Jade Fever (2015–…): Season 1, Episode 10 - Out of Bounds - full transcript

After finally uncovering some promising boulders at the Wolverine mine, the crew discovers they may have breached their claim lines.

(hammer striking)

- [Claudia] I'm Claudia Bunce,

I love jade.

- [Man] Woo hoo, tubes of jade.

- Up here near the Yukon in Jade City,

we've the the world's richest
deposits of nephrite jade

and the Chinese want it.

(man laughing)

- This is gonna be the
million dollar rock.

- Now we just have to find it.

Woo-hoo gold!



I will dig until my hands bleed.

(whooshing and crashing)

(whooshing and crashing)

(whooshing and crashing)

(whooshing and crashing)

Jade makes people do crazy things.

(crashing)

(laughing)

(helicopter blades whirring)

- [Pilot] There's a Delta
down there at the bottom

on the right hand side.

- [Claudia] Stuck on the side of the road?

- [Pilot] Yep.

- [Steve] You know they made
that movie, "The Road to Hell".



That's nothing compared to this.

This is the road to hell.

(Claudia laughs)

- [Narrator] On a helicopter
headed to the remote

Wolverine Jade Mining Claim.

Jade's City's founding father

is going to try to turn
around his daughter's fortune.

- Oh my god look how big that trench is.

Dad, can you see?

- [Steve] I does look
messy from the air, eh?

- [Narrator] Today Steve
Simonovic has been brought out

to help in the search for nephrite jade.

(upbeat guitar music)

- [Man] Good to see you.

- Hey, how's going?

- [Narrator] A week earlier
Steve helped broker a truce.

- [Claudia] You're late.

- [Claudia] Between
Claudia and Alan's company

and a new investor group from China.

- [Steve] You're not
going to sleep with them.

- No.

- You're mining.

Get it done.
- For sure, sure I'm not.

- [Narrator] For now Steve's
been tasked with getting

the Jade City crew
underperforming season on track.

- [Steve] Well, let's go take a look.

(hammer striking)

Sounds good.

That's how you find them.

It echoes and hammer bounces off.

Ordinary rock.

(hammer tapping)

See?

(hammer tapping)

See this one sounds different
you can hear, longer.

Definitely by the sound.

(hammer tapping)

- [Claudia] My dad
started this jade industry

and he started Jade
City over 30 years ago.

- [Steve] This looks good here.

- [Claudia] He wanted to
get rich in jade mining.

(hammer tapping)

And he did.

- Greenstone, she can fool you, green eh.

But the difference, see the grain?

Tells you it's not jade.

Jade is very smooth and you
don't see grain in the jade.

- Steve, he was the number
one guy in the jade business

in Canada before.

Which one you think's the best?

- [Steve] Huh?

- This one and the other one.

- [Steve] This one.

I don't know what the hell it is

with these outside speckles.

You hardly ever see jade
anywhere with this outside.

Yeah no good.

Nothing here.

(hammer tapping)

(sighs) Yeah, too much
rock, not enough jade.

I'd have to change the place.

If you don't find enough
in one spot, you move.

You know it's there.

You know you gotta find it.

(chain clanking)

- [Man] Okay, good.

(metal clanking)

That's good, that's good.

- [Narrator] At Dynasty,
Josh and new driller, Rob

are prepping for one
more shot at hard rock.

- Okay, good enough.

Perfect.

Doing our last day here and
if we don't hit (beep) today

mine site's shut down.

- [Narrator] The Hard Rock
Drill Program has had its ups

and downs.

- Woo-hoo tubes of jade.

That's what you call the (beep) goods.

(beep) Six, that's all I got.

(beep) hell.

- (beep) damn jade is right there.

It's like they play hide and seek for us.

Keep me. (sighing)

- [Narrator] Information
on the exact location

of the season's best core samples was lost

after driller Kevin's near fatal crash

with a moose.

(door shutting)

(siren wailing)

The corers were scattered in a ditch.

- [Claudia] This piece might fit here.

We have no idea how far down we are.

- Nope.

- [Narrator] So today Claudia and Alan

have agreed to one more day of drilling.

In hopes they can pinpoint the location

of the valuable lands Kevin hit.

- [Leslie] Good morning.

- [Man] Hey Leslie.

- [Leslie] I know I'm late but
that's just my middle name.

Let's get that lens last chance.

- [Narrator] Claudia and
Alan have put geologist,

Leslie Hunt in charge
of drilling at Dynasty.

- [Leslie] That is lovely.

- [Narrator] It's her job
to find the lens again

and figure out if it's
valuable enough to mine.

- Oh, this lens is elusive.

