Gold Rush: Alaska (2010–…): Season 3, Episode 14 - The Night Shift - full transcript
Tensions mount between the day and night shifts as Todd pushes his men harder. Parker battles an aging wash plant and the treacherous road from Discovery Claim while Dustin risks it all diving for hidden gold in the frozen glory hole water.
At the edge of the Arctic Circle,
four crews are racing
to get to gold.
Hey!
We're losing daylight, let's go!
This is our final push right now,
we're going after it.
In the Klondike,
Todd Hoffman has admitted defeat.
I'm going to shut down Quartz Creek.
He's down to one claim.
But working together
is dividing the team.
Chaos is not welcome at Indian
River. Now chaos has entered.
The pressure is starting to show.
You're supposed to have the
(BLEEP) stacked up.
(BLEEP) I'm not doing it for
myself, I'm doing it for these guys.
At Porcupine Creek,
the Dakota boys get desperate,
diving into the frigid Alaskan water
for gold.
My whole body's numb right now.
And Parker Schnabel discovers that
his new virgin ground...
Holy cow, that is amazing.
..is rich with gold.
I'm having a hard time
processing this.
Nearing the end of
the five-month mining season,
the Hoffman crew is running hard
at Indian River.
About another month
and it's gonna start freezing,
so time is of the essence.
Bombs away!
But despite their hard work, Todd's
crew have only 277 ounces of gold.
They still need another 98 ounces
just to break even,
let alone hit their 1,000-ounce
season goal.
Todd needs a new plan and fast.
So here's the deal.
If we're gonna get 1,000 ounces,
40-, 50-ounce cleanups
won't cut it.
We're running out of daylight.
I think the best way
to utilise all our guys...
I think I need
to start a night crew.
We need to be running this plant.
I'll get my Quartz guys
and just start a night shift.
We're running out of time.
We've got a process,
we've got a plan.
That has been running flawless.
If we don't run this fricking plant
there's no chance.
I'd rather take the chance.
Man, we've got our heart
and soul in that plant.
Todd... don't break that washplant.
Todd's operation at Quartz Creek
has failed.
His trommel arrived
seven weeks late
and recovered only seven ounces,
worth around $11,000,
before a broken seal
caused it to lose gold.
I'm shutting
this fricking thing off.
But Dave Turin's Indian River
claim
has produced over $400,000
in gold.
That's a lot of money.
I'm pretty proud of this, Jack.
Todd has abandoned Quartz Creek to
run both crews side-by-side at Indian
River.
Quartz Creek have got to do it on
our time schedule and our system.
Together they only managed
to get 46 ounces,
17 ounces less than
Indian River's best week.
It's gonna require
some major stepping up.
Now, Dave Turin's crew
must leave their washplant
in the hands of Todd's novice crew
on the night shift.
Todd wants that 1,000 ounces,
I do too,
but I want to do it
safe and efficiently.
We need a good plan, we need order
and a system, we do not need chaos.
We've had problems, running this
thing nine, ten hours a day.
If we crank that up
to 24 hours a day,
you're going to increase the
possibilities of breaking something.
There is that anxiety
that comes over you
when you realise that somebody else
is going to come in and baby-sit
your kid.
Over the season,
Dave's crew has fine-tuned Big Red.
It now consistently produces
an ounce of gold for every
ten buckets of good paydirt.
To succeed this season, Todd needs to
double the number of buckets they
run.
And he wants to prove that his crew
is at least as good as Dave's.
TODD: Quartz Creek guys...
we're the night shift.
OK, you know what that means?
The pride we showed up there, we're
gonna do it right now, right here,
OK? OK.
The day shift, erm... how many
buckets did they do today?
They did 124.
We won't get 1,000 ounces with the
124 buckets these guys ran today,
so now tonight we're going
to pick up the slack,
we're gonna pick up that extra
25 buckets that they missed.
Shut her down at 200.
I hear 200.
OK, guys? Hell, yeah,
let's show them how it's done.
Let's run some yards, huh?
C'mon boys, lets kick some ass.
Yeah, our competition used
to be Indian versus Quartz.
But now it looks like day shift
versus the night crew.
Four months into the mining season,
the Yukon nights are getting longer.
This is a lot easier in the day,
but guess what?
It's getting darker and darker.
Facing a 12-hour shift, Todd sets
a goal of 17 buckets an hour.
These guys have got
to frickin' step up...
We cannot stop.
Within hours, the fast pace starts
to take its toll on the washplant.
But Todd refuses to stop.
Water's undermining
the underneath of the sluice box,
but I don't have time
to fix it right now.
We gotta keep rolling.
Hey, we got dirt
going through this thing, Andy?
(GRINDING AND SQUEALING)
The hopper-feeder belt
suddenly seizes up.
Hey guys, quick, quick, quick,
quick, quick.
'Be right there.'
The hopper, something's going on,
quick, we gotta shut her down! Run!
There's something down there,
it's jamming this thing up.
We have a piece of big rock that
made it through our grizzlies that's
plugging it up.
The hydraulic pressure
is building up.
It's coming.
The crew must relieve the pressure,
or it could destroy the conveyor.
It's on.
Thurber, hit the bypass!
Time is money. We've gotta get
rolling again. Let's go.
Come on, guys!
Hey, Mitch. Mitch!
Yeah. Hang on.
I'm hearing something, up there.
In here, it kinda popped and then...
You see that gearbox there?
Hey, grab me my crowbar,
I think I've found it,
we've got a rock jammed
at the end of the pulley.
See just how hard that thing's
stuck in there...
Got it!
Good job, Mitch. What do you say we
try it? Let's just hit it real
quick.
(MOTOR STARTS)
We're not going to tell Dave.
What happens on the night shift,
stays on the night shift.
It stays right here.
After running the washplant
for 12 straight hours,
dawn marks the end of the first
night shift at Indian River.
All right, guys, this is the last
bucket, right here, number 200.
'Ten-four, buddy,
brings home the bacon!'
'Way to go, man, that's awesome!'
Todd's crew has run a record 1,400
yards through Big Red.
200 buckets, Mitch,
good job, good job.
Day crew has to step it up,
otherwise we're not gonna make it.
In Alaska...
Fred Hurt is digging
gold-rich paydirt at Porcupine Creek.
Oh-ho, I bet that thing
got some gold in that bucket.
Ha-ha! I bet that's a...
that's a bucket of gold there.
(CHUCKLING)
This is our final push right now,
we're going after it.
It's there for the taking,
we're just going for it.
The Dakota boys have spent
the last month
on the hunt for what they think
is an ancient waterfall.
Whether it's a boom or it's a bust,
I'm looking for treasure!
The deeper down they go,
the better the gold.
MELODY: This grey material is not
like anything I've ever seen in my
life.
Now, to hit his 160 ounce-goal,
Fred is determined
to follow the grey dirt down.
Hey, we're on that
good ol' grey stuff
and we hope
there's plenty of gold down there.
Fred's got one thing on his mind,
and one thing only.
