Original subtitles

Almost halfway through the season,

Tony Beets, the King of the Klondike,

is struggling to recover from a major blow.

Dropping more than five million dollars on new equipment

to open his Indian river claim,

only to be denied a license.

Now, he's swinging wildly.

The 80 Pup cut is days away from being mined out.

Tony desperately needs another quick hit to fill the coffers.

Last season, Tony pulled 2000 ounces out of the mega cut.

And believed the last section would be the most rich in gold.

But before he could mine it, disaster struck.

Tony believes the site is a kind of glory hole

where an ancient river once flowed and formed a plunge pool,

that could contain millions in gold.

Now, he wants to find out if the pay dirt in this flooded hole

could be the start of his fightback.

Go ahead.

Sounds good.

Nope. Yeah.

Good. We have a lil nuggie in there.

That's only off of two pails.

Go for Kevin. Go for Kevin.

Oh, yeah.

All right.

The glory hole is covered with one million gallons of water

and surrounded by an 80 foot bank on one side,

and the mined out mega cut on the other.

It's too far to pump the water across the cut.

Instead, Tony will attempt to pump it over the high bank into a ditch.

Next, Mike Beets must drag a 100 foot, heavy-duty pipe

to the top of the slope.

We're using the pipe, because the pipe won't break.

Plus, it actually works nice into the hose,

because we can set it over the bank,

and it'll sit better than trying to deal with the hose,

'cause the hose will have issues going up.

The crew connects the pipe to the pump with flexible hose.

yeah.

When they work, they work amazing.

The clock on the season's definitely ticking.

We're like, 700 ounces behind where we were at this time last year.

Gold mining prodigy, Parker Schnabel,

is neck-deep in the biggest gamble of his life.

He spent two-and-a-half million dollars

stripping the deepest ground he's ever mined.

But there's still a long way to go.

By the time you rip it, it's probably 225,000 yards or so.

Which is a lot of dirt to move.

I already paid royalties on...

the stuff at Mud Mountain. So, we definitely have to get it done this year.

I don't know if there's enough there to fund what we've put into Mud Mountain.

It's a gamble. It's the biggest gamble yet.

I mean, it could almost cost us the company. If nothing else,

it's gonna set us back financially, probably, four, five years.

To get back to stripping,

Parker needs to raise money fast.

He's tasked foreman Mitch Blaschke, on the airstrip.

And last season's, rookie plant boss Tyson Lee, on the promised land

to bring in at least 450 ounces this week.

I couldn't do much more than I did last year.

And this year, more is being asked.

I just don't know if I can pull it off or not.

To hit Parker's goal,

Tyson needs to run 240 yards of pay dirt

every hour, 24x7, through wash plant Slucifer.

I need to be maintaining the hall road for the rock trucks.

I need to be keeping an eye on Slucifer, I need to be here digging pay,

I need to be hauling the ditching out.

I'm gonna be all over the place today, that's for sure.

Hey, Shane, do you wanna come over here with that loader?

The water level's rising and I bet it will reach our berm.

So, Shane...

- What we're gonna wanna start doing is... - Yeah.

building a finger out there.

- Yeah. - Basically, where that second pile is.

- Yeah. - If the vines plug that off,

our water table's gonna come up

and it's gonna do a direct shoot to our pond.

This is a priority, 'cause if that happens, we're

Yeah.

Slucifer discharges almost 200,000 gallons of water

and fine tailings an hour.

Enough to fill 12,000 beer kegs.

The water circulates through two ponds

to allow fine tailings to settle

and clean water to flow back for re-use.

The tailings have built up a sludge,

raising the level of water, which is now about to breach the finger between the ponds.

Tyson must quickly raise the height of the finger by a foot.

So, right now, it just needs to be an inch above water table,

- we can build it up as we go, right? - Yep.

- Okay, I'm on it. - Thank you.

Why the hell is he going that way?

Shane, stop. Shane, stop.

Shane!

Holy

Now he's stuck.

What are you doing?

sink on a site.

On Indian river,

Tyson Lee has a 69,000 pound loader

stuck in quicksand.

That loader will literally sink on a site.

Just what we needed today.

