Gold Rush: Alaska (2010–…): Season 3, Episode 12 - Pink Slip - full transcript
Todd calls it quits on his turbo trammel and shuts down his Quartz Creek operation. Dave's race to open a new cut leaves his dozer hanging over a cliff. Parker finally hits bedrock at Emerson Trench.
.
At the edge of the Arctic Circle,
four mining crews are battling
to make their fortunes.
Looks like it's gonna be
drop dead great.
Todd Hoffman has split his team
across two claims
in pursuit of
a thousand ounce dream.
I want that gold for our team, man.
At Quartz Creek...
I'm ready to kick ass.
..it's now or never for
Todd's new trommel.
I'm shutting
this fricking thing off.
Over at the Indian River claim...
If I get this thing stuck
we're toast.
Dave Turin pushes his old dozer to
the limit opening up a new cut.
Holy crap.
Down at Porcupine Creek
it's out with the old.
Ah, baby. Oh, crap!
And in with the new...
for the Dakota Boys.
Hell, yeah. Holy cow, look at
that thing. Oh, wow.
And at Big Nugget,...
We've found something.
Parker Schnabel's hunt
for bedrock gold...
Maybe we've got a goldmine.
..hits rock bottom.
If this cut is what it looks to be,
I won't be here next year.
At Quartz Creek in the Klondike,
the Hoffman crew is 98 days
into the 150-day mining season.
Yeah, it looks like this is
all running nice and clean.
What do you think?
I think it's doing it,
it's like the heavies are making it
out, I think we're good.
After three months,
they're finally producing gold.
The trommel's running perfect.
If gold's here
we're gonna be catching it.
The trommel's up and running
and things are really rocking
and rolling today.
Good speed, it's handling
the material well. It looks good.
I got Otteson, the investor,
coming in, so we need 100 ounces.
OK, keep jamming
the yards through it.
Three weeks ago, Todd's investor,
Jason Otteson,
gave him an ultimatum.
I'd like to come back and see
350 ounces from both mines.
And Todd made a bold promise.
Probably get 250 ounces
out of Indian
and I'll give you 100 from Quartz.
The trommel has been
plagued with problems,
and so far all the Hoffman's gold
has come from Indian River.
We haven't even ran
any gold here at Quartz yet
so it's a nightmare right now.
But last week, things turned around
at Quartz Creek
when they found nuggets
in the sluice box.
Fricking awesome!
Hey, guys, good shift, good job,
let's cut it off now.
Guys, this is our first real
clean up.
Thurber, grab the mats.
Let's do it. Yeah.
Let's get it into the room.
For the first time this season,
Todd's operation has been running
good pay dirt without any problems.
With just one week before
their investor arrives,
they need to produce a lot of gold -
and fast.
Looks good.
You don't see any gold on top,
hopefully that means it went down in
the mat where it's supposed to be.
I've been saying I see 100 ounces out
of it. I hope that's what we see.
We had a real good run today and
we pulled the mats, we're gonna do
a clean up and see what we got.
It's Todd and Jack's
first real clean up of the season.
The moment of truth
for Quartz Creek.
We need a hundred ounces by this time
next week, and so if the pans
keep looking like this,
I'll tell you what,
there's gonna be
really an amazing first clean up.
We should have
a really good clean up,
a minimum, I think, at 50 ounces,
what do you guys think? Should be.
We're gonna give Indian
some competition now.
I'm ready to kick ass.
The Hoffmans got 93 ounces
all last season.
Now they need 100 ounces
in just six days.
And at least 50 from
this clean up alone.
Guys, I'm telling you,
you worked really hard,
I'm gonna show you what we got.
Now,
that's it, that's all.
How many ounces?
There's 7.34 ounces,
and that's the grand total.
With just 7.34 ounces,
worth less than $12,000,
the Hoffman crew is 93 ounces short
of what they need
to keep their investor happy.
The average person, you know,
that would mean something.
But this doesn't even buy fuel
for us.
We just got thrown down
and kicked right in the teeth.
This feels like groundhog day,
because over and over and over I'm
trying to constantly figure it out,
what is going wrong with my crap.
And I'm tired of it.
I got Jason coming in six days,
I got a hundred ounces to get,
seven ounces won't cut it.
And that dirt that I am putting
into this machine is awesome.
We got issues.
South, at the Big Nugget Mine
in Alaska,
it's Parker Schnabel's second week
searching for a bedrock pay streak
at Emerson Trench.
We found something, maybe.
The dirt is changing.
This is Parker's last
gold-bearing ground on the mine.
Well, one thing's for sure, there's
some rocks, a couple of big boulders.
That's a good thing.
That's really cool, whenever we find
green rock we find gold.
Oh, yeah, that's the stuff.
Let's hope it's full of gold.
Let's see what we've got.
Maybe we've got a gold mine.
Two weeks ago,
Parker drilled Emerson
and hit bedrock eight metres down.
Right on.
Holy cow.
Since then, he's run low grade
overburden
to cover his $2,000 a day
running costs.
About 12 ounces, this is getting us
down towards bedrock
where it should be a lot better.
Now, from six metres down
this test bucket will determine if
Parker has finally reached
the gold-rich pay streak
that will make or break his season.
We got to screen off
the oversize gravel.
We'll see what kind of gold we get.
What did you find out? The material
definitely is not getting better.
It's a little worse than it was up
on top. Oh, that's weird.
I don't know if we're in
the right spot but, you know,
I do know there's got to be
a channel over there.
I'm just concerned that, right now,
it's not getting any better.
With less gold as he digs down,
Parker is no longer covering
his running costs.
He must decide whether to continue
digging the final layer
down to bedrock.
It will be there, yeah,
we'll find it. OK, let's go for it.
There's gonna be gold there.
I mean, there can't not be.
In the Klondike, the Indian River
crew is running out of pay dirt
from their first cut.
Their wash plant, Big Red,
is chewing through
the final 5,000 yards of dirt.
Hate to say goodbye to the pay dirt
from cut one.
It's kind of a bittersweet,
the beginning of the end, you know?
We've only got about five days left
of running the plant,
then we're out of material.
Last week Dave Turin realised
his stockpile of pay dirt
was running low.
There's probably 12 days to run
and this pit will be done.
Determined to keep the wash plant
running and catching gold,
Dave started a new cut
on the upper terrace.
Here we go,
opening cut two at Indian River.
Now, Dave is halfway through
opening the terrace cut.
He has another two metres
of permafrost to strip
before he can get down
to pay gravel.
We're gonna be out of pay dirt
in a bit,
so I got to get this cut opened up,
otherwise that plant is down.
We got to keep it fed.
In order to keep it fed
I got to have a second cut.
The summer sun is melting the frozen
mud, making conditions difficult.
It's a hot day,
it's melting pretty fast.