Digging. He wants to dig, dig, dig.
Even if he doesn't get everything,
he wants to dig it out.
(LAUGHS)
But Fred's been so focused
on digging dirt,
he's missed something.
MELODY: Holy crap!
See that crack down there?
The cracks are very important.
I can see right now a crack
and I can see a rock in it,
and if there's a rock in it,
there could be gold in it.
Thousands of years ago, an ancient
river flowed down this valley,
creating cracks in the face
of the waterfall.
The cracks, or "gold traps",
can act like a natural riffle,
catching gold on its way downstream.
In these holes,
there's definitely gold.
It's just getting in them.
This just changes everything.
At Porcupine Creek,
Melody explores deep cracks in the
bedrock wall of the glory hole.
This is what every miner
wants to see. Gold.
People pick gold out of bedrock
cracks all the time.
If a rock can be stuck in there,
so can gold.
If Melody is right, the cracks could
contain thousands of dollars' worth
of gold.
Holy crap!
Gold that Fred needs.
Oh!
Unable to dig the gold traps
with the excavator,
Melody wants to vacuum the gold
out of the bedrock.
I think we got a nice thing
going here.
'I'd really like to dredge it out.'
Hey Fred, it looks like a good spot
for a dredge to me.
No. Right now
it's about the digging.
If I can dig it, it's a lot easier
and more efficient to dig it
than it is to dredge it.
We'll see, I'm gonna keep on digging
until I just can't dig no more.
At the bottom
of one of those things
could be an amazing amount of gold.
'There won't be any change of plans
because of those anomalies.'
To dredge in the glory hole,
they would need to flood the area
around the gold traps.
They'd then use a suction hose
to pull water, silt and hopefully
gold from the cracks.
This material then passes
through a floating sluice box
where riffles
trap the gold.
But a glory hole full of water
will keep Fred from digging.
There's gold everywhere all over
this stuff that we haven't touched
yet.
This is not acceptable.
Fred thinks we're going to dig it,
but I want to get a dredge out here.
It's something I'm doing,
and this is my gold too.
Indian River in the Klondike.
Todd's crew have finished
their first night shift
and Dave's crew is taking over.
The night shift got 200 buckets
through there, which is about 1,400
yards,
That's a great day, it really is.
When we get 1,000 ounces,
we're gonna call it a team win.
It'll be quite interesting
to look at that sluice box.
It's going to be
a real fun summer now.
They arrive to a nasty surprise.
Holy smokes.
That really cut back.
Work during the night shift
washed the base out
from under the sluice box.
Determined to run more dirt
than Dave's crew,
Todd refused to stop his shift
to fix it.
We're about ready to lose that leg,
you guys.
Big Red could easily fall
into the settling pond.
This is what happens when you get
guys that get that gold fever,
they are untrained on this.
You know, they just....
they take the cream off the top
and leave a mess.
I can see it amongst the guys.
The peace and the harmony
has disappeared.
Chaos is not welcome at Indian River
and now chaos has entered.
And it's just a matter of time
before it crumbles.
Until Big Red is fixed, Dave Turin's
crew can't run any paydirt.
(METAL GROANING)
They need to pack rock back
under the base of the sluice box
to keep it from sinking.
But the time it takes to make this
fix is money out of their pockets.
We're battling the clock.
Every minute is precious right now.
If we're going to get to 1,000
ounces, we're going to have to make
this thing run.
Now they have to test the fix.
They start by turning on the water.
I think that's gonna work.
What do you think, Fred?
We'll know more when we get material
down it, and the water going down
the sluices.
Start it up. OK, crank her up.
Firing her back off again.
We're good to go now.
But they won't know
if Big Red will cope
until the sluice box is loaded with
the full weight of water and paydirt.
Check it out, check it out,
check it out!
That looks pretty good right there.
Looks darn good. I think it looks
great, Dave. Yeah.
Nice job.
Back to business.
The water is going exactly where
we want it, it's a good fix.
To have any hope of hitting
1,000 ounces of gold this season,
both crews will have
to be at the top of their game.
But it's taken Dave Turin's crew
half their shift
just to clean up Todd's mess.
Hey, we're losing daylight,
let's go...
The plant's running great, but we
got off to a really late start.
We didn't get started till almost
three o'clock this afternoon.
We're doing our share,
that's for sure.
I think we're doing
part of their share.
My crew just does whatever
it takes to get the job done.
In southeast Alaska, at Big Nugget,
Parker Schnabel is ready to mine his
new ground, the Discovery claim.
I would bet it's gonna be
pretty good ground.
We know there's gold here.
So long as we can get it down to our
plant it should be fairly easy.
With just a month left
in the mining season,
Parker is still 96 ounces, around
$150,000, short of breaking even.
This new ground has to pay out,
or Parker will lose money
for the second year in a row.
If we do it right, it will be great.
If we do it wrong,
it could ruin us.
Two weeks ago, he discovered
that Emerson Trench,
the last remaining ground
on Big Nugget, was not viable.
What the hell is going on?
Where's the (BLEEP) gold?
Out of options, Parker leased
the Discovery claim.
It was on this claim in 1898
where the first Porcupine Creek gold
was found.
This claim had the most gold on it
and it's where it all started.
Parker plans to haul 20 loads a day
down to his washplant.
But the Discovery claim lies
at the top of a treacherous dirt road
that snakes its way 100 metres up
from Big Nugget.
This is Parker's first load
of Discovery paydirt.
The dirt we're digging is not
designed to be hauled out of here.
Parker's rock truck
is almost 20 years old.
Fully loaded,
it weighs over 36 tons.
The more I get in each truck load,
the less time this is gonna take,
the less, you know, exposure
to this road I'll have,
but at the same time, you know,
a heavier truck is more likely
to make unstable banks slide,
or brakes fail,
or whatever it is, you know.
I overloaded the truck, too.
My engine brake
isn't really holding me.
That's heating up,
transmission's heating up.
There's tight spots like this
right here.
where it's just about wide enough
for a pick-up,
and this is a little
bigger than a pick-up.
On one side, sharp bedrock walls
could slice through his tyres.
On the other, a 100-metre cliff
drops down to the creek below.
This spot right here really
is pretty sketchy.
That's tight...
Really, you know,
all I can do on spots like this
is just crowd that rock and...
(CRUNCH) (BLEEP).
(BLEEP)
With no room to spare,
Parker scrapes a wheel on the rocks.
That outside is soft.
A few centimetres
in the other direction
could take Parker over the edge.
(BLEEP)
I think it's well worth
the risk we're taking here.
He makes it safely round the corner.
But next, Parker has to back up to
a 30-metre drop to dump his paydirt.
I don't know what's under me,
you know.
I didn't build the place
I'm dumping off of.
Beautiful. This might just work.
At Porcupine Creek,
Dustin is returning to the claim.
He's just spent $2,000 of his own
money to go after the gold
that he and Melody think is hidden
in the glory hole gold traps.
I now own a dredge. Fred and I
are at odds with it right now.
