Original subtitles

We have a lot of ground to get through and so we just needed

to get sluicing early in order to try to get through it all.

But, you know, it's always tough to know whether

you're making the right decisions or not.

Parker schnabel is still reeling

from an ugly start to his season.

Chasing a record 10,000-ounce target,

he started to sluice earlier than ever.

But setbacks and bad calls have cost him dearly.

Four weeks into the season, he's only mined 135 ounces.

The plant's running in the long cut,

but we are having cash problems.

Financially, we're still in a very big hole

and we need money coming in.

Parker is spending hundreds of thousands more than expected

to get down to pay dirt in the bridge cut and the long cut.

But now he has another problem.

There's lots of keeping a wash plant running,

especially considering we're fighting permafrost.

As hard as concrete, permafrost is a thick layer of ice

beneath the top layers of dirt.

See these frost chunks that I'm bailing?

Like, you don't get gold out of chunks of frost.

And that had me really concerned.

It's like, did we start sluicing too early?

Parker usually lets the permafrost sit for months

to melt in the sun, making it easier to dig

and process in the wash plant.

But with no other places ready to sluice,

Parker has foreman Mitch blaschke fighting mother nature...

With horsepower.

Parker's decided that we need to bring in the big guns here,

so I've got this dozer out in the cut now.

And if it can't get through this frozen ground, nothing will.

Mitch scrapes the top few inches of icy pay

into piles that will thaw quickly.

Parker said keep that wash plant running 24-7.

An excavator then loads the trucks with the thawed pay dirt,

which is fed into rock sand.

This is a very expensive way to have to do things here.

Not only the fuel we're burning,

the time it takes, but the wear and tear on undercarriage.

Hopefully at the end of it all, we see a lot of gold.

Man, that did not sound good.

We just want to have a look underneath the dozer here.

Everything's looking good on the undercarriage.

That's not good.

We got some big old cracks here on the back of the blade.

Man.

That is... That's serious there.

Man.

Well, as you can see, this ground out here is extremely hard.

When you're out here sliding that blade across here,

it's just grinding that steel down.

We need to get this dozer out of the cut,

and we're going to have to get this cleaned up

and get it repaired.

Parker wanted to start sluicing early,

and this is what happens here.

The dozer's 20-foot-wide,

carbon-hardened steel cutting edge is supported by

multiple triangular braces behind the blade.

The frozen ground has cracked those support braces

and weakened the blade's integrity.

To strengthen it, the mechanics must gouge out

the supports at the base of the cracks,

then re-weld them into place before the dozer can return

to action.

Mechanics bill horton and Liam pukila arrive to repair

the critical dozer.

I'm just cleaning away all the dirt that's packed in

behind the blade.

Got dirt in my teeth.

Dirt in my teeth, gold in my veins.

Cracks exposed,

bill gouges them out using an arc cutter.

All right, that should be good.

Now the dilemma is it's all overhead welding under here.

So I got to really concentrate and try to get these welds

laid right in here.

Mitch is really looking for this thing.

So I'm taking a couple of shortcuts.

I just got to get this done.

To finish the repair, bill grinds excess

molten slag off his new welds.

What the... My foot!

Argh! What's in my boot?

Whoo.

No.

- Did it get you good? - -Yeah, it's got me pretty good.

The hot slag went down inside my boot, and I felt it hit here.

You have a band-aid.

Yeah.

Right there.

We got a band-aid on there. We're good to go.

Burned a hole right through my sock. It's what we'll call a bush fix right now.

A bush fix on bill.

Just another day of welding overhead.

- At least you're all right. - -Yeah, we're all good.

Let's just not get burned for nothing.

- Let's get this thing rolling. - Yeah, absolutely.

Pain is such a waste of time.

Bill's band-aid bush fix has him back in action.

Last rod.

Done.

Been a good job.

- Great job. - We nailed it again.

Nailed it again.

You get yourself looked after.

- I will. - Thanks, buddy.

Well, it is great to have this machine back in the cut.