I understood him wrong. I... When he was

telling me to go out, I thought he was talking that side.

You, you never go into fine tailings like that.

Well, that's why I said I was gonna go out to the top road.

- And go on, in on the top-- - And you're like, no on the bottom part. So...

No, I said go in at the top and loader goes down.

Grab my half-inch chain.

That thing's gonna sink on the site.

me!

I just hope my chain doesn't blow up.

Me too.

Chain is rated for 17,000 pounds.

All right. - Watch yourselves on this chain.

If it blows up, it's gonna go everywhere.

I love you, chain. Don't break.

You're getting close. She's almost out of the hole.

There we go.

Thank for that.

This chain has been worth it's weight in gold this year.

Luckily, it survived.

And it did the job and got me out.

Back to work.

There's one way to learn, and that's by making mistakes.

And you can't give a guy for making mistakes if he makes 'em once.

Makes it multiple times, yeah, sure get with it.

Everyone makes mistakes.

So far this season, we haven't found as good a ground as we've hoped for.

Um, we're still running the bacon strip. Um...

And it's paying the bills. But it's really not doing much more than that at the moment.

In his fourth year as boss,

Rick Ness is out to prove he can run with the big boys.

But 11 weeks into the season,

he's apparently a quarter of the way to his 2000-ounce target.

And the boulder-filled ground he's mining,

is taking a heavy toll on his wash plant.

Being so lean, we've just been hammered

as much pay through Rocky as we can.

Because of that, I mean, the cracks are starting to show.

Kruse has been doing his best to keep the thing running, keep it in patch together,

put band aids on it, basically.

But it's only a matter of time before it falls apart completely.

Poor Rocky has been to hell and back for the last three years

we've thrown at it.

It needs a new top gang.

With a skeleton crew, and no mechanic on the team,

Rick has been putting the full plant re-build off for as long as he can.

But now, he's called in the best.

Yukon legends, Freddie Dodge and Juan Ibarra

to put his season back on track.

I've known Rick for ten years anyway.

And we've always got along really good. We've got a kind of comradery.

Rick, I've helped out on multiple occasions over the years.

I've got him out of quite a few binds.

Here we go again.

He's gonna have to start paying better, though.

Slowly.

- What's going on, Fred? - Come on, bud.

- We made it. - Yeah, we're here. There's big Rick.

Rick!

What's going on, guys? - How's it going, Rick?

- Good to see you. - Good to see you, man.

- Welcome. Thanks for making the trip. - Yeah.

Good road.

- Better than some of the roads in Dawson, huh? - Yeah, no

- Well, you showed up at a good time. We're runnin'. Making gold?

We're making gold.

Well, you were saying your top deck's shot, right?

Yeah. Holes all over it. We've been stitching it, patching it, covering it...

- If it's out, you punch "play forward", huh? - We do, yeah. Yeah.

- Shut her down, Rick. Let's have a look at her. - Yeah, let's do it. All right.

Show us what you got, Rick.

Yeah, buddy.

Holy going off.

- It's completely welded, Freddy. Everything. - All the way.

Instead of being bolted for easy removal,

the punch plate has been welded in place.

Holy

You know, that's a job that should take maybe at tops, two hours.

Now it's gonna take several days to do that.

That thing's gonna be no joke.

- No bueno, man. - Mmm...

It's doable.

Yep.

Anything's doable if you've got the time.

You know, we're probably gonna have to shut you down for at least two to three days

- to do this, right?

Shutting down Rocky for three days

will cost Rick a $100,000 in lost gold.

If we don't shut down now, it's gonna shut you down on it's own.

Yeah.

You know, as much as that hurts, honestly [bleep],

if you guys can do that, I owe you big time.

The punch plate shot. I've changed quite a few in the past.

But, we'll see what this one's gonna take.

And what we're doing is hot, it burns your eyes.

Not a good spot for multiple people to be working.

I'm gonna try to keep my butt this way,

- so I have-- - That's how I like it, Juan.

While Freddy and Juan get busy,

Rick's crew stockpile pay, so they'll be ready to make up for the downtime.