If it doesn't have a lot of gold,
Fred'll say, "I told you so"
for weeks and weeks and weeks.
I need this dredge to get me
a bunch of gold. He'll get over it.
What in the hell is all this?
Tell me that's not
what I think it is.
That's your new dredge, Fred.
Well, all I want to know is when
you're gonna find time to waste
that much time.
It's still gold mining, Fred.
As long as dirt's going through
a sluice box, what do you care?
If I show you gold in this thing,
you'll love it.
If I don't you won't love it, so.
It's a good dredge, it's going to be
an excellent dredge. It's still a
dredge.
It's gonna work. You don't have
any idea what we're doing.
I bought a dredge and there's no way
I'm gonna buy a nice beautiful
dredge and not use it.
So it's going to get used,
so accept it.
We're doing it.
This is production mining,
we are not recreational miners.
We reach down and scoop
and grab the next scoop up.
Dustin has flooded
part of the glory hole to dredge.
So Fred can no longer dig
with the excavator.
I really hope this works.
Uh, I need it to work.
(ENGINE STARTS)
There we go.
Whoo! She wants to drive! Yeah!
Whoo-hoo! Ha-ha!
Hey!
The pump on the dredge
is rated to a depth of ten metres,
powerful enough to suck out gold
from deep inside the gold traps.
It's working great.
It's working really fantastic.
Want nuggets. Want gold.
I hope we kick butt and I hope
Fred gets a little surprise.
Unable to dig,
all Fred can do is watch.
The bedrock down here
is really coarse in this corner,
but there's a lot of material stuck.
There's a bunch of cracks.
After four hours, the icy water
proves to be too much.
Alaskan water, coming
right out of the mountains,
where the snow is...
It's really cold.
Argh!
My whole body's numb right now.
There, that's better.
I'm excited to see
what we find in the sluice
because I wanna show Fred and say,
"We have a little machine,
but it's doing the job."
Across the creek
at the Big Nugget Mine,
Parker and his crew run the dirt
from their new Discovery claim.
He needs it to be rich in gold
to get his season back on track.
It's good-looking dirt. I think
we'll get some pretty good gold out
of this.
It's right back to business.
This season's running short,
so we want to run as much dirt
as we can as fast as we can.
(CLATTERING)
What the hell?
(RATTLING)
Um, it's one of the baffles.
(BLEEP) (MOTOR STOPS)
(CREAK)
We gotta shut the plant down.
One of the blades came loose inside
that tumbles the dirt.
So we're gonna have to repair this.
There aren't any more that are
loose, that have gone sideways that
we can see.
What the (BLEEP)? I don't know
if anything else will break.
(BLEEP)
Long metal blades run the length
of Parker's trommel.
They keep the paydirt
constantly moving,
so that the water can separate
gold from the dirt.
Without the blades,
the material would pile up
at the bottom of the trommel,
and the gold would be washed out
with the rocks.
Oh, (BLEEP).
Yeah, this blade just got completely
tore out of our trommel.
Without it,
we might as well not run.
I (BLEEP) hate shutting
the washplant down.
Stuff like this should be kept up.
You know?
We shouldn't be looking
at stuff like this.
I mean, that weld
is just about gone,
I could hit that off
with a little hammer.
Nobody's paying attention.
"Oh we'll just run it till
it breaks." And now where are we?
We're on the best dirt we've had all
season with a broke down washplant.
We wanna get our gold and we can't
do that if this thing's not running
properly.
We're having to just re-weld
the brackets into place.
It's not a perfect situation,
it's not real easy right now.
It's getting so worn out
that, um... if we make it through
the end of this season
without any more breakdowns,
I'll be amazed.
The blade is welded back in place.
But the true test will come
when it stars running dirt again.
Hopefully this blade will hold.
The trommel's really thin.
We're welding on top of welds.
All we can do is run it
and hope it holds in there.
Fire it up.
Um... (ENGINE STARTS)
We got dirt going through.
How does it look? Awesome!
It's looking pretty good so far.
No down time this week,
we're running.
Back at Porcupine...
Fred and Dustin are lifting
the dredge out of the glory hole.
Little faster next time,
maybe we can smash something.
Slow down.
Fred's frustrated after being
forced to stop digging.
That ain't gonna hold. Hold up.
Get mad if you want.
You need both of those ropes
pulling on the front,
cos it's a lot heavier
and that rope is not 100 per cent.
Are you there? No.
Put it through that loop.
Uh, what am I doing?
Hold on. You're giving bad
instructions and getting pissed off
about it.
Calm down. Go ahead and get
pissed off all you want.
I'm not. You are. He is so
(BLEEP) ridiculous sometimes.
Fred. Angry little man.
Let's get back to mining.
In the gold tent,
Melody pans the material that they
have vacuumed from the gold traps.
She's about to find out
if her plan is going to pay.
This is sorta the moment of truth
for our dredge.
So we're just going to see
what we can find here.
What I'm starting to see here,
I think, um,..
Fred's going to be eating his words.
I think this is going to be sweet.
This looks great, this is huge. Wow.
This is a lot of gold
that we got out of there.
That came out of the dredge, Fred.
Oh, come on now.
That's what came out of it.
You're pulling my leg! No!
Damn!
That's... Hey, that's...
Hey, that's... that's impressive.
Well, let's just see
what we're gonna come up with here.
Previously, after running grey
material for five days,
they got a record 28 ounces of gold,
worth around $44,000.
This cleanup is from just
a single day of dredging.
There's one, two,
three, four,
five, six,
seven, eight,
nine, ten...
11... 12...
13...
14 ounces on the money!
Excellent, that is excellent.
(LAUGHS)
I'll take 14 ounces any day.
Hell, yeah. Yeah!
That's a lot of gold.
That's very good gold.
I guess I was wrong, you were right.
(LAUGHS)
I'm happy.
14 ounces, it...
You know, $20,000, one cleanout,
that's pretty damn good.
Fred looked excited.
The dredge worked wonderful,
It pulled up a lot of good stuff.
(LAUGHS) First dredge on Porcupine.
It works!
North at Indian River, Todd's crew
is back on the night shift.
Got the Quartz Creek boys down here,
the money is gonna be made here
at night with these guys.
On their first night, Todd's crew
ran a record 200 buckets of dirt
through Big Red.
Tonight, they want to do even better.
Andy, you got a copy?
'Yeah, go ahead.'
How's it going?
We're running low, we need paydirt.
How long until we gotta....
Half hour. And then what?
That's it, we're done.
That is not going to happen.
Dave's crew spent most of the day
shift fixing Todd's mess from the
night before.
As a result, they failed to stockpile
enough dirt to feed the night shift.
Todd takes action.
We need, uh, we need paydirt
real bad.
I need 20 truck loads up there.
I'll get you the dirt, Todd.
Right, see you.
To keep the plant running, Kevin has
to haul paydirt from the upper
terrace
and dump it off a 15-metre drop
high above the plant.
But he's never backed the huge truck
up to the drop off at night.
Hey, Walt, just a heads-up, man.