Bill put in a lot of work, and he kept after

it even after burning his foot there.

And I tell you what, we definitely need this machine out here

if we're going to keep Roxanne running.

We're spending a lot of money right now,

you know, trying to get this pay out.

So I know Rick's just going to want to fire up monster red

as soon as we can, put some money in the bank.

At Duncan creek, Rick ness' crew are eager to catch

their first rally valley gold of the season.

We're building quite the stockpile here right now.

After some early delays, they've stockpiled 5,000 yards

of pay dirt and are ready to sluice.

It's a pretty good feeling. I'd like to see that pile get

to a pretty good size by the end of the week.

The gold room hasn't seen any action this year yet.

No one wants to find out how much gold lies at

the bottom of rally valley more than Rick.

At the moment, our 1,500-ounce goal seems a long, long ways away.

We need to be processing a lot of gold.

We get as much gold out of here as we can just in case

we never get a chance to come back.

After learning that his water license

for next year is in limbo, this could be Rick's

last chance to pull as much gold out of Duncan creek as possible.

We've got dirt sitting there at monster red,

but all that's missing is a pump.

This year, I went ahead and invested in one.

I got a really big 12-inch pump coming in.

That's all we need.

We're up and running, then putting gold in the bank.

The good news is it's here, and it should be pulling in any minute.

What a beauty.

This right here means we can fire up monster red.

You know, this could be a Ferrari in my garage, but...

We'll take a pump on site.

Rick's only other working pump keeps rally valley from flooding.

His new massive 12-Gauge will allow him to run

his monster red wash plant flat out,

sluicing 300 yards an hour.

I can't wait to see how much water this thing pumps, actually.

We could probably run two plants at once.

We'll just send a hose down to rocky and pump it off one.

It's a monster, man.

This is the biggest pump I've ever had on site.

What do you think, buzz?

- That'll be sluicing by this afternoon. - -Let's do it.

Cool.

To get started, buzz has built a custom reducer

for the monster 12-inch pump to connect

to Rick's 10-inch suction line.

This pump's ready to go.

This is the final piece of the puzzle here to get sluicing.

This was a big investment. $150,000 we got to make up in gold

just to pay this pump off.

To pay for the pump, Rick needs to pull in at least

60 ounces of gold in his first week of sluicing.

Can I move a quarter inch your way?

That's it.

As soon as we get the suction hooked up,

then we can fire this pump up.

I'm so excited.

Suction line's on.

Everything's ready. Everything's in place.

Look at that.

What a beauty.

Big moment. Big new pump.

Come on.

Whoo.

We got no water anywhere.

That's...

That is scaring me.

Well, where the is the water?

We got no water anywhere.

That is scaring me.

Well, where the is the water going?

In the hunt for his first gold of the year,

Rick's fired up his brand-new pump.

But no water is reaching his wash plant.

We're not getting water for some reason.

There might be something plugging up our intake.

We're gonna go lift the suction basket,

see if something's clogging it from down there.

Let's just start at the source right before we get all goofy up here.

The weld, that's what we're sucking air in.

Now that you got water to it, it's completely leaking everywhere.

- Yeah. - -This whole piece is cracked.

- Yeah. - -We need to re-weld it.

The pump connects to the intake hose

through buzz's custom reducer.

Like a straw with holes in it, the fitting has cracks in the weld that

are sucking air in, creating an air lock that

prevents water from reaching the pump.

To fix it, they will weld the cracks shut,

sealing the intake line and allowing the pump

to pull the water necessary to run the wash plant.

This is easy to weld. This is not a big deal like this.

Okay. All right.

I was getting nervous about this pump.

Well, I knew I didn't have a reason to,

but I couldn't think of anything else.

Anything to keep it from sucking air in.

We're down in the cut, making some good headway.

It feels awesome.

Just starting to rip the d10 while.

Matt and the trucks work their way over to me.

Everyone's so excited to be out here.

I don't think there's a sad face around here today.