To have Freddy and Juan here,

I mean, this is what they do. Well, that's--

Wash plants is what they do.

You know, Rick being able to pull that favor is awesome, man.

Figure you're gonna miss climbing up on the plant with a boulder everyday, eh Kruse?

I don't know if you're aware of this, but I actually moved out of my room

and moved into the plant.

Yeah, boy oh boy. What a joke that was turning into eh?

Good thing those boys were able to give us a hand.

Uh, that's a fact.

Now we've got a problem.

These plates are not the right size.

Yeah. - Plates Rick ordered are an inch-and-a-half narrow.

So that it'll leave a three-quarter inch gap on each side.

Hey, Rick, can you come down to the wash plant?

Well, that doesn't sound good.

- How's it going, Rick? - Good. How's it going with you?

You've got kind of a nightmare scenario going on here.

Your plates are an inch-and-a-half narrow.

- You me? No, I'm not you. No.

No. it's all where we aren't gonna be able to tie it in to the sides.

me.

We're not completely

We're thinking what we can do is

in between all the cross members, we're gonna cut all the punch plate off.

And then we're gonna overlay your new punch plate on top of this.

The punch plate Rick ordered

is too small to bolt quickly to the deck.

Instead, they'll have to cut out the old screen in small pieces.

Then weld the new screen to the existing cross members.

And those cross members are bent right to

So, there's more work here than...

- what was anticipated.

We might have bit off more than we can chew in the few days we're here.

How you've been? Good. Fine, how are you?

- You had a loader get stuck? - Yeah.

- What happened? - Uh...

I was asking Shane to build that finger, that goes up,

and he thought I meant, "drive right into the fine tailings."

- Motor's fine? - Oh, yeah.

Managing people is much harder than managing machines.

I guess you know that better than anybody, though.

- You're doing a good job, man. - Thanks, man.

- No, really.

- You're doing a great job in keeping the plant running, - Thank you.

and you know that that's important.

Keep up the good work, man!

You know, last year, Parker came down to Ken and Stuart's

every once in a while, and this year I imagine I'll see him

a little less often than that, 'cause...

you know, he's got Mud Mountain going on.

He's got a lot on his plate.

In my mind, it would be ideal if he didn't have to come down there, 'cause...

you know, then, that means I'm doing my job right.

You know, that's my main goal as to, you know,

relieve that stress from Parker, take the stress of mining

down on Ken's ground often, and...

you know, put it on my shoulders.

When Tyson arrives for the day shift,

it's eerily quiet.

Hey, what's going on, guys?

- Not a lot, actually. - Yeah, doesn't look like it.

See the generator doors are open. Something happened to it?

Yeah, saying the battery voltage is low on it.

So, we're supposing it might have eaten another alternator.

Tyson's night shift team

shut Slucifer down over an hour ago

due to a dead generator.

That's no good.

Well, if you wanna get that light tower down here, I'll go grab

- the charger. Where is it? - I don't know.

- I've never used it. - Okay, I'll radio Mitch, we'll have him drive by.

To get back up and running,

Tyson plans to bypass the alternator

using a gas powered light tower

and a charger to charge the generator battery.

Alec brings in the tower. And Tyson heads off in search of a charger.

It's all the way at camp, so we're gonna have an hour there and back, just driving.

Hey, Mitch. So, the generator's alternator has up yet again.

So, wondering if you know where the charger is that we're using

before with the light tower.

The charger should be right by where the office generator is.

That's my guess.

Okay. Thank you, sir.

This is her.

Back to Neverland.

I'm gonna use the light tower to power this.

And this thing powers the generator,

and our generator powers Slucifer, and then we catch gold.

Howdy. - How's it goin', man?

She's out of fuel.

kidding me.

It was the alternator you were sayin', weren't you?

No, Shane said battery is low.

I went to actually start looking at things,

and I'm like, what the [beep]? This thing cranks like a bunny.

- So, what was the issue then? - It was out of gas.

I thought you said that the alternator was

I didn't actually look at anything.

I was just regurgitating Shane's words.

Don't just regurgitate someone's words. Look at the thing.

Welcome to the circus.

Tyson has wasted another two hours

jeopardizing the 450-ounce weekly gold.