If I get this thing stuck...
we're toast.
At first, Dave plays it safe
by stripping a small area.
And everything I'm hitting
is thawed out and it's all mud.
I can't even get any traction at all.
Whoa!
Oh no, oh no, that's bad.
Holy crap.
Hey, Greg, you got a copy?
I'm done now, I can't even move.
If I go any more I will get buried
over that cliff.
Hey, Greg, I got a real problem.
This ice is melting pretty fast.
I'm gonna need to get some help
up here right away.
With the ground melting fast,
the 42-tonne dozer is in
a precarious situation.
It could easily slide down
into the lower cut.
This is not good.
If my blade was forward
I'd have a chance at riding this out.
But with it being the back end so
heavy, it's just gonna keep
slipping down.
OK, Greg, bring her up.
All right, ten-four,
I'll be right there.
There's only one route up
to Dave's stranded D9.
I'm climbing up a frozen muck hill.
Now I'm hoping
I don't slide off this thing.
Easy.
What the frick?! Easy.
Sliding on ice.
Whoa!
.
.
At Indian River, in the Klondike,
Dave Turin's dozer is stuck on
the edge of a ten-metre cliff
of melting permafrost.
Greg Remsburg is on the way to help.
Oh, come on, baby.
He has to get the 460 excavator
up the icy slope
before the D9 slips off the cliff.
I've got to try to get
some traction.
Oh, there you go, Greg, got her now,
by golly.
That was a fiasco.
Greg now has to find a way to pull
the 42-tonne D9 out of harm's way.
Dave, I'm gonna try to track
backwards,
because I have a feeling,
when I start pulling on you,
I'm gonna slide towards this
30-foot ledge I'm looking over.
Give me more. Down, down, stop!
OK, here we go.
Got it, Greg.
Thank you, nice job, nice job, Greg.
I'm glad we didn't lose...
lose this thing into that.
Let's call it a day,
let's go eat some dinner. Ten-four.
Back in Alaska, at Porcupine Creek,
the Dakota Boys are on
gold-rich pay dirt
at the bottom of the glory hole.
But their 270 excavator has
broken down again,
leaving them unable to mine.
The frame that holds
the idler wheel is in pieces.
We welded it several times.
But there's such an extreme amount
of friction and force
it snaps everything loose.
The idler wheel frame first broke
six weeks ago.
Piece of (BLEEP)!
All of our stuff is breaking.
Fred welded a replacement part
from scrap metal.
But it didn't hold together
for long.
Oh, crap!
I got to tell you how sick I am of
fixing makeshift stuff right now.
Now, with the frame in pieces again,
Dustin has had enough.
The money that
we spend on breakdowns,
it's starting to get about
the same amount as renting
a brand-new machine.
I am tapped out for cash this year.
Just weld it back up,
put it back together again.
Are you ready? Fire it up.
(ENGINE STARTS)
With no money for a new excavator,
Fred has no option
but to weld the part again.
Other way.
Oh, yeah, you're right.
That's as far as we want it.
Gentle, Fred.
Now they need to get the 140
kilogram wheel back in place.
I think that's it.
I think you're right.
At least we got this fixed up.
I'm getting so damn good at it,
it's dumb.
With their 270 running again,
the Dakota Boys rush back to the
glory hole to make up for lost time.
This is where we needed to be.
Moving a lot of dirt, doing it fast.
Right now this feels really good,
I'm getting some gold.
Ah, damn it!
After just six hours...
(BLEEP)!
..Fred's welding fails - again.
We've been running
a month-and-a-half on this stuff.
It's not meant to be permanent.
"Dustin." Hey, Melody.
"I just stopped the loader,
I can see it dripping."
"I think it's transmission fluid."
(Damn.)
With the excavator down already,
Melody has found a problem
with the 220 loader.
I'm hoping it's
just the hose or something.
Yeah, it's coming out heavy.
Transmission fluid.
This looks like rear seal,
you have to take
the entire machine apart.
It's gonna be the end of
the season for this thing.
Oh, crap!
This is one of our key machines,
absolutely it is.
Without this machine we're not
running. That's all there is to it.
Two down,
so we're not running. Summer's
ticking by, it's disappointing.
I can't do this.
There are just 50 days left
in the season.
Fred is not even halfway
to his 160-ounce target.
Every hour he's not running dirt
is money out of his pocket.
For every day that you're down
you're losing probably,
oh, five, 6,000 bucks.
And it don't take many of those days
to add up.
I've had a bunch of those days
this year.
Pretty well sick of it.
Fred has run out of options.
He makes a call
he's been trying to avoid.
I know we kind of agreed on a certain
amount on a loan and everything.
I was wondering if there's any way...
I'm gonna have to try to see if I can
get a little bit more credit.
Across the creek at Big Nugget,
Parker's crew is still digging down
to Emerson bedrock.
We must have moved at least 25
to 30,000 yards of overburden.
We're doing probably close to
2,000 yards a day out of this pit.
In the race down to bedrock,
Parker's pushing his wash plant
harder than ever.
But running so much dirt
has caused the tailings to back up.
Hey, what the (BLEEP) was that?
If the build-up stops the trommel
the motor could burn out.
There's too much fine gravel
in this material.
This machine won't handle it.
What?
If you're not gonna watch the plant
just let us know so that Gary can.
Hey, I just barely
sat on the machine.
I just barely got on the machine for
two minutes. (BLEEP) didn't happen
in two minutes. No.
I don't need that (BLEEP), OK?
The first thing - Don't yell at me
like that. Don't talk, listen.
First thing you do when you take over
that position, look at the plant.
Is it running right? Yes, it is,
and then you're responsible for it.
I got that, I got all that!
Costing me (BLEEP) money.
That was unfair.
Parker's been running around here
like a chicken with its head off.
Then, all of a sudden, for
two minutes, I get all the blame.
That's ridiculous.
I'm sick and tired of listening to
him whining and crying like a kid.
I'm just gonna start telling him
to shut up.
Anyway, I gotta go to the loader.
I'm sorry for being so aggressive.
Well, thank you for that.
Um...
We just... You know, that plant's all
we've got. I understand that.
If that rock stops that trommel
like it just about was.
The thing is - We can't let that
happen and we gotta pay attention.
We both know it doesn't help to be
yelling and screaming at each other.
Because all it does is piss people
off and get us all in a bad mood.
And you know I pay attention to
plant and I'm good at what I'm doing
and I apologise for that being, you
know, messed up like that, but...
.
.
At Porcupine Creek, in Alaska,
the Dakota Boys are
dead in the water.
Both the loader and their excavator
are broken down.
So we have two machines down,
we can't do anything.
Well, you know, we don't have
the parts to fix it.
We're trying to get as much gold
as we can.
We're spending the least amount of
money and it's proving to be...