Rookie mine boss Kevin beets is learning that optimism

doesn't bring in gold.

We're getting to some real production now.

But if we want to keep up and reach our goal,

we're going to have to make sure the trucks keep on moving.

Slowed by critical equipment failures,

Kevin is still stripping overburden at the lynx cut

and hasn't mined an ounce.

We had a lot of delays and we spent over a million bucks.

So we're starting to feel the pressure to get

some of that back.

We really need to get sluicing before the piggy bank

gets too small.

To get the gold flowing,

Kevin wants his crew down to pay dirt

and sluicing in three weeks.

Bills are still coming in despite no gold coming in,

so we really need to be focused on moving dirt

so I can keep all the machines going.

Our current schedule has us sluicing by

the end of the month.

Fingers crossed.

We need to get down to the pay because we need to make some money here.

Man, man.

That is soft.

Chase got stuck in the mud.

Hey, Matt.

Yeah, I'm stuck here trying to get out of the cut.

Give me a second.

Basically, I'm just going to grab in his box

and give him a little push.

Thank you, Matt.

Well, we won't be doing that again.

- What happened? - I got stuck.

The ground was a little soft, and I got stuck.

But you can see, we've hit the water table now.

That ditch is full.

And that's why you get stuck, and the trucks get stuck.

You know, it's miserable to push.

That just hinders the production.

I'm not going to be able to go any lower than what this water is,

because then the whole cut will just be a big mud hole, right?

If we can get a dewatering pump in and start taking

this water table down, then it'll be easy.

The lynx cut's water table is the level,

underground, where the water naturally sits.

Now that it's been exposed, water is overwhelming

the drainage ditch, flooding the cut,

turning the floor into thick mud.

To keep on top of the constant flow of groundwater

into the cut, Brennan needs a dewatering pump...

To completely drain and then keep the cut dry,

allowing the trucks to keep working.

All righty.

What's going on, boss?

That's my question.

Did you bring your dinghy?

Well, this is what we're up against here without no pump.

They got so much mud that it's saturating

and they can't drive on it.

I'm getting a little bit frustrated here.

I got some bad news for you then.

And what's that?

We don't have a pump.

Tony promised that I'd be able to borrow a pump

that I haven't had time to get to yet.

That sucks.

That really sucks right now.

So that's not the answer I was looking for, man.

I need that pump. Until then, we're shut down.

Without a pump to drain the cut, Kevin's crew is shut down.

This is my up, so I'm going to go get on fixing it.

Well, it's a bit of a up not having a water pump here.

It's just pushing us more and more away from

this 1,000-ounce goal that we have.

He's going to try and find one,

but we're going to shut down and have people sitting around.

I am not prepared.

I'm kind of dropping ball here.

So I'm going to go talk to Tony, see what we can do.

Kevin drives three miles west to his dad's Indian river claim

in search of a solution.

The pump was one of the things Tony was loaning us

until we can get our own to help get us started.

I've been kind of relying on that.

Let's go see Tony.

Hello.

Yeah.

Happens when you don't sleep.

Mostly because I'm fixing your stuff for you.

Well, remember that pump we're supposed to get?

The pump.

See, the one you promised we could have this winter.

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

See, the one you promised we could have this winter..

Rookie mine boss Kevin beets needs a water pump

from his dad to keep his lynx cut operation running.

I was relying on that being available.

A two-day delay will cost Kevin thousands

and put his gold-sluicing deadline at risk.

Okay. Any way to speed that up? We're already at groundwater.

So we need it today.

I was relying on it, and you said we could use it.

Until Tony's spare pump is ready,

Kevin's lynx cut stripping operation is dead in the water.

I mean, I was hoping for a little bit better than that.

I kind of trusted that it would be, you know, ready.

Don't want to sound like a whiner, but like.

I mean, I really should have known.

But you know, you like to hope.

We really can't have any more delays with the pump.

I sent out a few messages, but nobody's picking up the phone.

I did message Parker.

No response.

Kevin left me a voicemail trying to find a dewatering pump.