If it's there it's elusive.

If it's not then we're done drilling.

You right over where
it goes in the ground.

- [Man] 10.6 meters.

- You're marvelous thank you.

This is our last stab at it.

Yep, that's beautiful.

Righty ho and a way we go!

All right.

(machine cranking up)

- Time to start drilling.

(mechanical whirring)

- The small lens can be
worth like $50 million

But the thing with these jade lenses.

It's one of the hardest things to drill

'cause it's almost like a tube.

If you're drilling something
that's like a tube.

You can go under it 'cause they're small

in both horizontal and
vertical dimensions.

- Leslie takes this all really personally.

It's touch because she's
trying to prove something.

She wants us to be successful.

- 25 years of drilling,
this is the toughest

I've ever drilled.

You can't walk away from a property

with the fear that next
year someone's gonna

come in and find what you missed.

That's what keeps geologist
up at night. (giggles)

(mechanical whirring)

- Once I get to 60 feet
I'll send you a message.

I'll let you know what
we've seen at 60 feet.

- Yeah, we should hit at 30 though,

I'm hoping to start seeing jade at 30.

We're going to let them drill

and they'll bring the core up to me

and I'll look at it and
decide what we're doing.

I expect there to be jade here.

(dramatic music)

(whooshing)

- [Steve] This is where I
like to dig, a flat spot.

- [Narrator] Claudia's dad, Steve

has been hammering around at Wolverine.

He thinks the crew would
be better off digging

in another area.

- It seems like we're
digging in the wrong spots

because we're not coming
up with the good jade yet.

So we're frustrated
wondering if we're looking

in the right area.

- Always discuss your mountain range.

When you find one good one or half a good,

you're gonna find half a dozen around.

- Let's get moving.

(machines running)

- This looks good.

- [Narrator] Few people know
the area around Wolverine

better than Steve.

More than 30 years ago
the Jade City founder

staked many of the claims in the region.

He thinks the virgin
territory at Wolverine

is full of valuable jade boulders.

- It's right under the grass surface.

And you find a lot of rocks.

- Steve, when he talking about the jade

because he's been there
for quite a long time.

He's really knowledgeable.

And you know what.

- [Steve] Alan!

- [Alan] We found some rock.

- [Man] I just got excited.

(hammer tapping)

- That's the sound of money.

That's for sure.

(hammer tapping)

Woo-hoo.

- Here I thought it was a (beep) line

and there's a dozen rocks.

- [Steve] We got to go and check them out.

(hammer tapping)

This looks good here.

- This one?

And that other one there.

- Once in a while when you
hit, you hit like 20 pieces.

And that makes your season almost.

- [Alan] See that green right there.

This a dark green.

This is what we're looking for.

- Well this gives you a lot of promise.

- From what I see on the
outside it's jewelry grade.

- [Alan] You hit the jackpot.

If this one's good, a
quarter million dollars.

(hammer tapping)

- [Narrator] But big
finds don't go unnoticed

in jade country.

BC's Cassiar's Highlands may
look like an untamed wilderness

but they're actually subdivided
by carefully established

mining claims that have
neighbors competing

in close quarters.

- Everybody's close
enough that they can come

and chopper over us everyday

and make sure we're staying
on our side of the line

and see what we're doing
and see what we're finding.

Historically, if you were
an inch over the claim,

you're dead.

(laughs) You're hung.

- [Narrator] Even 120 kilometers
from the nearest road,

word travels fast.

- Everybody wants to have the
grade A $6 million boulder

of the season.

So if would have come out
with a grade A at that site.

And they have adjoining claims to us.

That would have been huge for them too.

Alan spots a neighboring
miner checking out the claim

adjacent to Wolverine.

- I see the truck.

It's a huge bladesaw.

(dramatic music)

Claudia, you see the truck.

It's a huge bladesaw.

- [Narrator] At Wolverine,
Alan spies a jade miner

on the claim next door.

- [Alan] I think they're Ernie's.

- [Narrator] He could be
checking to see no one's digging

on his claim.

- Okay, they're gone.

- [Narrator] For now it
seems there are no issues.

(mechanical humming)

- [Josh] Hey Rob, stop the drill.

Hopefully, it's jade.

- [Narrator] At Dynasty
Josh and Rob are drilling

the last test hole of the season.

- We're 42-43 feet out of
70 feet now on this rod.

- [Narrator] They were
expecting to see jade cores

at 30 feet.

- So with this tube I can
see the last little bit

that it drilled is clearly
not jade down here.

It's a pretty bad sign.

We got really bad fault going on in here.