..a bad idea to use
(BLEEP) equipment.
Spend the extra money,
make more money.
(SIGHS)
But the season isn't over yet.
Fred has managed to get more credit
and is bringing in new equipment.
They wanted more equipment,
we got some more.
It will be a big surprise,
real good stuff here.
As well as a new loader, Fred has
replaced his 20-year-old excavator
with a brand-new one
that has far more power.
I think I can
do some digging with that.
Oh, my gosh. Hey, Dustin.
Look at that stuff.
Oh, wow.
Hell, yeah, Fred.
Oh, he came through.
(LAUGHS)
Yeah, Fred!
Oh, wow.
Look at that thing. All yours.
Oh, my.
Here's what I'm interested in.
Holy cow, look at that thing,
look at you.
Oh, my.
It's huge.
You said you wanted new
or different equipment,
we got different equipment.
I'll be damned, this is gonna change
everything, Fred.
I'll tell you what.
(LAUGHS)
Oh, my goodness.
What do you think?
This is so cool. Thank you so much.
All right.
Well, you've earned it, fire it up.
(STARTS ENGINE)
Ah. (LAUGHS)
The Dakota Boys can finally get back
to chasing their 160-ounce gold.
I hope to see a lot of gold
coming past through that bucket.
Shoot, we ought to be able to run
twice as long now.
I... I agree.
(LAUGHS)
Yeah, get twice the amount of gold,
too.
But before they can get back to
work, first they must unload
the new machine.
Fred inches
the enormous excavator forward.
That is scary.
(METALLIC CREAK)
Cool.
Don't come off a bit, Fred. Hold on.
Wait, wait, wait.
It looks giant.
Look at that thing.
He probably won't even stop to eat.
Look at those teeth, huh?
I don't think
I would enjoy doing that part.
He don't like it, either.
This thing's huge.
It is.
That thing is gonna make us
so much gold.
I think this is gonna make
our season end with a good ending.
I do.
Fred puts their new excavator
to work right away.
Whoo-hoo!
Whoa!
"You can't jerk on the levers,
it's too powerful."
"You're used to your machine not
responding for a few seconds.
That thing responds to everything."
Well, one thing about this guy here,
this excavator,
oh, you could get you a two-yard
bucket every time. (LAUGHS)
Porcupine Creek finally has
the right equipment,
and the wash plant is running
good pay dirt.
They're back in the game.
North in the Klondike.
Dad, hit the pump.
All right.
Todd and crew are trying to
determine what led to their
disastrous seven-ounce clean up.
"Roger, sounds good."
OK, ready? Let's go!
(ENGINE WHIRS)
We got a very bad clean up,
really bad.
What we're doing is we're trying to
figure out what's going on.
I know how many ounces we should
have had, and that ain't it.
Thurber, check around, grab your pan
and we got to figure out what's
going on here. Check the back end.
While Thurber pans the tailings,
mechanic Mitch discovers a problem.
Hey, Todd, there's something
flapping around in there.
I don't know what it is. Well,
look again, see if it's a stick.
No, it's definitely
hooked to the drum whatever it is.
It's hard to see but you can watch it
coming round every time.
Oh, that's not good. That definitely
ain't a stick, that's part of
the drum. I think so.
We'll see what he does,
comes up with on this pan. Right.
And then I'll talk to you
in a minute. All right.
If Thurber finds any gold in the
tailings, they're washing gold right
out the back of the trommel.
How does it look?
There it is.
Ohh, you are fricking kidding me!
There's one, two, three, four,
five, six.
Quit asking us questions right now,
OK? This is not funny.
14 pieces and they aren't small.
I'm shutting this fricking thing off
until we figure out what's going on.
Yeah, you better.
Run down there and kill the pump,
I'm done.
Shut it down!
(ENGINE OFF)
Figure this stupid thing out.
We got 14 pieces of gold
in that pan, coming off the end.
That explains why
we don't have anything in the box.
That explains why.
They weren't fine, they were a nice
size. It's not the sluice.
The sluice is catching it. Yeah.
It's coming out of the fricking
trommel, something's wrong.
Something's changed
from the other day.
Mitch, let's crawl in there and look
at that thing that was hanging down.
Yeah.
Cut the water.
Mitch, it was hanging down,
like on the first or second spiral.
Towards the...
This end a little bit, Mitch.
This isn't good right off the bat.
I can see some daylight here.
Between the drum and our spiral,
yeah, what was hanging down is they
used a urethane, like a sealant.
Yeah. Yeah. This is what we were
seeing flipping around.
Here's a section of it right there.
Three feet long.
The spiral attached
to the outer drum
drives the gold up and out
into the sluice box.
But the urethane that seals the
spiral to the drum has come loose,
allowing fine gold to slip down
into the tailings.
It's going under there and out the
fricking trommel is what it's doing.
Now we haven't run this thing very
long for it all to be peeling off.
What do you think? We got to do
the whole fricking thing?
Yeah, it's like all the way up here,
it's not just one little spot.
I could weld it all,
but the problem is it has
to be ground perfectly smooth.
You're looking at
about 400ft of welding,
the problem is the grinding.
Like quick - or how long?
Two weeks at best.
I cannot spend one more day working
on this, I'm done. I can't do it.
I'm gonna turn it off.
I think it's gonna be turned off
for the season. I'm really sorry.
The trommel cost
hundreds of thousands of dollars.
But Todd has finally given up on it.
Without a reliable wash plant,
the Hoffmans are finished
at Quartz Creek.
I ain't come up here to sit around
and look at a machine.
I came up here to work and we're not,
so pretty frustrating.
I quit my job to come up here
and mine with Todd and these guys,
and it's starting to look like it
may have been the wrong choice,
the wrong decision.
There comes a time where you gotta
make a decision for the team.
And my decision is
this trommel is done,
I'll shut it off for the summer.
And... er... chalk it up
as a failure.
I failed this summer
right here at Quartz Creek.
Up at Indian River,
Dave Turin is racing to get to
the pay gravel in the new cut.
Be nice to hit
some gravel here shortly.
Right now the only wash plant going
in our outfit is right down there
and it's eating rock like a
tyrannosaurus, so it needs to be fed.
Indian River's stockpile
is nearly gone.
We've got maybe four hours of
cut one material left.
If Dave doesn't get
down to new pay dirt soon,
the wash plant will grind to a halt,
costing them around $10,000 a day
in lost gold.
Maybe another foot or so.
Dave, do you have a copy?
"Yeah, I do, Freddy."
"We're about done with cut one."
I'm on it.
We can't afford to have
the Indian River plant down.
Hey, Dave, we're one bucket away
from finishing up cut one.
(CLUNK)
Whoa!
What's this?
Oh, yeah, we're
already on the gravel,
I got white quartz, I got river rock
and plenty of gravel.