I just ignored it.

I'm not going to jump to attention when you phone me

and say you want a dewatering pump.

I'm like, what was he doing all winter?

Pumps are one of the most necessary parts

of a mining operation. We have like 20 of the things.

It's because when a water pump breaks and I am like

, because I don't have a spare water pump.

That makes me feel dumb.

I feel that way about every single thing on the mine site though.

Most of the mining process is about

just not letting yourself get screwed.

Parker is fighting problems of his own.

The only ground he can sluice is frozen solid

and the costs to get the gold out are skyrocketing.

We're in the red and we need gold.

We might be eating kraft dinner for the rest

of the season because we're going to have to cut some costs.

I love kraft dinner though.

To help collect the cut's top layer of thawed pay,

piled up by the dozer, plant boss Tyson Lee uses

the 480 to send as much pay to his wash plant, Roxanne,

as possible.

We're just trying to scratch some thaw and get some pay up.

This bucket is key for scratching pay.

This gets it right down to clean frost.

The 480's specialty cleanup bucket has a flat cutting edge,

ideal for scooping every available scrap

of the thin layer of thawed pay dirt cleanly from the cut.

PayPal's getting low.

I need to be swinging in this thing whole hours

of the day to keep up with Roxanne.

This bucket is not looking good right now.

With this cutting edge getting this low, it's wearing into the bucket.

It's just gonna this bucket completely up.

Janko's already changed this edge once in this cut

and he's gotta do it again.

I'll walk this thing over there.

This is the worst case scenario.

We're still fighting frost, but right now,

it seems like a battle we're losing.

The concrete-like frozen ground has shredded

the bucket's cutting edge.

It's a quick fix, but Tyson can't send pay dirt

to Roxanne until it's done.

I just put this edge on a couple days ago,

but they've worn it right down to the frog again.

Should be able to be able to reuse it,

so I'll just take it off, clean up the surfaces,

flip it around, and bolt it back on.

Holy.

The crack.

There's this big massive crack on the ear here.

That thing's gonna bust right off.

A large crack in a structural ear means

the quick fix on the critical bucket will take much longer.

I don't think that this thing is gonna go back

to work like looking like this.

We've been fighting frost in here and getting pay through the plant

and this excavator with this bucket is like key

to doing that.

Do you think you can have it going by the end of the day?

- No. - No?

No.

If that progresses, what's going to happen is

this ear is just going to get ripped right off.

So we will need to get that thing fixed

before this thing can go to work.

It'll be probably at least a day's work.

Like, we have no other buckets?

We don't have any spare cleanup buckets.

It gets bad to worse.

Yeah.

Wash plant Roxanne is cleaning thawed pay

at 250 yards an hour.

Without a spare cleanup bucket to keep digging pay,

Parker's only working plant will run out,

shutting down his only means of getting gold.

- Should we go talk to Mitch? - Yeah.

- Hi, Mitch. - How's it going?

I'm just feeling a bit badly because not only was this pit

nowhere near where we thought it was,

but the weather's not cooperating at all, is it?

No, it needs to warm up for us.

What weather app you got?

This is what I see.

Bunch of clouds. Not very warm.

Yeah, this weather's just an.

It's not supposed to be above this for ten days.

Ten more days of cold weather won't thaw Parker's long cut.

And the costs of battling frozen ground

will spiral out of control.

The number one priority is profit margin

of the whole project.

And right now, fighting frost in this pit,

our costs are probably double what they should be.

And they will continue to be double until we take drastic measures.

What are our options?

Option one.

Keep fighting.

And we can, you know, keep working up here.

The more we have to fight, the more expensive it is.

- Right. - -But maybe with gold prices

the way they are, it'd be worth it.

Option two.

Stop fighting.

If we're not gonna fight it, it needs a fair amount of time to sit.

If we do this, the company's gonna lose

probably over a million dollars in revenue

in the next month that we thought we'd have.

I think the best thing to do is just stop sluicing entirely.

