, once you work really hard,

it's nice to see a payout like that.

It's a nice win.

Hunter's got great instincts, maybe a lot better than me.

Right now we're falling behind,

but I'll tell you what, failure isn't an option.

We're back on the gold there at Sacramento.

Soon as we get fairplay in the game, we're gonna win.

Get out of my way. Get out of my way.

There's a lot of dead dreams.

On the next "gold rush"...

We haven't won the war, but we won a battle.

Holy moly.

All I want to do is mine this property.

It's my life savings sitting there.

I mean, you're talking about two and a half months not running.

That's 2 million bucks, right?

Does that improve a guy's mood?

I don't think so.

Well, you got quite the old Mariana trench going, huh?

- Shut it down! - We can't keep shutting down.

It ain't working out.

He's a little

I don't know what the his problem is.

He's a little

Corrected & Synced by Bakugan