"Hey, Chris."
"Greg, you got a copy?"
Yeah, baby.
Ten-four, Dave.
Yeah, bench cut is ready to go,
there's no doubt about it.
Now we're getting somewhere.
I'd like to congratulate you guys.
Coming at ya, buddy. This is the
reason we goldmine, days like this.
South at the Big Nugget Mine,
Parker and his crew are
near the end of a two-week dig
for bedrock gold at Emerson Trench.
I hope this pays off.
I don't even wanna hear the word
"overburden" ever again.
Bedrock, that's a good sign.
That's what we're after.
We're on bedrock.
Is it bedrock?
That stuff's bedrock, yeah.
Let's test it and figure out
what's down there. Cool, good.
Let's have a box full of gold.
The money that they have spent
clearing the area,
they definitely need to see
some good results.
I'm not feeling it at all - What do
you mean you're not feeling it?
I'm not seeing any colours at all,
just itty bitsy, tiny, fine gold.
Down here at the bottom?
Down here at the bottom.
I'd have expected as we got down to
bedrock it would've been good but -
Right.
I'm not seeing it at all.
That's weird.
This section of bedrock, it must
have either been cleaned
or there's no gold on it.
Yeah, I was betting this whole thing
on bedrock. Really, (BLEEP) up.
What have we been doing for
the last three weeks, then?
Yeah, we've just dug a great big
hole and we got down to nothing.
I don't know what to think.
(BLEEP)! Where's the (BLEEP) gold?
Three weeks, $30,000,
and nearly 700 man hours,
but there is no gold at bedrock.
What the hell is going on?
We even drilled the (BLEEP) thing.
I must just be really unlucky.
Or something.
If this cut is what it looks to be,
I won't be here next year.
Over at Porcupine Creek, the Dakota
Boys have been digging non-stop
for the last three days
with their new equipment.
Shut it down!
To have a chance of hitting their
160-ounce gold for the season,
they need to produce
two ounces a day,
or six ounces
from this one clean up.
If we get about a dozen ounces
out of it, I'll be happy.
So we ran for 20 hours or so?
Yeah, close to 20. Doesn't look like
we're ounce per hour yet.
It looks pretty close, though.
It's zeroed in right now, here we go,
we may...
we'll see what happens here.
Five, six...
Interesting.
11,
12,
13,
it's blinking 14 but it's 13.9.
Nice.
That's wonderful.
That's pretty good for 20 hours.
$20,000 in gold for
three days' work.
Just think the Hoffmans,
two years ago, got 14.3.
In the entire season.
The entire season.
Oh dear.
And this is one week, not,
well, one week and three days.
It's three days, yeah.
(LAUGHS)
That's excellent, you guys.
That's really excellent.
With 74.9 ounces,
worth around $120,000,
the Dakota Boys are on track
to hit 160 ounces.
It was a good cleanout
for three days.
It's pretty exciting, though.
It's a lot of gold for us.
.
.
At Indian River in the Klondike...
Discharge conveyor's down,
discharge conveyor's down.
The tailings conveyor
suddenly fails.
Claim boss Dave Turin acts fast.
Crap!
Chris, shut it down.
I got an electrical problem
with that tailings conveyor.
As it's dumping
for some reason it's creating heat.
It kicks out the electrical safeguard
and it shuts it off.
I just reset it and off we're going.
OK, start it up.
(ENGINE WHIRS)
We jumped at this real fast, we got
it fixed, did you see my guys react?
That's the way we work down here
at Indian River.
With morale on a high,
the Indian River crew
start the final clean up
of cut one pay dirt.
Chris, we got a real nugget.
We got an Indian River nugget?
Yes.
Why, yes. Yes, it is. Ooh.
This is a huge week for us,
this is the end of cut one,
so it's really the end of an era.
And that's...
It's a pretty good feeling.
This is awesome, you know,
when you got this much gold
in one little shovel full it looks
like it's gonna be drop dead great.
Boy, I sure hope this clean up's
gonna be good, Freddy.
We'll find out here in a minute.
Well, I tell you what, I'm excited.
What is your number?
53, I think.
55.
55. What was yours?
54.
58.
53.78.
Great.
Pretty good.
You couldn't ask for
better than that. All of it?
Nice job. That's great.
That's pretty coarse material there,
isn't it?
That is...
You've got some nuggets in there.
Hey, that puts us over 200.
Yeah.
Right?
223, man. 223!
You know, that's $350,000 of gold.
That's a lot of money.
I'm pretty proud of this. Yeah.
I'm proud of you guys
and that first cut.
The bench cut's ready to go, the
drill results were better up there.
I think you're gonna pull out twice
what you got here, no sweat.
All right, see you later.
Thanks, Jack. All right.
Dave Turin's crew have pulled
$350,000 in gold
out of a single cut.
With six weeks to go,
Indian River is well on its way
to its 501-ounce goal.
We ran 40,000 yards of dirt
and rocks with the wash plant,
we've extracted 223 ounces of gold.
It's... The numbers are phenomenal.
There's a chance that Indian River by
itself could get 1,000 ounces.
We pulled off our first cut
and we've mined it flawlessly,
and the nice thing is we're
transitioning from our first cut
to the bench cut just like that.
Not losing a single day of sluicing.
But things are far different
over at Quartz.
With only 7.34 ounces,
worth less than $12,000,
Todd has stopped running
the high-tech trommel.
And investor Jason Otteson is
about to arrive.
Indian River has been a huge success
but Quartz Creek's failure has left
Todd well short of the 350 ounces
he promised.
This is not good.
Jason's here. Oh, great(!)
This day just keeps on giving.
Hey, man.
What's going on over here?
No work.
I wish I could say we're just shut
down for lunch but we are not shut
down for lunch. Oh, no.
Ran the trommel. You know, I been
panning gold off the main sluice off
the back end.
It's got issues, so I definitely
don't wanna sit there and run this
sweet dirt through it, you know?
So I made a decision to cut it.
That's not what I wanted to hear
this trip. No, I know.
Where do we stand? Where do we stand
with the gold? We got about 230. 230.
But 350 was what I came for.
Yeah. We're short.
So, Todd, how much of this
came from Quartz?
We were supposed to get a hundred
ounces last time out of just Quartz.
Only seven, 7.34 came from Quartz.
We didn't hit that goal.
Yeah, three trips, three times
I've been disappointed.
All right, well, let's go talk.
OK. Thanks, Dad. Thanks, Furb.
Yep. Yep.
You're killing me, man.
It's a long journey
to come for bad news.
If you can't increase your production
you got to save your costs,
cut some heads.
There's way too many people here
right now.
I'm not sinking another penny
until we get some decisions made.
We have a lot on the line here.
You might be right.
The last thing I wanna do
is send anybody home.
It's not their fault, you know?