It's going to sit for three weeks, and it needs to thaw.

I just need to accept that this blows

our gold target out of the water.

This pit's.

With Parker's sluicing on ice,

the only money to keep the operation running now

sits in Roxanne's mats.

Right now, Parker's made a really big decision here

to shut down Roxanne and just focus on getting this cut in shape.

And the reason for that is we're spending a lot of the profit here.

Roxanne is our only wash plant we've had running,

so this is the only revenue the company is making.

So hopefully this cleanup's really good,

and it'll hold us over while this cut's thawing out.

It's frustrating. I'd like to just snap my fingers

and all the gold jump out of the ground.

That would be a cool superpower.

We need to just slow down and let the sun do its thing.

The trick for me is just not running out of money,

'cause time costs money, right?

And I don't know that this is the right thing,

but I know what we were doing was wrong.

Yeah, naturally, perfectly cool.

Our 90-degree, 10-inch reducer here

had a stress crack around the whole thing.

Our pump suction was sucking air, basically.

We weren't getting any water up at the plant,

so these guys came in and welded the out of it.

Now we should be able to turn the pump on,

get full suction, have full water at the plant.

We're off to the races. Let's go get some gold.

After fixing a connector to his brand-new pump,

Rick can finally fire up the wash plant

and catch his first gold.

Round two, fight.

Let's go.

I hear water.

Yeah, it actually is working.

Fills up the bypass. Let's see what it looks like.

What the is that supposed to be?

Why do we only have that much water at 1,400 rpm?

That's weird.

- Are the valves open on both sides? - -Yeah.

These should all be rocketing water out.

I mean, you look in that sluice box,

our pumps are cranked up at 1,400 rpm right now.

And, like, I could piss more water than that.

This plant takes 3,500 gallons a minute.

When it's got that proper amount here,

I mean, these sluice boxes are roaring.

And we don't got nothing like that.

It's not enough to run monster red.

To wash his rally valley pay dirt properly,

Rick needs to figure out why his water pressure is still too low.

And at 1,400 rpm, we should be getting 3,500 gallons per minute.

That's not even close.

Dude, I just can't see that pump not being enough.

- No. - -We got another issue somewhere.

- You want to run down there? - Yeah.

All dry. Well, it's lifted again.

Hey, Ryan!

That whole thing.

- Yeah. - There it is.

I completely forgot that we had to try to squeeze

that together to keep it from collapsing last year.

- Last season... - Argh! - That's a big hole.

Look at how far it's pinched.

A pinch in the intake hose caused monster red

to lose water pressure.

Actually, you can see through it, dude.

Those pop through.

To get back on the gold, the crew quickly patched

the pinched area.

Putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound here.

It's definitely damaged.

New pump, way more powerful. That's collapsing that.

Almost guaranteed.

I think you're right.

I think we should just cut the damn thing off.

- Yeah. - And I think we reband it.

I mean, we're going to lose four feet.

All right.

Yeah, if you're good with it, we'll get it cut.

- We'll get it ready to mount. - Yep.

Ryan's new plan, cut out the damaged section of suction line

to prevent the monster pump from sucking it closed.

Good job wearing your safety glasses.

Yeah.

We just cut the bad section of the hose out

that was collapsing under suction.

We're going to get it clamped on.

We're going to get it put back in the water.

Should have been a pretty easy fire up,

and it's taking a lot more time than it should have.

I'm not happy about it, but, you know, I'm just trying to stay calm.

Yeah.

- That'll do. - Are we done?

Yeah.

Fire this up. Let's finally get some gold.

Enough, enough, enough of this today.

Hose repaired,

Rick is ready for his third attempt to fire up.

That's all.

So where the is the hang up here?

What am I missing?

It should be going straight up into the plant.

I don't understand why it's not.

- Hardly any pressure there. - -Yeah.

It's very discouraging. Everybody's been working their ass off

to get a pretty good sized pay pile up here.

But there's no payoff when there's no water.

So...

We've got nothing obstructing our intake,

nothing through our pump.