It's getting pretty dark.
I'm having trouble seeing
backing up to that edge,
so I got a couple of loads before
I can't do it any more tonight.
If you go too far you'll roll this
sucker right down the hill. It won't
feel good.
What the frick are you doing
up there? We need that damn dirt.
Andy is going through it like crazy.
Kevin can't see his back wheels.
He has no way to know
how close he is to the edge.
One wrong move,
and his 40-ton rock truck
will fall onto Andy, waiting below.
I got in it. I can go through and
send this truck 50 feet over.
It's coming up here...
Whoa! (BLEEP)
We're done, man, I can't see.
There's no way I can do this, man.
I ain't sending this truck
50 feet over this edge.
Kevin, you're fricking gonna keep
dumping that dirt,
you understand me?
I can't see, man, I don't want
to kill myself or someone else.
You need to get that fricking dirt
down this hill, OK? Come on.
Todd, you'll keep getting
your paydirt,
but I can't guarantee there won't be
a rock truck coming down with it.
Hey, that's what seatbelts are for.
Get us that frickin' dirt.
If Kevin stops dumping, Todd will be
forced to shut down the washplant.
Listen to me.
What in the hell's going on?
Dude, it's dark. I get it,
I know it's getting dark now.
Dude, it's stupid, dude.
I think, just ease it in there
and dump that (BLEEP)
over the cliff.
It's OK... It's a 50 foot drop off.
And I'm backing right up to it.
You got six wheels.
Dude... We're supposed to have
this (BLEEP) stacked up.
I know. We're not supposed to be
doing this. They didn't do it.
So it rests on my shoulders
to put my life at risk? Yes. The...
(BLEEP)
Kevin! Get your hat... Hey!
Get your hat and get in that truck
and get that (BLEEP) over the cliff,
do you understand?
With Walt as his spotter, Kevin
reluctantly agrees to continue.
All right, Kevin, come on back.
Dude, I'm backing up
into frickin' outer space.
That's what it feels like.
I'm doing it for these guys.
I'm not doing it for myself,
I'm doing it for these guys.
We do need to keep going,
I mean, it's essential.
We're just gonna go at it slower,
safe as we can.
We're just gonna have
to frickin' deal with it.
It's all right. Turn to your right
a little bit, to your right.
We're not gonna be back here
next year
unless we get this dirt
through the plant.
We're not gonna get
the dirt through the plant
if it don't come off the hill.
Keep... Keep coming, keep it coming.
Keep coming, keep coming.
Come on, man, let's go.
We can get 1,000 ounces,
I believe it!
Everybody else has to believe it.
Right there, dump it.
Despite the risks,
the night shift is back on track.
Good, good, good, you got it!
Jack's a heck of a good guy.
But he's got an obsession
with trying to find
that one spot in the world that
contains a massive amount of gold.
I can smell the gold in this one.
Sooner or later,
Jack'll find a glory hole
and it'll probably be
the happiest day of his life.
He'll get down like a little kid and
roll around in it before he mines it
out.
There's a certain smell
that you get
and I can smell it.
In Alaska, Parker Schnabel
is about to find out
if his new ground holds enough gold
to reach his 300-ounce goal
for the season.
So we just shut down to do
our first cleanout from Discovery.
Hopefully it's gonna work out good.
We've been working hard
to get dirt from there.
It's a tough dig, long road,
not a lot of dirt,
but hopefully the quality
will make up for that.
This week, he's gone through $10,000
in fuel hauling paydirt down from
the Discovery claim.
Parker is desperate
for a big cleanout.
Holy crap!
Gary, you gotta come see this. You
gotta come check this sluice out.
Look at that. Great! Look at that.
Wow, that is cool.
Holy cow, that is amazing.
Look at it,
it's just loaded down there. Yeah.
Honestly, I'm having a hard time
processing this.
You know? I mean,
there is a lot of gold in there.
It's unbelievable
that that kind of ground
is on the first claim
that was ever staked on this creek.
It's nice stuff. I didn't think I'd
see anything like this all year.
It's pretty awesome.
Recently, Parker's been losing money
at an alarming rate.
In the last six weeks, his crew has
found just 14.3 ounces,
worth less than $23,000.
Ten...
There's 35.
That's 43 ounces.
That's... Holy cow. Wow.
Impressive. Very impressive.
That's a hell of a lot of gold.
This is the stuff that dreams are
made of, here. This is great.
That puts a little more gas back
in the tanks. I know I was tired.
Good job. Yeah, and thank you, guys.
I know the last month has been
pretty slow,
but, if it's paying like that,
we'll keep running it,
and there's more up there
and I think that
this is just the beginning.
In just one week,
Parker's crew has pulled out
almost $70,000
worth of gold from Discovery.
His total is now 135 ounces,
worth around $210,000.
There's a lot of bad ground
around here,
but there's a small amount
of extremely good ground
and we've found some of it.
If this kind of gold continues,
we'll get our 300 ounces.
I mean, we're gonna do it.
At Indian River in the Klondike,
two Hoffman crews ave been mining
around the clock for a week.
In six days, they've run a massive
10,000 yards of material
through their washplant.
Now it's time to find out if adding
the night shift was a wise move.
This is the moment of truth
and everything boils right down
to this little hopper here.
Usually it's I go out and I'm kinda
sorry, y'know, sorry that it's not
that great.
The night shift's kicking butt.
The day shift's kicking butt.
What do you think, man?
Is it gonna be a big one or little?
Big! Big cleanup?
Yeah, it's gonna be a big cleanup.
We've been kicking some butt. This
has got to be outstanding this time.
I remember last year, thinking,
"If we can just get a double digit
cleanup, that would be sweet."
63 is our biggest cleanup till now.
One, three, five, seven...
It sounds weird, but we cannot have
40- and 50-ounce cleanups,
even though that sounds big.
We've gotta have big cleanups
and we gotta have them frequent.
28, 29...
Holy...
I don't know if we can get to 1,000
ounces, I just believe we can.
Hey.
I got good news and...
good news.
100 ounces. (LAUGHTER)
(CHEERING)
Yeah! Pretty good! Awesome.
100 ounces, are you kidding me?
Isn't that cool?
That is cool. No way!
Whoa. No! 37 more.
Yeah!
37. Nice!
Whoo!
That's one cleanup? Yeah. 137.
That's our absolute best cleanup.
We're at 414 right now and climbing.
So, you know, guys,
all I can say is good job.
You know, you earned it.
Awesome.
But, guess what.
We went past the break-even point.
Everything now is putting
in our pockets.
Nice!
Guys, you see that?
That's a team effort, right there.
Todd's night shift has more than
doubled their best cleanup to date.
They have now mined
over $600,000 in gold,
and they've passed a major milestone.
We have a major breakthrough.
We're past the break-even point.
Now, there's gold going in people's
pockets. That's why I'm here.
From here on in, everything they pull
out of the ground is pure profit.
But, with less than a month
of the season left,
and a million-dollar goal,
they still have a long way to go.