The blame falls on me.
So, we'll see.
I really don't wanna
talk about it anymore.
I got a lot of hard decisions
to make, OK?
subtitles by Deluxe
.
At the edge of the Arctic Circle,
four mining crews are battling
to make their fortunes.
Looks like it's gonna be
drop dead great.
Todd Hoffman has split his team
across two claims
in pursuit of
a thousand ounce dream.
I want that gold for our team, man.
At Quartz Creek...
I'm ready to kick ass.
..it's now or never for
Todd's new trommel.
I'm shutting
this fricking thing off.
Over at the Indian River claim...
If I get this thing stuck
we're toast.
Dave Turin pushes his old dozer to
the limit opening up a new cut.
Holy crap.
Down at Porcupine Creek
it's out with the old.
Ah, baby. Oh, crap!
And in with the new...
for the Dakota Boys.
Hell, yeah. Holy cow, look at
that thing. Oh, wow.
And at Big Nugget,...
We've found something.
Parker Schnabel's hunt
for bedrock gold...
Maybe we've got a goldmine.
..hits rock bottom.
If this cut is what it looks to be,
I won't be here next year.
At Quartz Creek in the Klondike,
the Hoffman crew is 98 days
into the 150-day mining season.
Yeah, it looks like this is
all running nice and clean.
What do you think?
I think it's doing it,
it's like the heavies are making it
out, I think we're good.
After three months,
they're finally producing gold.
The trommel's running perfect.
If gold's here
we're gonna be catching it.
The trommel's up and running
and things are really rocking
and rolling today.
Good speed, it's handling
the material well. It looks good.
I got Otteson, the investor,
coming in, so we need 100 ounces.
OK, keep jamming
the yards through it.
Three weeks ago, Todd's investor,
Jason Otteson,
gave him an ultimatum.
I'd like to come back and see
350 ounces from both mines.
And Todd made a bold promise.
Probably get 250 ounces
out of Indian
and I'll give you 100 from Quartz.
The trommel has been
plagued with problems,
and so far all the Hoffman's gold
has come from Indian River.
We haven't even ran
any gold here at Quartz yet
so it's a nightmare right now.
But last week, things turned around
at Quartz Creek
when they found nuggets
in the sluice box.
Fricking awesome!
Hey, guys, good shift, good job,
let's cut it off now.
Guys, this is our first real
clean up.
Thurber, grab the mats.
Let's do it. Yeah.
Let's get it into the room.
For the first time this season,
Todd's operation has been running
good pay dirt without any problems.
With just one week before
their investor arrives,
they need to produce a lot of gold -
and fast.
Looks good.
You don't see any gold on top,
hopefully that means it went down in
the mat where it's supposed to be.
I've been saying I see 100 ounces out
of it. I hope that's what we see.
We had a real good run today and
we pulled the mats, we're gonna do
a clean up and see what we got.
It's Todd and Jack's
first real clean up of the season.
The moment of truth
for Quartz Creek.
We need a hundred ounces by this time
next week, and so if the pans
keep looking like this,
I'll tell you what,
there's gonna be
really an amazing first clean up.
We should have
a really good clean up,
a minimum, I think, at 50 ounces,
what do you guys think? Should be.
We're gonna give Indian
some competition now.
I'm ready to kick ass.
The Hoffmans got 93 ounces
all last season.
Now they need 100 ounces
in just six days.
And at least 50 from
this clean up alone.
Guys, I'm telling you,
you worked really hard,
I'm gonna show you what we got.
Now,
that's it, that's all.
How many ounces?
There's 7.34 ounces,
and that's the grand total.
With just 7.34 ounces,
worth less than $12,000,
the Hoffman crew is 93 ounces short
of what they need
to keep their investor happy.
The average person, you know,
that would mean something.
But this doesn't even buy fuel
for us.
We just got thrown down
and kicked right in the teeth.
This feels like groundhog day,
because over and over and over I'm
trying to constantly figure it out,
what is going wrong with my crap.
And I'm tired of it.
I got Jason coming in six days,
I got a hundred ounces to get,
seven ounces won't cut it.
And that dirt that I am putting
into this machine is awesome.
We got issues.
South, at the Big Nugget Mine
in Alaska,
it's Parker Schnabel's second week
searching for a bedrock pay streak
at Emerson Trench.
We found something, maybe.
The dirt is changing.
This is Parker's last
gold-bearing ground on the mine.
Well, one thing's for sure, there's
some rocks, a couple of big boulders.
That's a good thing.
That's really cool, whenever we find
green rock we find gold.
Oh, yeah, that's the stuff.
Let's hope it's full of gold.
Let's see what we've got.
Maybe we've got a gold mine.
Two weeks ago,
Parker drilled Emerson
and hit bedrock eight metres down.
Right on.
Holy cow.
Since then, he's run low grade
overburden
to cover his $2,000 a day
running costs.
About 12 ounces, this is getting us
down towards bedrock
where it should be a lot better.
Now, from six metres down
this test bucket will determine if
Parker has finally reached
the gold-rich pay streak
that will make or break his season.
We got to screen off
the oversize gravel.
We'll see what kind of gold we get.
What did you find out? The material
definitely is not getting better.
It's a little worse than it was up
on top. Oh, that's weird.
I don't know if we're in
the right spot but, you know,
I do know there's got to be
a channel over there.
I'm just concerned that, right now,
it's not getting any better.
With less gold as he digs down,
Parker is no longer covering
his running costs.
He must decide whether to continue
digging the final layer
down to bedrock.
It will be there, yeah,
we'll find it. OK, let's go for it.
There's gonna be gold there.
I mean, there can't not be.
In the Klondike, the Indian River
crew is running out of pay dirt
from their first cut.
Their wash plant, Big Red,
is chewing through
the final 5,000 yards of dirt.
Hate to say goodbye to the pay dirt
from cut one.
It's kind of a bittersweet,
the beginning of the end, you know?
We've only got about five days left
of running the plant,
then we're out of material.
Last week Dave Turin realised
his stockpile of pay dirt
was running low.
There's probably 12 days to run
and this pit will be done.
Determined to keep the wash plant
running and catching gold,
Dave started a new cut
on the upper terrace.
Here we go,
opening cut two at Indian River.
Now, Dave is halfway through
opening the terrace cut.
He has another two metres
of permafrost to strip
before he can get down
to pay gravel.
We're gonna be out of pay dirt
in a bit,
so I got to get this cut opened up,
otherwise that plant is down.
We got to keep it fed.
In order to keep it fed
I got to have a second cut.
The summer sun is melting the frozen
mud, making conditions difficult.
It's a hot day,
it's melting pretty fast.
If I get this thing stuck...
we're toast.
At first, Dave plays it safe
by stripping a small area.
And everything I'm hitting
is thawed out and it's all mud.