We're going to figure it out.

Just means we're not gonna sluice today.

We're basically just sitting around...

- Not doing much. - Bored as hell.

Over at scribner, Kevin's crew has been shut down

for two days as they wait for a dewatering pump.

We'll want to try to push instead of waiting,

otherwise we're gonna end up missing our deadline.

Desperate to hit his sluicing goal,

foreman Brennan makes a bold decision to get the dozer back into the cut.

We need gold, man. I want to hit our target.

It's muddy right here and I don't want to risk another truck.

I'll be down here by myself trying to get it going

and just keep moving material.

The water pump is about as important as this d10

has been the whole time here.

I honestly don't know why we don't have one already.

I kind of feel like Kevin still maybe hasn't quite made the full leap

to be in the mine boss yet, just because he's so used

to being the mechanic.

Who's that?

This is the pump Tony said he'd have ready and waiting for me to borrow.

Let's go!

Whoo! Nice work, kev!

Beautiful. And that's where she's going to live for now.

Finally nice to have her here.

Let's just hope that we can get drying our cut out here.

Kevin and Brennan immediately get to work

installing the pump.

That's it.

You made that look too easy again.

Right?

You notice how few godverdommes are involved?

What the gibberish are you talking?

Or are we just drunk?

That's "god damn it" in Dutch..

We got the pump down there, so we're about to go

get it fired up and start the draining the cut.

I just hope that this one's up to the task.

It seems like everything we get is always something

that we need to work on.

Are you going to put the throttle back this mid?

That should be idle.

We should be good to try her.

You sabotaged this before you brought it here, didn't you?

Every time we borrow something,

it's nine days of fixing. Never ends.

This pump should have been in here pumping.

I don't want it to be snowing before we finally get

a wash plant because everything's broken every two minutes.

We'll get nicer things.

I'm not mad at you, kev, by any means.

I just feel for you. Like, I don't know how you can deal with this

all every year after year.

It's crazy.

It's amazing what you get used to when you don't know any better.

Is that a Murphy?

No wonder.

- What? - -That's a Murphy switch.

What's that mean?

You got to press that in.

Otherwise, it's not going to fire up.

It's a dead switch.

It's so, like, low oil pressure.

This gets too hot, the Murphy switch goes, shuts off.

Yeah, yeah.

It's written up there, so I didn't see it.

So this should.

There we go.

Look how quick that's drying up already, you know what I mean?

I know.

Father Tony's pump has Kevin back on track.

Well, buddy, high five on that one.

Yeah.

Let's just pray tonight that this thing doesn't break down,

because this is the lifeline right now.

Who put the treats in here?

Nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom.

I hope Kevin and faith budgeted for Brennan's eating habits.

He's eating like three plates a meal.

The guy can eat like crazy.

That's true.

All the gold we find is going to go to Brennan's food bill.

It kind of, like, evens itself out

because, like, I don't eat that much.

Like, I eat like a bird. He eats my portion.

He's a growing boy. He needs to feed his muscles.

Better give meself a pick-me-up.

Straight up eating protein.

Gross.

- What's up, man? - Yo.

So the pump.

Yep.

Ended up putting gauges on our suction,

- put gauges on our discharge. - Yep.

Basically calculated out all the line,

everything we needed to do, and the pump is doing everything it can.

That's perfect numbers is what they're telling me.

Our issue is still not enough water pressure.

Mechanic Ryan's tests show Rick's $150,000 pump

is working perfectly, moving huge amounts of water,

but isn't designed to generate the force needed

to clean pay dirt.

Basically, we're coming to that conclusion

that it's a volume pump.

It's all about volume.

So you're saying I bought the wrong pump?

And I know it seems crazy, brand-new pump,

12-inch, sounds like, that's perfect.

But pressure-wise, it's not the right pump.

How the?

I know that in my head, there's a difference between

a volume pump and a pressure pump.

That was... it was weeks getting that one,

and holy, I screwed that up.

Hey, dude, can you chill out for a minute?