We only got 414 ounces,
we're 586 ounces short.
Night and day, we've got a chance
of getting 1,000 ounces.
I believe we can do it,
but we're running out of time.
Subtitles by Deluxe
four crews are racing
to get to gold.
Hey!
We're losing daylight, let's go!
This is our final push right now,
we're going after it.
In the Klondike,
Todd Hoffman has admitted defeat.
I'm going to shut down Quartz Creek.
He's down to one claim.
But working together
is dividing the team.
Chaos is not welcome at Indian
River. Now chaos has entered.
The pressure is starting to show.
You're supposed to have the
(BLEEP) stacked up.
(BLEEP) I'm not doing it for
myself, I'm doing it for these guys.
At Porcupine Creek,
the Dakota boys get desperate,
diving into the frigid Alaskan water
for gold.
My whole body's numb right now.
And Parker Schnabel discovers that
his new virgin ground...
Holy cow, that is amazing.
..is rich with gold.
I'm having a hard time
processing this.
Nearing the end of
the five-month mining season,
the Hoffman crew is running hard
at Indian River.
About another month
and it's gonna start freezing,
so time is of the essence.
Bombs away!
But despite their hard work, Todd's
crew have only 277 ounces of gold.
They still need another 98 ounces
just to break even,
let alone hit their 1,000-ounce
season goal.
Todd needs a new plan and fast.
So here's the deal.
If we're gonna get 1,000 ounces,
40-, 50-ounce cleanups
won't cut it.
We're running out of daylight.
I think the best way
to utilise all our guys...
I think I need
to start a night crew.
We need to be running this plant.
I'll get my Quartz guys
and just start a night shift.
We're running out of time.
We've got a process,
we've got a plan.
That has been running flawless.
If we don't run this fricking plant
there's no chance.
I'd rather take the chance.
Man, we've got our heart
and soul in that plant.
Todd... don't break that washplant.
Todd's operation at Quartz Creek
has failed.
His trommel arrived
seven weeks late
and recovered only seven ounces,
worth around $11,000,
before a broken seal
caused it to lose gold.
I'm shutting
this fricking thing off.
But Dave Turin's Indian River
claim
has produced over $400,000
in gold.
That's a lot of money.
I'm pretty proud of this, Jack.
Todd has abandoned Quartz Creek to
run both crews side-by-side at Indian
River.
Quartz Creek have got to do it on
our time schedule and our system.
Together they only managed
to get 46 ounces,
17 ounces less than
Indian River's best week.
It's gonna require
some major stepping up.
Now, Dave Turin's crew
must leave their washplant
in the hands of Todd's novice crew
on the night shift.
Todd wants that 1,000 ounces,
I do too,
but I want to do it
safe and efficiently.
We need a good plan, we need order
and a system, we do not need chaos.
We've had problems, running this
thing nine, ten hours a day.
If we crank that up
to 24 hours a day,
you're going to increase the
possibilities of breaking something.
There is that anxiety
that comes over you
when you realise that somebody else
is going to come in and baby-sit
your kid.
Over the season,
Dave's crew has fine-tuned Big Red.
It now consistently produces
an ounce of gold for every
ten buckets of good paydirt.
To succeed this season, Todd needs to
double the number of buckets they
run.
And he wants to prove that his crew
is at least as good as Dave's.
TODD: Quartz Creek guys...
we're the night shift.
OK, you know what that means?
The pride we showed up there, we're
gonna do it right now, right here,
OK? OK.
The day shift, erm... how many
buckets did they do today?
They did 124.
We won't get 1,000 ounces with the
124 buckets these guys ran today,
so now tonight we're going
to pick up the slack,
we're gonna pick up that extra
25 buckets that they missed.
Shut her down at 200.
I hear 200.
OK, guys? Hell, yeah,
let's show them how it's done.
Let's run some yards, huh?
C'mon boys, lets kick some ass.
Yeah, our competition used
to be Indian versus Quartz.
But now it looks like day shift
versus the night crew.
Four months into the mining season,
the Yukon nights are getting longer.
This is a lot easier in the day,
but guess what?
It's getting darker and darker.
Facing a 12-hour shift, Todd sets
a goal of 17 buckets an hour.
These guys have got
to frickin' step up...
We cannot stop.
Within hours, the fast pace starts
to take its toll on the washplant.
But Todd refuses to stop.
Water's undermining
the underneath of the sluice box,
but I don't have time
to fix it right now.
We gotta keep rolling.
Hey, we got dirt
going through this thing, Andy?
(GRINDING AND SQUEALING)
The hopper-feeder belt
suddenly seizes up.
Hey guys, quick, quick, quick,
quick, quick.
'Be right there.'
The hopper, something's going on,
quick, we gotta shut her down! Run!
There's something down there,
it's jamming this thing up.
We have a piece of big rock that
made it through our grizzlies that's
plugging it up.
The hydraulic pressure
is building up.
It's coming.
The crew must relieve the pressure,
or it could destroy the conveyor.
It's on.
Thurber, hit the bypass!
Time is money. We've gotta get
rolling again. Let's go.
Come on, guys!
Hey, Mitch. Mitch!
Yeah. Hang on.
I'm hearing something, up there.
In here, it kinda popped and then...
You see that gearbox there?
Hey, grab me my crowbar,
I think I've found it,
we've got a rock jammed
at the end of the pulley.
See just how hard that thing's
stuck in there...
Got it!
Good job, Mitch. What do you say we
try it? Let's just hit it real
quick.
(MOTOR STARTS)
We're not going to tell Dave.
What happens on the night shift,
stays on the night shift.
It stays right here.
After running the washplant
for 12 straight hours,
dawn marks the end of the first
night shift at Indian River.
All right, guys, this is the last
bucket, right here, number 200.
'Ten-four, buddy,
brings home the bacon!'
'Way to go, man, that's awesome!'
Todd's crew has run a record 1,400
yards through Big Red.
200 buckets, Mitch,
good job, good job.
Day crew has to step it up,
otherwise we're not gonna make it.
In Alaska...
Fred Hurt is digging
gold-rich paydirt at Porcupine Creek.
Oh-ho, I bet that thing
got some gold in that bucket.
Ha-ha! I bet that's a...
that's a bucket of gold there.
(CHUCKLING)
This is our final push right now,
we're going after it.
It's there for the taking,
we're just going for it.
The Dakota boys have spent
the last month
on the hunt for what they think
is an ancient waterfall.
Whether it's a boom or it's a bust,
I'm looking for treasure!
The deeper down they go,
the better the gold.
MELODY: This grey material is not
like anything I've ever seen in my
life.
Now, to hit his 160 ounce-goal,
Fred is determined
to follow the grey dirt down.
Hey, we're on that
good ol' grey stuff
and we hope
there's plenty of gold down there.
Fred's got one thing on his mind,
and one thing only.
Digging. He wants to dig, dig, dig.
Even if he doesn't get everything,
he wants to dig it out.
(LAUGHS)
But Fred's been so focused
on digging dirt,
he's missed something.