I can't even get any traction at all.
Whoa!
Oh no, oh no, that's bad.
Holy crap.
Hey, Greg, you got a copy?
I'm done now, I can't even move.
If I go any more I will get buried
over that cliff.
Hey, Greg, I got a real problem.
This ice is melting pretty fast.
I'm gonna need to get some help
up here right away.
With the ground melting fast,
the 42-tonne dozer is in
a precarious situation.
It could easily slide down
into the lower cut.
This is not good.
If my blade was forward
I'd have a chance at riding this out.
But with it being the back end so
heavy, it's just gonna keep
slipping down.
OK, Greg, bring her up.
All right, ten-four,
I'll be right there.
There's only one route up
to Dave's stranded D9.
I'm climbing up a frozen muck hill.
Now I'm hoping
I don't slide off this thing.
Easy.
What the frick?! Easy.
Sliding on ice.
Whoa!
.
.
At Indian River, in the Klondike,
Dave Turin's dozer is stuck on
the edge of a ten-metre cliff
of melting permafrost.
Greg Remsburg is on the way to help.
Oh, come on, baby.
He has to get the 460 excavator
up the icy slope
before the D9 slips off the cliff.
I've got to try to get
some traction.
Oh, there you go, Greg, got her now,
by golly.
That was a fiasco.
Greg now has to find a way to pull
the 42-tonne D9 out of harm's way.
Dave, I'm gonna try to track
backwards,
because I have a feeling,
when I start pulling on you,
I'm gonna slide towards this
30-foot ledge I'm looking over.
Give me more. Down, down, stop!
OK, here we go.
Got it, Greg.
Thank you, nice job, nice job, Greg.
I'm glad we didn't lose...
lose this thing into that.
Let's call it a day,
let's go eat some dinner. Ten-four.
Back in Alaska, at Porcupine Creek,
the Dakota Boys are on
gold-rich pay dirt
at the bottom of the glory hole.
But their 270 excavator has
broken down again,
leaving them unable to mine.
The frame that holds
the idler wheel is in pieces.
We welded it several times.
But there's such an extreme amount
of friction and force
it snaps everything loose.
The idler wheel frame first broke
six weeks ago.
Piece of (BLEEP)!
All of our stuff is breaking.
Fred welded a replacement part
from scrap metal.
But it didn't hold together
for long.
Oh, crap!
I got to tell you how sick I am of
fixing makeshift stuff right now.
Now, with the frame in pieces again,
Dustin has had enough.
The money that
we spend on breakdowns,
it's starting to get about
the same amount as renting
a brand-new machine.
I am tapped out for cash this year.
Just weld it back up,
put it back together again.
Are you ready? Fire it up.
(ENGINE STARTS)
With no money for a new excavator,
Fred has no option
but to weld the part again.
Other way.
Oh, yeah, you're right.
That's as far as we want it.
Gentle, Fred.
Now they need to get the 140
kilogram wheel back in place.
I think that's it.
I think you're right.
At least we got this fixed up.
I'm getting so damn good at it,
it's dumb.
With their 270 running again,
the Dakota Boys rush back to the
glory hole to make up for lost time.
This is where we needed to be.
Moving a lot of dirt, doing it fast.
Right now this feels really good,
I'm getting some gold.
Ah, damn it!
After just six hours...
(BLEEP)!
..Fred's welding fails - again.
We've been running
a month-and-a-half on this stuff.
It's not meant to be permanent.
"Dustin." Hey, Melody.
"I just stopped the loader,
I can see it dripping."
"I think it's transmission fluid."
(Damn.)
With the excavator down already,
Melody has found a problem
with the 220 loader.
I'm hoping it's
just the hose or something.
Yeah, it's coming out heavy.
Transmission fluid.
This looks like rear seal,
you have to take
the entire machine apart.
It's gonna be the end of
the season for this thing.
Oh, crap!
This is one of our key machines,
absolutely it is.
Without this machine we're not
running. That's all there is to it.
Two down,
so we're not running. Summer's
ticking by, it's disappointing.
I can't do this.
There are just 50 days left
in the season.
Fred is not even halfway
to his 160-ounce target.
Every hour he's not running dirt
is money out of his pocket.
For every day that you're down
you're losing probably,
oh, five, 6,000 bucks.
And it don't take many of those days
to add up.
I've had a bunch of those days
this year.
Pretty well sick of it.
Fred has run out of options.
He makes a call
he's been trying to avoid.
I know we kind of agreed on a certain
amount on a loan and everything.
I was wondering if there's any way...
I'm gonna have to try to see if I can
get a little bit more credit.
Across the creek at Big Nugget,
Parker's crew is still digging down
to Emerson bedrock.
We must have moved at least 25
to 30,000 yards of overburden.
We're doing probably close to
2,000 yards a day out of this pit.
In the race down to bedrock,
Parker's pushing his wash plant
harder than ever.
But running so much dirt
has caused the tailings to back up.
Hey, what the (BLEEP) was that?
If the build-up stops the trommel
the motor could burn out.
There's too much fine gravel
in this material.
This machine won't handle it.
What?
If you're not gonna watch the plant
just let us know so that Gary can.
Hey, I just barely
sat on the machine.
I just barely got on the machine for
two minutes. (BLEEP) didn't happen
in two minutes. No.
I don't need that (BLEEP), OK?
The first thing - Don't yell at me
like that. Don't talk, listen.
First thing you do when you take over
that position, look at the plant.
Is it running right? Yes, it is,
and then you're responsible for it.
I got that, I got all that!
Costing me (BLEEP) money.
That was unfair.
Parker's been running around here
like a chicken with its head off.
Then, all of a sudden, for
two minutes, I get all the blame.
That's ridiculous.
I'm sick and tired of listening to
him whining and crying like a kid.
I'm just gonna start telling him
to shut up.
Anyway, I gotta go to the loader.
I'm sorry for being so aggressive.
Well, thank you for that.
Um...
We just... You know, that plant's all
we've got. I understand that.
If that rock stops that trommel
like it just about was.
The thing is - We can't let that
happen and we gotta pay attention.
We both know it doesn't help to be
yelling and screaming at each other.
Because all it does is piss people
off and get us all in a bad mood.
And you know I pay attention to
plant and I'm good at what I'm doing
and I apologise for that being, you
know, messed up like that, but...
.
.
At Porcupine Creek, in Alaska,
the Dakota Boys are
dead in the water.
Both the loader and their excavator
are broken down.
So we have two machines down,
we can't do anything.
Well, you know, we don't have
the parts to fix it.
We're trying to get as much gold
as we can.
We're spending the least amount of
money and it's proving to be...
..a bad idea to use
(BLEEP) equipment.
Spend the extra money,
make more money.
(SIGHS)
But the season isn't over yet.