- Give us a second. - Just give us a second, would you?

Like, holy.

That's a lot of money.

You know how long it took to get that thing here.

Yeah.

Rick's costly mistake means monster red can't run.

Argh, I'm just so mad at myself right now.

It's such a stupid mistake.

How the do I spec out the wrong pump?

Monster red's sitting there, pile of dirt with a ton of gold in it,

and we can't even run it.

I need that money. I need that money in my account.

I need that money to pay bills, and here we are.

- We got no way to run it. - So, it's stupid.

Stupid mistake.

Look how much water's in this ditch right now

and it's only half full.

Yeah, you can see how high it was this morning.

Unlike Rick, Kevin's pump is drying out his lynx cut.

It seems to be nice and chugging along.

Man, this is awesome.

One step closer to getting that plant put up?

One step closer to sluicing.

I think we're actually going to hit this deadline now.

Yay!

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

Cut cleared of water, Kevin and Brennan get back

to work with a chance of sluicing in less than three weeks.

Well, I'm very happy with the way everything's looking down here.

We've got the pump in, it's been running great.

It's drying our cut out, which is what we needed

and we wanted.

I see the trucks are just clipping along really nicely,

so I'm very, very happy.

It's way better now.

The water's finally dropped a little bit,

so hopefully no more getting stuck.

I'd love to start off with brand-new equipment,

but even I don't have that much capital.

So we'll make do with what we got and just work towards it.

It's starting to look like a real mine now.

- Hey, Mitch. - What's happening?

Yo, yo.

Well, we definitely,

broke some stuff this week, hey?

Man. Yeah, that frost is unreal out there.

It's tough.

An expensive battle against frozen ground

has forced Parker to shut down sluicing in the long cut.

You look at the abuse the machines are taking,

and I mean, that was a big old crack in that bucket of the 480.

And then you look at the dozer blade just trying to push off

every little bit of thaw and get it down to the frost.

- Yeah, man. - And once you get to it and it hits it,

it's like, you just feel it catching it.

Yeah.

That's an expensive way of getting little pay.

I mean, it'd be nice if it keeps loosening,

but, man, we need it to warm up.

Yeah, I wonder if maybe we just didn't

jump the gun a little bit this year.

Started too early.

It's starting to seem that way, isn't it?

It's a tough call because it's a big pit that has

to come out this year, but then the frost makes it

extremely expensive.

So we just... We pulled the pin on it.

You did.

This cleanup will be the last one for a while.

Despite all this mayhem, did we find any gold?

Yeah, we did.

Parker's expecting the long cut to deliver

at least 200 ounces a week.

- He's got a big jar there. - -Let her rip.

- Come out. - 20, 30, 50, 60, 70, 80, 100.

- Yeah. - 120, 130, 140, 152.3.

Worth over $380,000.

But falling short of what Parker wanted.

That is not what we needed.

You guys might have to work for free for a couple months.

You starting to see the 10,000-ounce goal kind of dwindling away?

- We probably could do 10. - -Right.

But then, like, our costs would go up by, you know, 50%.

Because there's only so many ounces on this property,

and if you mine all of them at a really bad profit margin,

then that's bad.

Yeah.

Right? And I think that one of our principles

has always been doing things when it's the most efficient

to do them.

I hate it when we're having to, like, do things that

we don't want to do. In a way that we don't want to do them

because, like, we're in a rush to get ounces out of the ground.

I hate that.

Until warmer weather thaws the long cut's pay dirt,

Parker's march towards a $25-million season

has been stopped cold.

Definitely a tough decision to make, turning off Roxanne,

but at the end of the day, we've been fighting it a lot.

We're still learning this piece of ground,

and the Indian river, where, you know, where

we've basically mined our whole careers,

is much more forgiving.

And I really don't like shutting a wash plant down

right when we started it, basically.

And right now is not the most efficient time to be sluicing,

so we shouldn't be doing it.

I gotta figure out a way to keep stripping this when we're not sluicing.