MELODY: Holy crap!
See that crack down there?
The cracks are very important.
I can see right now a crack
and I can see a rock in it,
and if there's a rock in it,
there could be gold in it.
Thousands of years ago, an ancient
river flowed down this valley,
creating cracks in the face
of the waterfall.
The cracks, or "gold traps",
can act like a natural riffle,
catching gold on its way downstream.
In these holes,
there's definitely gold.
It's just getting in them.
This just changes everything.
At Porcupine Creek,
Melody explores deep cracks in the
bedrock wall of the glory hole.
This is what every miner
wants to see. Gold.
People pick gold out of bedrock
cracks all the time.
If a rock can be stuck in there,
so can gold.
If Melody is right, the cracks could
contain thousands of dollars' worth
of gold.
Holy crap!
Gold that Fred needs.
Oh!
Unable to dig the gold traps
with the excavator,
Melody wants to vacuum the gold
out of the bedrock.
I think we got a nice thing
going here.
'I'd really like to dredge it out.'
Hey Fred, it looks like a good spot
for a dredge to me.
No. Right now
it's about the digging.
If I can dig it, it's a lot easier
and more efficient to dig it
than it is to dredge it.
We'll see, I'm gonna keep on digging
until I just can't dig no more.
At the bottom
of one of those things
could be an amazing amount of gold.
'There won't be any change of plans
because of those anomalies.'
To dredge in the glory hole,
they would need to flood the area
around the gold traps.
They'd then use a suction hose
to pull water, silt and hopefully
gold from the cracks.
This material then passes
through a floating sluice box
where riffles
trap the gold.
But a glory hole full of water
will keep Fred from digging.
There's gold everywhere all over
this stuff that we haven't touched
yet.
This is not acceptable.
Fred thinks we're going to dig it,
but I want to get a dredge out here.
It's something I'm doing,
and this is my gold too.
Indian River in the Klondike.
Todd's crew have finished
their first night shift
and Dave's crew is taking over.
The night shift got 200 buckets
through there, which is about 1,400
yards,
That's a great day, it really is.
When we get 1,000 ounces,
we're gonna call it a team win.
It'll be quite interesting
to look at that sluice box.
It's going to be
a real fun summer now.
They arrive to a nasty surprise.
Holy smokes.
That really cut back.
Work during the night shift
washed the base out
from under the sluice box.
Determined to run more dirt
than Dave's crew,
Todd refused to stop his shift
to fix it.
We're about ready to lose that leg,
you guys.
Big Red could easily fall
into the settling pond.
This is what happens when you get
guys that get that gold fever,
they are untrained on this.
You know, they just....
they take the cream off the top
and leave a mess.
I can see it amongst the guys.
The peace and the harmony
has disappeared.
Chaos is not welcome at Indian River
and now chaos has entered.
And it's just a matter of time
before it crumbles.
Until Big Red is fixed, Dave Turin's
crew can't run any paydirt.
(METAL GROANING)
They need to pack rock back
under the base of the sluice box
to keep it from sinking.
But the time it takes to make this
fix is money out of their pockets.
We're battling the clock.
Every minute is precious right now.
If we're going to get to 1,000
ounces, we're going to have to make
this thing run.
Now they have to test the fix.
They start by turning on the water.
I think that's gonna work.
What do you think, Fred?
We'll know more when we get material
down it, and the water going down
the sluices.
Start it up. OK, crank her up.
Firing her back off again.
We're good to go now.
But they won't know
if Big Red will cope
until the sluice box is loaded with
the full weight of water and paydirt.
Check it out, check it out,
check it out!
That looks pretty good right there.
Looks darn good. I think it looks
great, Dave. Yeah.
Nice job.
Back to business.
The water is going exactly where
we want it, it's a good fix.
To have any hope of hitting
1,000 ounces of gold this season,
both crews will have
to be at the top of their game.
But it's taken Dave Turin's crew
half their shift
just to clean up Todd's mess.
Hey, we're losing daylight,
let's go...
The plant's running great, but we
got off to a really late start.
We didn't get started till almost
three o'clock this afternoon.
We're doing our share,
that's for sure.
I think we're doing
part of their share.
My crew just does whatever
it takes to get the job done.
In southeast Alaska, at Big Nugget,
Parker Schnabel is ready to mine his
new ground, the Discovery claim.
I would bet it's gonna be
pretty good ground.
We know there's gold here.
So long as we can get it down to our
plant it should be fairly easy.
With just a month left
in the mining season,
Parker is still 96 ounces, around
$150,000, short of breaking even.
This new ground has to pay out,
or Parker will lose money
for the second year in a row.
If we do it right, it will be great.
If we do it wrong,
it could ruin us.
Two weeks ago, he discovered
that Emerson Trench,
the last remaining ground
on Big Nugget, was not viable.
What the hell is going on?
Where's the (BLEEP) gold?
Out of options, Parker leased
the Discovery claim.
It was on this claim in 1898
where the first Porcupine Creek gold
was found.
This claim had the most gold on it
and it's where it all started.
Parker plans to haul 20 loads a day
down to his washplant.
But the Discovery claim lies
at the top of a treacherous dirt road
that snakes its way 100 metres up
from Big Nugget.
This is Parker's first load
of Discovery paydirt.
The dirt we're digging is not
designed to be hauled out of here.
Parker's rock truck
is almost 20 years old.
Fully loaded,
it weighs over 36 tons.
The more I get in each truck load,
the less time this is gonna take,
the less, you know, exposure
to this road I'll have,
but at the same time, you know,
a heavier truck is more likely
to make unstable banks slide,
or brakes fail,
or whatever it is, you know.
I overloaded the truck, too.
My engine brake
isn't really holding me.
That's heating up,
transmission's heating up.
There's tight spots like this
right here.
where it's just about wide enough
for a pick-up,
and this is a little
bigger than a pick-up.
On one side, sharp bedrock walls
could slice through his tyres.
On the other, a 100-metre cliff
drops down to the creek below.
This spot right here really
is pretty sketchy.
That's tight...
Really, you know,
all I can do on spots like this
is just crowd that rock and...
(CRUNCH) (BLEEP).
(BLEEP)
With no room to spare,
Parker scrapes a wheel on the rocks.
That outside is soft.
A few centimetres
in the other direction
could take Parker over the edge.
(BLEEP)
I think it's well worth
the risk we're taking here.
He makes it safely round the corner.
But next, Parker has to back up to
a 30-metre drop to dump his paydirt.
I don't know what's under me,
you know.
I didn't build the place
I'm dumping off of.
Beautiful. This might just work.
At Porcupine Creek,
Dustin is returning to the claim.
He's just spent $2,000 of his own
money to go after the gold
that he and Melody think is hidden
in the glory hole gold traps.
I now own a dredge. Fred and I
are at odds with it right now.
If it doesn't have a lot of gold,
Fred'll say, "I told you so"
for weeks and weeks and weeks.
I need this dredge to get me
a bunch of gold. He'll get over it.