Fred has managed to get more credit
and is bringing in new equipment.
They wanted more equipment,
we got some more.
It will be a big surprise,
real good stuff here.
As well as a new loader, Fred has
replaced his 20-year-old excavator
with a brand-new one
that has far more power.
I think I can
do some digging with that.
Oh, my gosh. Hey, Dustin.
Look at that stuff.
Oh, wow.
Hell, yeah, Fred.
Oh, he came through.
(LAUGHS)
Yeah, Fred!
Oh, wow.
Look at that thing. All yours.
Oh, my.
Here's what I'm interested in.
Holy cow, look at that thing,
look at you.
Oh, my.
It's huge.
You said you wanted new
or different equipment,
we got different equipment.
I'll be damned, this is gonna change
everything, Fred.
I'll tell you what.
(LAUGHS)
Oh, my goodness.
What do you think?
This is so cool. Thank you so much.
All right.
Well, you've earned it, fire it up.
(STARTS ENGINE)
Ah. (LAUGHS)
The Dakota Boys can finally get back
to chasing their 160-ounce gold.
I hope to see a lot of gold
coming past through that bucket.
Shoot, we ought to be able to run
twice as long now.
I... I agree.
(LAUGHS)
Yeah, get twice the amount of gold,
too.
But before they can get back to
work, first they must unload
the new machine.
Fred inches
the enormous excavator forward.
That is scary.
(METALLIC CREAK)
Cool.
Don't come off a bit, Fred. Hold on.
Wait, wait, wait.
It looks giant.
Look at that thing.
He probably won't even stop to eat.
Look at those teeth, huh?
I don't think
I would enjoy doing that part.
He don't like it, either.
This thing's huge.
It is.
That thing is gonna make us
so much gold.
I think this is gonna make
our season end with a good ending.
I do.
Fred puts their new excavator
to work right away.
Whoo-hoo!
Whoa!
"You can't jerk on the levers,
it's too powerful."
"You're used to your machine not
responding for a few seconds.
That thing responds to everything."
Well, one thing about this guy here,
this excavator,
oh, you could get you a two-yard
bucket every time. (LAUGHS)
Porcupine Creek finally has
the right equipment,
and the wash plant is running
good pay dirt.
They're back in the game.
North in the Klondike.
Dad, hit the pump.
All right.
Todd and crew are trying to
determine what led to their
disastrous seven-ounce clean up.
"Roger, sounds good."
OK, ready? Let's go!
(ENGINE WHIRS)
We got a very bad clean up,
really bad.
What we're doing is we're trying to
figure out what's going on.
I know how many ounces we should
have had, and that ain't it.
Thurber, check around, grab your pan
and we got to figure out what's
going on here. Check the back end.
While Thurber pans the tailings,
mechanic Mitch discovers a problem.
Hey, Todd, there's something
flapping around in there.
I don't know what it is. Well,
look again, see if it's a stick.
No, it's definitely
hooked to the drum whatever it is.
It's hard to see but you can watch it
coming round every time.
Oh, that's not good. That definitely
ain't a stick, that's part of
the drum. I think so.
We'll see what he does,
comes up with on this pan. Right.
And then I'll talk to you
in a minute. All right.
If Thurber finds any gold in the
tailings, they're washing gold right
out the back of the trommel.
How does it look?
There it is.
Ohh, you are fricking kidding me!
There's one, two, three, four,
five, six.
Quit asking us questions right now,
OK? This is not funny.
14 pieces and they aren't small.
I'm shutting this fricking thing off
until we figure out what's going on.
Yeah, you better.
Run down there and kill the pump,
I'm done.
Shut it down!
(ENGINE OFF)
Figure this stupid thing out.
We got 14 pieces of gold
in that pan, coming off the end.
That explains why
we don't have anything in the box.
That explains why.
They weren't fine, they were a nice
size. It's not the sluice.
The sluice is catching it. Yeah.
It's coming out of the fricking
trommel, something's wrong.
Something's changed
from the other day.
Mitch, let's crawl in there and look
at that thing that was hanging down.
Yeah.
Cut the water.
Mitch, it was hanging down,
like on the first or second spiral.
Towards the...
This end a little bit, Mitch.
This isn't good right off the bat.
I can see some daylight here.
Between the drum and our spiral,
yeah, what was hanging down is they
used a urethane, like a sealant.
Yeah. Yeah. This is what we were
seeing flipping around.
Here's a section of it right there.
Three feet long.
The spiral attached
to the outer drum
drives the gold up and out
into the sluice box.
But the urethane that seals the
spiral to the drum has come loose,
allowing fine gold to slip down
into the tailings.
It's going under there and out the
fricking trommel is what it's doing.
Now we haven't run this thing very
long for it all to be peeling off.
What do you think? We got to do
the whole fricking thing?
Yeah, it's like all the way up here,
it's not just one little spot.
I could weld it all,
but the problem is it has
to be ground perfectly smooth.
You're looking at
about 400ft of welding,
the problem is the grinding.
Like quick - or how long?
Two weeks at best.
I cannot spend one more day working
on this, I'm done. I can't do it.
I'm gonna turn it off.
I think it's gonna be turned off
for the season. I'm really sorry.
The trommel cost
hundreds of thousands of dollars.
But Todd has finally given up on it.
Without a reliable wash plant,
the Hoffmans are finished
at Quartz Creek.
I ain't come up here to sit around
and look at a machine.
I came up here to work and we're not,
so pretty frustrating.
I quit my job to come up here
and mine with Todd and these guys,
and it's starting to look like it
may have been the wrong choice,
the wrong decision.
There comes a time where you gotta
make a decision for the team.
And my decision is
this trommel is done,
I'll shut it off for the summer.
And... er... chalk it up
as a failure.
I failed this summer
right here at Quartz Creek.
Up at Indian River,
Dave Turin is racing to get to
the pay gravel in the new cut.
Be nice to hit
some gravel here shortly.
Right now the only wash plant going
in our outfit is right down there
and it's eating rock like a
tyrannosaurus, so it needs to be fed.
Indian River's stockpile
is nearly gone.
We've got maybe four hours of
cut one material left.
If Dave doesn't get
down to new pay dirt soon,
the wash plant will grind to a halt,
costing them around $10,000 a day
in lost gold.
Maybe another foot or so.
Dave, do you have a copy?
"Yeah, I do, Freddy."
"We're about done with cut one."
I'm on it.
We can't afford to have
the Indian River plant down.
Hey, Dave, we're one bucket away
from finishing up cut one.
(CLUNK)
Whoa!
What's this?
Oh, yeah, we're
already on the gravel,
I got white quartz, I got river rock
and plenty of gravel.
"Hey, Chris."
"Greg, you got a copy?"
Yeah, baby.
Ten-four, Dave.