But he's finally back on the goal.

At Paradise Hill, Tony Beets' glory hole is finally dry.

Ruby Mahoney loads pay.

All right, Megan, you're loaded.

Take that beautiful gold to the trommel.

Will do, honeybun, will do.

Did you just call me honeybun?

Operator Brad Merrett feeds the first of the glory hole dirt

through the trommel.

Okay, we're running through some really good pay

out of the glory hole here right now.

So, we're gonna try to pump it all through the machine here

as quick as we can and get a real nice clean out.

Oh, it, there ain't no water.

Tony to Tony. You got a copy, Tony?

No water running through the trommel.

See, it's one problem after another with the trommel.

Half a mile down the hill,

a 900-horsepower pump is supposed to send water

from the feeder pond to the trommel.

Now this is all... This is stress time.

Now this is the pump that runs the trommel.

These are pre cups for the injectors.

All of them are leaking water out of here.

Which means that they're .

The injector pre cups have overheated and cracked,

leaking coolant into the cylinder heads,

and causing complete engine failure.

Primarily we use this one, because they can get at the height,

because it's 300 feet, plus, to get up to the trommel.

And you need a big engine and pump to get there.

The Beets have a backup pump,

but it's been sitting quiet for more than a year.

Uh, yes, this is a D348. This is a backup pump for the D398.

So, now we're really hoping we can get this thing pumping up the hill.

That's our biggest issue. We got plenty of pumps,

but to get them the 300-plus feet up the hill is the thing.

So, if this thing's down...

Of course it's down.

If this doesn't work, we don't got no water, we ain't sluicin'.

So, it's very important that we get this done.

Let's get hot!

On the secondary backup, the pump itself is getting pretty toasty.

Not the engine, just the pump itself.

Gotcha.

This is bull

This is a whole new level of

On Paradise Hill, the Beets are attempting

to run gold-rich glory hole pay.

But their backup water pump is overheating.

We're gonna build a little manifold that's gonna spray water.

It's a bit of a bush fix, but it should help us get us by.

Down at the workshop,

Eric Ylioja, drills holes into a steel pipe to create a sprayer.

Tony and Kevin add an offshoot to the pump's water outlet,

and connect the sprayer to the end.

42-degree creek water blasts over the radiator and engine.

If that water doesn't give us control,

then all else will.

Uh, no, not yet, but I'm having a little double check here.

No, I can't hear nothin'.

I hear a lot of noise, but I ain't seen no water yet.

Tony Beets do you copy? Tony Beets.

We got water.

We got water now. Lots of it.

Yeah.

So we got the 94 blowin' up a ton of water.

Clearly.

It looks good.

We can finally get sluicin' again.

yeah!

We didn't have enough time to begin with, but now we really don't.

At Duncan Creek, wash-plant expert Freddy Dodge and mechanic Juan Ibarra,

are three days into the fix of Rick's wash plant, Rocky.

You know, this is something they should have taken on, on the off-season.

I see why they didn't do it, because it's a big job.

But I'm hoping Freddy and I have enough time to be able to get this done.

It's no easy chore, that's for dang sure.

But all we can do is just keep goin'.

So, this is the new punch plate.

Are you ready, Juano? Let's do it.

Each 10-foot section of punch plate

weighs close to a 1000 pounds.

Pull 'em up a little more.

Way towards me a little.

This way a little.

That chain, whoa.

Whoa, whoa, whoa!

Way too much!

Come down easy!

Okay, coming down, Freddy.

Stick in just a hair Juano.

Perfect. We'll start welding her out.

I'm pretty stoked to see how far they've gotten.

With no mechanic on site,

it's been down to Rick's hometown buddy, Chris Kruse,

to keep the plant running.

Holy

Would you look at that!

What's goin' on, Kruse? What's up?

Well, the hard part's done.

Just gotta finish welding her out.

This is awesome, man.

We actually have something else we can do to this screen to make it better.

If a guy who takes kickers put 'em at, like, a 45-degree angle,

so, when that material's coming down,

stuff that's trying to get away

will hit those and kick it out into the screens, right?