We're getting pretty deep down there

so hopefully we see something soon

and if not, things are looking
grim for the Dynasty sight.

(engine starting up)

We exhausted a lot of
resources on Dynasty.

Wasted a lot of time and now
there's no ifs and or buts

about it.

We need to make it happen.

(hammer clanging)

(machine humming)

(machine chugging)

Bring it up.

(Josh grunts)

Ha, ha!

There's some (beep) jade!

This is what you want to see right here.

A good haul of jade.

Actually a couple of pieces in this run,

the right breakage where you can tell

that it's like a conglomerate

and that it's been broken apart

instead of shattered.

We got two consecutive pieces in one run.

So it's a good sign, good color.

So we'll see what Leslie has to say

and how much she likes that.

(rocks clacking)

This makes the day a success.

(country guitar music)

- [Narrator] Josh and Rob
bring the last drill cores

for inspection to geologist Leslie Hunt.

- [Leslie] Well.

- [Josh] We finally have
some jade to show you.

(Leslie cheers)

- [Leslie] Wonderful.

(water spraying)

- From right there.

- [Leslie] That's nice
translucency here though.

- Yeah, and right here.

Not enough but it's there at least.

- [Narrator] The cores are
from the same jade lens

Kevin hit a month earlier

but the lens is not nearly
as thick as they had hoped.

- It's nice.

- It's nice it's just
not consistent enough.

- Is it enough?

- That's your call to make.

We've been speculating all day

about what you're gong to say.

- Remember I'm not the owner.

- [Josh] That's right.

- [Narrator] Claudia and Robin
have come back from Wolverine

to make a final decision on Dynasty.

- How's it going?

- We've gone down deeper
in three different areas

and it's just not coming up.

- That Dynasty site's been elusive for us.

It's costs a lot of money
and we've been trying to find

that main lens

and find out where it's coming from.

But it's hiding from us.

- So there's no reason
why there couldn't be

massive grade A jade lenses around there.

But they're buried.

We have to make a decision.

- Yeah.

- Well I think that we need to focus

on Wolverine right now
and shut down Dynasty

for this season.

And I think we need to put
all our eggs in one basket

and go straight for Wolverine.

- At some point you have
to say, we'll stop here

'cause it's gonna cost.

- I think it's a good decision

to let it go for right now.

See you later.

- [Leslie] Yes.

- Thanks for everything.

We still have a lot to prove on Dynasty.

We haven't given up on Dynasty.

There's much more potential.

- A lot of sleepless night, oh my god.

Believe me you feel it
when you're not finding it,

it's your fault.

I don't know what that is
but you just do your best

using the knowledge that you have,

the information that you have.

And it's just not there this year.

So that's it.

- We have a three nice one.

That means probably half million dollar.

So pretty exciting.

- [Narrator] At Wolverine,
Alan and the crew

have moved to a new corner of the site

and are finally seeing some hopeful signs.

- We know there's some good jade there.

We're in the right place.

- [Narrator] The most promising
rock from the new area

is now under the saw.

(mechanical cutting)

(banjo twanging)

- [Alan] This one's good.

(indistinguishable)

No fracture.

(beep) grade A.

But finally we found it.

(helicopter buzzing)

- What do you think that
chopper's doing Key?

Snooping around checking
to see what we're cutting.

Oh, they're coming to land here.

Not sure who this is.

- Yeah, mine inspector.

- It is right.

Is everything good here?

- We'll find out.

(helicopter whirring)

- [Narrator] A surprise
visit from a mining inspector

and conservation officer

has put operations at Wolverine on hold.

- [Mine Inspector] Is
Robin and Claudia around?

- [Man] Nope, they'll be in tomorrow.

- [Narrator] All the
activity has attracted

the attention of the mining inspector.

- The mining inspector is god.

He can take your mining permits.

You can be banned from mining for life.

- They can come at any
time to check and make sure

it's nothing illegal and
everybody follow the rule.

- [Mine Inspector] There is one issue.

- The mines inspector told
us that we might be off

on our GPS lines.

- [Narrator] If the Jade
City crew has been mining

on someone else's claim,

it will cost them much
more than just the season.

- If you took the jade from
other people's property,

for example like a quarter
million dollars boulder,

that's a criminal charge.

That's a big thing.

- [Man] Hey, thanks for dropping in.

- [Mine Inspector] Good season.

- [Man] Nice to talk to you.

Let's go before we eat some dust.

(helicopter whirring)

- We want to do everything by the book

and we want to stay really good and clean

with our mines inspector.

We want to be in the good books with them.

- [Narrator] So the next
day Claudia and Robin

return to double check their claim lines.

- We want to expand our mining.