Yeah, bench cut is ready to go,
there's no doubt about it.
Now we're getting somewhere.
I'd like to congratulate you guys.
Coming at ya, buddy. This is the
reason we goldmine, days like this.
South at the Big Nugget Mine,
Parker and his crew are
near the end of a two-week dig
for bedrock gold at Emerson Trench.
I hope this pays off.
I don't even wanna hear the word
"overburden" ever again.
Bedrock, that's a good sign.
That's what we're after.
We're on bedrock.
Is it bedrock?
That stuff's bedrock, yeah.
Let's test it and figure out
what's down there. Cool, good.
Let's have a box full of gold.
The money that they have spent
clearing the area,
they definitely need to see
some good results.
I'm not feeling it at all - What do
you mean you're not feeling it?
I'm not seeing any colours at all,
just itty bitsy, tiny, fine gold.
Down here at the bottom?
Down here at the bottom.
I'd have expected as we got down to
bedrock it would've been good but -
Right.
I'm not seeing it at all.
That's weird.
This section of bedrock, it must
have either been cleaned
or there's no gold on it.
Yeah, I was betting this whole thing
on bedrock. Really, (BLEEP) up.
What have we been doing for
the last three weeks, then?
Yeah, we've just dug a great big
hole and we got down to nothing.
I don't know what to think.
(BLEEP)! Where's the (BLEEP) gold?
Three weeks, $30,000,
and nearly 700 man hours,
but there is no gold at bedrock.
What the hell is going on?
We even drilled the (BLEEP) thing.
I must just be really unlucky.
Or something.
If this cut is what it looks to be,
I won't be here next year.
Over at Porcupine Creek, the Dakota
Boys have been digging non-stop
for the last three days
with their new equipment.
Shut it down!
To have a chance of hitting their
160-ounce gold for the season,
they need to produce
two ounces a day,
or six ounces
from this one clean up.
If we get about a dozen ounces
out of it, I'll be happy.
So we ran for 20 hours or so?
Yeah, close to 20. Doesn't look like
we're ounce per hour yet.
It looks pretty close, though.
It's zeroed in right now, here we go,
we may...
we'll see what happens here.
Five, six...
Interesting.
11,
12,
13,
it's blinking 14 but it's 13.9.
Nice.
That's wonderful.
That's pretty good for 20 hours.
$20,000 in gold for
three days' work.
Just think the Hoffmans,
two years ago, got 14.3.
In the entire season.
The entire season.
Oh dear.
And this is one week, not,
well, one week and three days.
It's three days, yeah.
(LAUGHS)
That's excellent, you guys.
That's really excellent.
With 74.9 ounces,
worth around $120,000,
the Dakota Boys are on track
to hit 160 ounces.
It was a good cleanout
for three days.
It's pretty exciting, though.
It's a lot of gold for us.
.
.
At Indian River in the Klondike...
Discharge conveyor's down,
discharge conveyor's down.
The tailings conveyor
suddenly fails.
Claim boss Dave Turin acts fast.
Crap!
Chris, shut it down.
I got an electrical problem
with that tailings conveyor.
As it's dumping
for some reason it's creating heat.
It kicks out the electrical safeguard
and it shuts it off.
I just reset it and off we're going.
OK, start it up.
(ENGINE WHIRS)
We jumped at this real fast, we got
it fixed, did you see my guys react?
That's the way we work down here
at Indian River.
With morale on a high,
the Indian River crew
start the final clean up
of cut one pay dirt.
Chris, we got a real nugget.
We got an Indian River nugget?
Yes.
Why, yes. Yes, it is. Ooh.
This is a huge week for us,
this is the end of cut one,
so it's really the end of an era.
And that's...
It's a pretty good feeling.
This is awesome, you know,
when you got this much gold
in one little shovel full it looks
like it's gonna be drop dead great.
Boy, I sure hope this clean up's
gonna be good, Freddy.
We'll find out here in a minute.
Well, I tell you what, I'm excited.
What is your number?
53, I think.
55.
55. What was yours?
54.
58.
53.78.
Great.
Pretty good.
You couldn't ask for
better than that. All of it?
Nice job. That's great.
That's pretty coarse material there,
isn't it?
That is...
You've got some nuggets in there.
Hey, that puts us over 200.
Yeah.
Right?
223, man. 223!
You know, that's $350,000 of gold.
That's a lot of money.
I'm pretty proud of this. Yeah.
I'm proud of you guys
and that first cut.
The bench cut's ready to go, the
drill results were better up there.
I think you're gonna pull out twice
what you got here, no sweat.
All right, see you later.
Thanks, Jack. All right.
Dave Turin's crew have pulled
$350,000 in gold
out of a single cut.
With six weeks to go,
Indian River is well on its way
to its 501-ounce goal.
We ran 40,000 yards of dirt
and rocks with the wash plant,
we've extracted 223 ounces of gold.
It's... The numbers are phenomenal.
There's a chance that Indian River by
itself could get 1,000 ounces.
We pulled off our first cut
and we've mined it flawlessly,
and the nice thing is we're
transitioning from our first cut
to the bench cut just like that.
Not losing a single day of sluicing.
But things are far different
over at Quartz.
With only 7.34 ounces,
worth less than $12,000,
Todd has stopped running
the high-tech trommel.
And investor Jason Otteson is
about to arrive.
Indian River has been a huge success
but Quartz Creek's failure has left
Todd well short of the 350 ounces
he promised.
This is not good.
Jason's here. Oh, great(!)
This day just keeps on giving.
Hey, man.
What's going on over here?
No work.
I wish I could say we're just shut
down for lunch but we are not shut
down for lunch. Oh, no.
Ran the trommel. You know, I been
panning gold off the main sluice off
the back end.
It's got issues, so I definitely
don't wanna sit there and run this
sweet dirt through it, you know?
So I made a decision to cut it.
That's not what I wanted to hear
this trip. No, I know.
Where do we stand? Where do we stand
with the gold? We got about 230. 230.
But 350 was what I came for.
Yeah. We're short.
So, Todd, how much of this
came from Quartz?
We were supposed to get a hundred
ounces last time out of just Quartz.
Only seven, 7.34 came from Quartz.
We didn't hit that goal.
Yeah, three trips, three times
I've been disappointed.
All right, well, let's go talk.
OK. Thanks, Dad. Thanks, Furb.
Yep. Yep.
You're killing me, man.
It's a long journey
to come for bad news.
If you can't increase your production
you got to save your costs,
cut some heads.
There's way too many people here
right now.
I'm not sinking another penny
until we get some decisions made.
We have a lot on the line here.
You might be right.
The last thing I wanna do
is send anybody home.
It's not their fault, you know?
The blame falls on me.
So, we'll see.
I really don't wanna
talk about it anymore.
I got a lot of hard decisions
to make, OK?
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