We're gonna have to concentrate the time we have in the morning.

Just welding these plates, and then just do any finish-up welding,

if we've gotta get to another mine.

Gotcha.

I think I've said it plenty, but I wanna make sure you guys really understand

how much I appreciate this.

'Cause I'd have been down there for a month doin' this.

Easy.

- Well, we better get back to it. - Yeah.

- See you in a bit. - All right, buddy. Thanks.

Bye, Kruse.

- Get back to work!

After four days of cutting, grinding and welding,

Freddy and Juan have almost got the new screen deck finished.

I don't know if my knees could take a few more Juan.

They're hamburger.

Let's call it a night.

But not everyone is heading home.

Freddie had an idea for these little diverters.

And they're done for the day. I'm gonna work a little late tonight

and get these bad boys in.

The new screen deck has three inch edges.

With no holes where gold-rich pay dirt can escape unwashed.

So Kruse is going to attempt Freddie's fix.

Putting 12 kickers like pinball flippers

to divert pay dirt into the center of the screen.

I'm happy to be able to...

Help Freddie and Juan get this thing wrapped up.

Next morning.

Freddie and Juan are back to finish welding the deck before leaving.

Hey Juano,

I'm happy we called him when we did yesterday.

Yeah.

Holy [bleep], Juan.

Hey, Rick. Juan and myself would like you

to come down to the wash plant if you got a moment.

Fredrick. Kruse.

Yeah!

Don't see any welding going on. Does that mean you're done?

Well, we got a problem.

- Have a look yourself. We got another problem. Uh-oh!

We got in here this morning,

and all the was already done.

- Yeah, we came in and finished the plug wells, - Exciting.

and Kruse had already been in here and done a bunch of 'em and...

He already got all the bottom welded so... Yup.

Why the hell not?

Why did you do that?

Ah, after everybody went to bed, I decided I'd...

Nice job.

If Freddie's calculations are correct.

Rocky will now catch over ten percent more gold.

You know, honestly, you probably saved us four hours

- If not more than that. Eight hours.

Thank you. Yeah, thanks buddy.

She's not the prettiest girl at the dance,

but she's at the dance huh Juano?

She's there, man. - Yup. She got her new dancing shoes on.

Now, we're back in business.

Let's fire this thing up.

With a little help from Kruse.

Freddie and Juan has done the impossible.

Replacing Rocky's full welded screen deck.

And bent crossmembers in just four days.

It's always great to see Freddie.

And, man, him and Juan really knocked it out of the park with this thing.

I mean, they got this done in a fraction of the time

that it would have taken my guys.

And it's the little improvements that Kruse and him made--

We're gonna be catching more gold even so...

Now we're back in business.

In Parker's Promised Land,

Tyson meets with claim-owner, Ken Tatlow,

to decide on names for the new cuts.

Good to see you. Good to see you.

You know, I've always been calling this place "Ken and Stewart's"

- but I know you call it that so... Yeah, well--

Do you have any names you wanna call this?

I'm kind of old-school and I like Westerns.

- Yeah. So, there's gonna be three cuts, right, Tyson?

So, we're gonna call these then The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

So, I think it'll fit right in 'cause that first cut should be really good.

And the way this is panning, it may not be very good.

And who the hell knows what's going on up top--

So--

Well that sounds good, Ken. We'll do it in three cuts.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

- The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

- Okay. Take care, Tyson. - Have fun. See you, Ken.

You know it's great having Ken back.

From his smile to his knowledge,

he's worth his weight in gold.

That's for sure. Well, more than 'cause he...

Doesn't weigh that much.

If you're not gonna eat, I'm gonna put my whole tit away.

We don't need to have Mom's tit on TV.

Okay, so there's two jars today.

What's all going on?

Two different cuts. So, one from the glory hole. One from 80 Pup.

Yeah.

See?

It's nice we have that system set up. So good

All that thing in place. - Yup.

Awesome. go. - Yup.

So, you guys had a day down.

I heard something about the pump.

- Yeah, the precups got fried.

The 80 Pup cut has been averaging a 180 ounces a week.

Oh!

Five, ten...

Twenty...

Twenty five...