But I wanna make sure we
don't cross our claim line.

If you look at the rock formation
where the creek runs up,

right where the hoe is there's
a V in the mountain there.

And that where the creek comes down.

- So it's this way, this is ours.

So this actually goes this way right here.

It's really difficult to have
an exact, exact location.

- Where are we sitting on our claim?

- [Robin] Where are we at?

We're standing right.

Alan, we're somewhere in this area here.

And then what I staked
was this line right here.

- I think we had way too many things to do

in the very beginning and maybe we forgot

to find out exactly where our lines were.

Probably should have done that right away.

- [Narrator] Robin calls in
Leslie and his brother Donnie

to get a precise reading
of their claim lines.

- I sent Leslie and Donnie out to our site

so we knew exactly where the line is.

- [Leslie] You want me to
outline your two claims?

- Leslie brings in the
expertise that we don't have

in our company.

- I'm gong to start walking
and flagging all the way

along the claim line.

- She's been through every
piece of those mountains.

- Let's go to point four

which is where the two claim lines meet.

(brush rustling)

- You have to establish where the line is.

You do not want to be going on

to the other other's person's claim.

- [Leslie] Good Donnie?

- Yes.

We cannot cross that line at
all because if we cross it

instantly we're going to court.

- 90.5.

- [Donnie] On this side is Ernie's.

- [Leslie] You there's too
much metal around here.

Are you at 318/260?

- [Donnie] 360.

- [Leslie] What's the other one?

- 257, the top one's at 360.

- If that point is one the line.

Then that's our line.

- Holy (beep).

You're not on the claim.

- (beep)

(dramatic music)

- I'm worried that that's not our land.

- [Narrator] Out at Wolverine,

the Jade City crew's claim
lines have been thrown

into question.

- We are totally way
off on our claim lines,

this can cost us to move our whole camp,

to readjust the way that
we're mining this season.

I could lose my permit for
life to ever mine jade.

It's serious.

- We on 36267, I'm
thinking 268's right here.

That's the line.

And I'll go and stand on the line.

- [Narrator] Leslie's
compass and GPS reading

shows the claim line is
going right throw the middle

of the work site.

- Well, we gotta get rid of this metal.

Because of magnetics
that affect the compass.

We got to get rid of that.

(engine humming)

- Okay.

It was the CAT that made
all that difference.

- The bulldozer was affecting the GPS.

The heavy metal drew it off.

- Yeah, that CAT made a
big difference didn't it?

That was scary.

We're, I think we're good.

Holy (beep) did they cut that tight.

- [Narrator] However Claudia
and Robin aren't completely

in the clear.

- Actually can you see
Donnie is that the south end

of that work site.

- All that was over the
line was the outhouse.

- So now the outhouse has to be moved.

- [Robin] You know this might get ugly.

- As it works out I'm not
stealing from my neighbors

but what I've been doing
is (beep) on his lawn.

- [Robin] Should check up
on the guy that's in there.

(man yells)

(man grunts)

- That's a massive weight
off our shoulders to know

that we're pretty close
on to our GPS line.

- It's our job to make
sure we do everything

the right way.

- [Narrator] The claim lines are verified

and digging in the new area
is turning up the biggest

finds of the season.

- [Claudia] Did you scrap it?

- [Robin] OI just scraped the dirt off.

- We got lucky this season this time.

- This is a nice rock.

This is the highest quality I've seen yet.

That is incredible just
like a stop light green, eh?

- Mm-hmm that's a nice one.

- It's nicer than the
stuff we saw in pit two.

There's an awful lot of boulders here,

it seems like they're pulling
out new boulders everyday.

Five, 10 new boulders every day.

If they find more of those,

we'll be here a whole bunch of years.

- So it seems like a pretty lucky spot.

So they're going to keep going.

- Way to go.

Good work.

- Take a picture and
make some phone calls.

- Stay and celebrate
with my husband. (laughs)

- Keep working because we
haven't got time to stop.

(Claudia laughs)

- Okay, we're confident now.

- [Claudia] Yeah, dumpkins.

- [Steve] I will cover.

- [Narrator] Next time on Jade Fever.

- [All] Row, row.

- Stop!

(crashing)

(beep)

(crashing)

(man groans)

- [Alan] We met, don't
tell me what I supposed

to do in my camp.

- [Man] But it's not going
to be a pleasant day today.

- [Robin] I did not say splitting wood.

- Ding, ding.

- Just steeper than that.

- Tell me to shush.

- [Robin] You might be
annoyed by me right now

but I don't care.

- [Alan] If we are not
successful this year,

the company's closed.

(dramatic music)