What in the hell is all this?
Tell me that's not
what I think it is.
That's your new dredge, Fred.
Well, all I want to know is when
you're gonna find time to waste
that much time.
It's still gold mining, Fred.
As long as dirt's going through
a sluice box, what do you care?
If I show you gold in this thing,
you'll love it.
If I don't you won't love it, so.
It's a good dredge, it's going to be
an excellent dredge. It's still a
dredge.
It's gonna work. You don't have
any idea what we're doing.
I bought a dredge and there's no way
I'm gonna buy a nice beautiful
dredge and not use it.
So it's going to get used,
so accept it.
We're doing it.
This is production mining,
we are not recreational miners.
We reach down and scoop
and grab the next scoop up.
Dustin has flooded
part of the glory hole to dredge.
So Fred can no longer dig
with the excavator.
I really hope this works.
Uh, I need it to work.
(ENGINE STARTS)
There we go.
Whoo! She wants to drive! Yeah!
Whoo-hoo! Ha-ha!
Hey!
The pump on the dredge
is rated to a depth of ten metres,
powerful enough to suck out gold
from deep inside the gold traps.
It's working great.
It's working really fantastic.
Want nuggets. Want gold.
I hope we kick butt and I hope
Fred gets a little surprise.
Unable to dig,
all Fred can do is watch.
The bedrock down here
is really coarse in this corner,
but there's a lot of material stuck.
There's a bunch of cracks.
After four hours, the icy water
proves to be too much.
Alaskan water, coming
right out of the mountains,
where the snow is...
It's really cold.
Argh!
My whole body's numb right now.
There, that's better.
I'm excited to see
what we find in the sluice
because I wanna show Fred and say,
"We have a little machine,
but it's doing the job."
Across the creek
at the Big Nugget Mine,
Parker and his crew run the dirt
from their new Discovery claim.
He needs it to be rich in gold
to get his season back on track.
It's good-looking dirt. I think
we'll get some pretty good gold out
of this.
It's right back to business.
This season's running short,
so we want to run as much dirt
as we can as fast as we can.
(CLATTERING)
What the hell?
(RATTLING)
Um, it's one of the baffles.
(BLEEP) (MOTOR STOPS)
(CREAK)
We gotta shut the plant down.
One of the blades came loose inside
that tumbles the dirt.
So we're gonna have to repair this.
There aren't any more that are
loose, that have gone sideways that
we can see.
What the (BLEEP)? I don't know
if anything else will break.
(BLEEP)
Long metal blades run the length
of Parker's trommel.
They keep the paydirt
constantly moving,
so that the water can separate
gold from the dirt.
Without the blades,
the material would pile up
at the bottom of the trommel,
and the gold would be washed out
with the rocks.
Oh, (BLEEP).
Yeah, this blade just got completely
tore out of our trommel.
Without it,
we might as well not run.
I (BLEEP) hate shutting
the washplant down.
Stuff like this should be kept up.
You know?
We shouldn't be looking
at stuff like this.
I mean, that weld
is just about gone,
I could hit that off
with a little hammer.
Nobody's paying attention.
"Oh we'll just run it till
it breaks." And now where are we?
We're on the best dirt we've had all
season with a broke down washplant.
We wanna get our gold and we can't
do that if this thing's not running
properly.
We're having to just re-weld
the brackets into place.
It's not a perfect situation,
it's not real easy right now.
It's getting so worn out
that, um... if we make it through
the end of this season
without any more breakdowns,
I'll be amazed.
The blade is welded back in place.
But the true test will come
when it stars running dirt again.
Hopefully this blade will hold.
The trommel's really thin.
We're welding on top of welds.
All we can do is run it
and hope it holds in there.
Fire it up.
Um... (ENGINE STARTS)
We got dirt going through.
How does it look? Awesome!
It's looking pretty good so far.
No down time this week,
we're running.
Back at Porcupine...
Fred and Dustin are lifting
the dredge out of the glory hole.
Little faster next time,
maybe we can smash something.
Slow down.
Fred's frustrated after being
forced to stop digging.
That ain't gonna hold. Hold up.
Get mad if you want.
You need both of those ropes
pulling on the front,
cos it's a lot heavier
and that rope is not 100 per cent.
Are you there? No.
Put it through that loop.
Uh, what am I doing?
Hold on. You're giving bad
instructions and getting pissed off
about it.
Calm down. Go ahead and get
pissed off all you want.
I'm not. You are. He is so
(BLEEP) ridiculous sometimes.
Fred. Angry little man.
Let's get back to mining.
In the gold tent,
Melody pans the material that they
have vacuumed from the gold traps.
She's about to find out
if her plan is going to pay.
This is sorta the moment of truth
for our dredge.
So we're just going to see
what we can find here.
What I'm starting to see here,
I think, um,..
Fred's going to be eating his words.
I think this is going to be sweet.
This looks great, this is huge. Wow.
This is a lot of gold
that we got out of there.
That came out of the dredge, Fred.
Oh, come on now.
That's what came out of it.
You're pulling my leg! No!
Damn!
That's... Hey, that's...
Hey, that's... that's impressive.
Well, let's just see
what we're gonna come up with here.
Previously, after running grey
material for five days,
they got a record 28 ounces of gold,
worth around $44,000.
This cleanup is from just
a single day of dredging.
There's one, two,
three, four,
five, six,
seven, eight,
nine, ten...
11... 12...
13...
14 ounces on the money!
Excellent, that is excellent.
(LAUGHS)
I'll take 14 ounces any day.
Hell, yeah. Yeah!
That's a lot of gold.
That's very good gold.
I guess I was wrong, you were right.
(LAUGHS)
I'm happy.
14 ounces, it...
You know, $20,000, one cleanout,
that's pretty damn good.
Fred looked excited.
The dredge worked wonderful,
It pulled up a lot of good stuff.
(LAUGHS) First dredge on Porcupine.
It works!
North at Indian River, Todd's crew
is back on the night shift.
Got the Quartz Creek boys down here,
the money is gonna be made here
at night with these guys.
On their first night, Todd's crew
ran a record 200 buckets of dirt
through Big Red.
Tonight, they want to do even better.
Andy, you got a copy?
'Yeah, go ahead.'
How's it going?
We're running low, we need paydirt.
How long until we gotta....
Half hour. And then what?
That's it, we're done.
That is not going to happen.
Dave's crew spent most of the day
shift fixing Todd's mess from the
night before.
As a result, they failed to stockpile
enough dirt to feed the night shift.
Todd takes action.
We need, uh, we need paydirt
real bad.
I need 20 truck loads up there.
I'll get you the dirt, Todd.
Right, see you.
To keep the plant running, Kevin has
to haul paydirt from the upper
terrace
and dump it off a 15-metre drop
high above the plant.
But he's never backed the huge truck
up to the drop off at night.
Hey, Walt, just a heads-up, man.
It's getting pretty dark.
I'm having trouble seeing
backing up to that edge,
so I got a couple of loads before
I can't do it any more tonight.