Thirty...

Thirty five...

Forty...

Forty five, fifty...

- Sixty...

61.48.

That's it?

That's for three days?

Three days. That's depressing.

With the 80 Pup cut's diminishing returns...

Tony needs the two days of Glory hole pay dirt...

To deliver at least a 100 ounces, to get back into contention.

Okay, sounds good.

Five, ten...

Thirty...

Forty...

Fifty...

Sixty...

Eighty...

Ninety...

One hundred...

One-ten, One-twenty, One-thirty, One-forty...

One...

148.42.

But it leaves Tony with no more good ground open and ready to mine.

What? What's our total this week?

209.9.

So what's our season total now?

Sixteen-sixty.

No.

Well, yeah.

Yep.

Yeah, we will.

I don't know if you guys have noticed.

I now have over 1400 followers on Instagram.

Wow, goodie for you.

I mean, it's not Brendon.

- He's got well over 60,000.

- Yeah.

What's up, guys?

Hey-o.

- What's going on?

Hey.

It was great to see Freddie Dodge.

And Juan, I didn't know as well but super helpful, you know.

Getting our plant fixed.

I mean, we've been putting that off all year right?

- I can't believe we made it this long. I know.

You made it work.

- I mean, we kept sluicing up until now and...

Now, we've got-- Yeah.

Now, we've got a brand-new top deck.

All thanks to those guys and...

You know, thanks to you for going down there at night and pitchin' in,

because they didn't sound too confident that they were gonna get it done.

Um, we only had one day to run but...

We might as well weight it up.

Time to find out if Freddie's fixes have upped their gold production.

Rick's biggest one-day total so far this season...

is 16 ounces.

Seven, eight, nine.

Ten...

Eleven...

Thirteen...

17.27.

Seventeen? For a day. Not bad.

That's not bad.

Rick's crew have mined more than $30,000 of gold in just one day.

Almost ten percent more than any day so far this season.

Freddie's improvement has paid off.

We still got long ways to go.

Long ways to go but it should add up quicker

now that we won't have any downtime with the plant right?

That's sweet. - Yeah.

Well...

Thanks for everything again guys.

What do you say we have a beer for Freddie and Juan tonight?

yeah. - Absolutely.

Get back at it tomorrow.

Oh, yeah!

Awesome to have Freddie and Juan here.

To help get that top deck done.

I mean, that's not something we could have done by ourself, I'll be honest.

Man, I'm just glad that I got a chance to help him out and get it finished up.

Yeah, I can't thank Freddie and Juan enough,

for coming in here, fixing that plant.

Increasing our recovery. I mean, we're set for the season now.

How's it going?

Well, besides the generator running out of fuel

you didn't have too bad a week did ya?

No. - Little bit of tailings problem maybe?

Buried the loader in fine tailings.

We've all done that I think.

I've buried everything on this mine site.

- Multiple times.

All right, let's weigh some gold.

So far, Slucifer has averaged 258 ounces a week.

Time to find out if Tyson's kept it on track.

Tyson. We're gonna do Slucifer first, bub.

Ready-o!

- Yup. Oh, yeah. - There she is.

- Okay, you ready? - Quite a bit in it.

20...

40...

80... 100...

120...

140...

150... 180...

200...

Keep going.

205.9!

Worth $370,000

But less than half of 450 ounces

Parker needs to restart stripping at Mud Mountain.

- It's not bad. - Not bad, young man.

Not bad at all.

Not bad considering you ran your generator out of fuel.

Here we go. Here comes Red.

20...

50...

80... 100...

120... 190...

200... 230... 240...

246.05.

There you go! Wow.

We need your guys generator.

That-- Hey, it runs really good with some fuel in it.

Mitch and Big Red have won again.

Mining more than $442,000 in gold.

So, I grew up racing go-karts right?

And one thing I can tell ya...

It's really had to catch up when somebody's in front of ya

Normally, they're in front of you 'cause they are faster.

That's like...

- 450 ounce week? Yeah.

There's a lot of miners up here that don't get that all season.

We're going back to Mud Mountain.

So, do you wanna go down and check on it being fueled?

- All right. It'll be all right.