If you go too far you'll roll this
sucker right down the hill. It won't
feel good.
What the frick are you doing
up there? We need that damn dirt.
Andy is going through it like crazy.
Kevin can't see his back wheels.
He has no way to know
how close he is to the edge.
One wrong move,
and his 40-ton rock truck
will fall onto Andy, waiting below.
I got in it. I can go through and
send this truck 50 feet over.
It's coming up here...
Whoa! (BLEEP)
We're done, man, I can't see.
There's no way I can do this, man.
I ain't sending this truck
50 feet over this edge.
Kevin, you're fricking gonna keep
dumping that dirt,
you understand me?
I can't see, man, I don't want
to kill myself or someone else.
You need to get that fricking dirt
down this hill, OK? Come on.
Todd, you'll keep getting
your paydirt,
but I can't guarantee there won't be
a rock truck coming down with it.
Hey, that's what seatbelts are for.
Get us that frickin' dirt.
If Kevin stops dumping, Todd will be
forced to shut down the washplant.
Listen to me.
What in the hell's going on?
Dude, it's dark. I get it,
I know it's getting dark now.
Dude, it's stupid, dude.
I think, just ease it in there
and dump that (BLEEP)
over the cliff.
It's OK... It's a 50 foot drop off.
And I'm backing right up to it.
You got six wheels.
Dude... We're supposed to have
this (BLEEP) stacked up.
I know. We're not supposed to be
doing this. They didn't do it.
So it rests on my shoulders
to put my life at risk? Yes. The...
(BLEEP)
Kevin! Get your hat... Hey!
Get your hat and get in that truck
and get that (BLEEP) over the cliff,
do you understand?
With Walt as his spotter, Kevin
reluctantly agrees to continue.
All right, Kevin, come on back.
Dude, I'm backing up
into frickin' outer space.
That's what it feels like.
I'm doing it for these guys.
I'm not doing it for myself,
I'm doing it for these guys.
We do need to keep going,
I mean, it's essential.
We're just gonna go at it slower,
safe as we can.
We're just gonna have
to frickin' deal with it.
It's all right. Turn to your right
a little bit, to your right.
We're not gonna be back here
next year
unless we get this dirt
through the plant.
We're not gonna get
the dirt through the plant
if it don't come off the hill.
Keep... Keep coming, keep it coming.
Keep coming, keep coming.
Come on, man, let's go.
We can get 1,000 ounces,
I believe it!
Everybody else has to believe it.
Right there, dump it.
Despite the risks,
the night shift is back on track.
Good, good, good, you got it!
Jack's a heck of a good guy.
But he's got an obsession
with trying to find
that one spot in the world that
contains a massive amount of gold.
I can smell the gold in this one.
Sooner or later,
Jack'll find a glory hole
and it'll probably be
the happiest day of his life.
He'll get down like a little kid and
roll around in it before he mines it
out.
There's a certain smell
that you get
and I can smell it.
In Alaska, Parker Schnabel
is about to find out
if his new ground holds enough gold
to reach his 300-ounce goal
for the season.
So we just shut down to do
our first cleanout from Discovery.
Hopefully it's gonna work out good.
We've been working hard
to get dirt from there.
It's a tough dig, long road,
not a lot of dirt,
but hopefully the quality
will make up for that.
This week, he's gone through $10,000
in fuel hauling paydirt down from
the Discovery claim.
Parker is desperate
for a big cleanout.
Holy crap!
Gary, you gotta come see this. You
gotta come check this sluice out.
Look at that. Great! Look at that.
Wow, that is cool.
Holy cow, that is amazing.
Look at it,
it's just loaded down there. Yeah.
Honestly, I'm having a hard time
processing this.
You know? I mean,
there is a lot of gold in there.
It's unbelievable
that that kind of ground
is on the first claim
that was ever staked on this creek.
It's nice stuff. I didn't think I'd
see anything like this all year.
It's pretty awesome.
Recently, Parker's been losing money
at an alarming rate.
In the last six weeks, his crew has
found just 14.3 ounces,
worth less than $23,000.
Ten...
There's 35.
That's 43 ounces.
That's... Holy cow. Wow.
Impressive. Very impressive.
That's a hell of a lot of gold.
This is the stuff that dreams are
made of, here. This is great.
That puts a little more gas back
in the tanks. I know I was tired.
Good job. Yeah, and thank you, guys.
I know the last month has been
pretty slow,
but, if it's paying like that,
we'll keep running it,
and there's more up there
and I think that
this is just the beginning.
In just one week,
Parker's crew has pulled out
almost $70,000
worth of gold from Discovery.
His total is now 135 ounces,
worth around $210,000.
There's a lot of bad ground
around here,
but there's a small amount
of extremely good ground
and we've found some of it.
If this kind of gold continues,
we'll get our 300 ounces.
I mean, we're gonna do it.
At Indian River in the Klondike,
two Hoffman crews ave been mining
around the clock for a week.
In six days, they've run a massive
10,000 yards of material
through their washplant.
Now it's time to find out if adding
the night shift was a wise move.
This is the moment of truth
and everything boils right down
to this little hopper here.
Usually it's I go out and I'm kinda
sorry, y'know, sorry that it's not
that great.
The night shift's kicking butt.
The day shift's kicking butt.
What do you think, man?
Is it gonna be a big one or little?
Big! Big cleanup?
Yeah, it's gonna be a big cleanup.
We've been kicking some butt. This
has got to be outstanding this time.
I remember last year, thinking,
"If we can just get a double digit
cleanup, that would be sweet."
63 is our biggest cleanup till now.
One, three, five, seven...
It sounds weird, but we cannot have
40- and 50-ounce cleanups,
even though that sounds big.
We've gotta have big cleanups
and we gotta have them frequent.
28, 29...
Holy...
I don't know if we can get to 1,000
ounces, I just believe we can.
Hey.
I got good news and...
good news.
100 ounces. (LAUGHTER)
(CHEERING)
Yeah! Pretty good! Awesome.
100 ounces, are you kidding me?
Isn't that cool?
That is cool. No way!
Whoa. No! 37 more.
Yeah!
37. Nice!
Whoo!
That's one cleanup? Yeah. 137.
That's our absolute best cleanup.
We're at 414 right now and climbing.
So, you know, guys,
all I can say is good job.
You know, you earned it.
Awesome.
But, guess what.
We went past the break-even point.
Everything now is putting
in our pockets.
Nice!
Guys, you see that?
That's a team effort, right there.
Todd's night shift has more than
doubled their best cleanup to date.
They have now mined
over $600,000 in gold,
and they've passed a major milestone.
We have a major breakthrough.
We're past the break-even point.
Now, there's gold going in people's
pockets. That's why I'm here.
From here on in, everything they pull
out of the ground is pure profit.
But, with less than a month
of the season left,
and a million-dollar goal,
they still have a long way to go.
We only got 414 ounces,
we're 586 ounces short.
Night and day, we've got a chance
of getting 1,000 ounces.
I believe we can do it,
but we're running out of time.
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