Jade Fever (2015–…): Season 3, Episode 10 - Night Moves - full transcript

Cold weather, frozen water lines and the threat of snow force the crew to set up lights and work all night to get the jade slabs quarried. Alan Qiao returns from China to assess the jade.

(intense country music)

- [Mike] Just trying to stay
in touch with the world.

Negative three decibels.

- [Guy] Right there?

- [Mike] The dip in the rock there?

- [Guy] In the rock?

- [Mike] Just kind of aim for that.

- [Narrator] At the
Dynasty Jade mine, Mike Mee

is on a mission to bring the internet

to the middle of nowhere.

- [Guy] Yeah, I think we'll have to



bring her down five degrees.

Cause you move it a millimeter,
it's a mile and a half

where it's pointing to, right?

- [Narrator] Mike and
Justin's investors want

to keep a closer tab on the
young miner's operation.

- [Guy] Kay, go look at your computer.

[Tent zipping]

- There's a lot of people that have

kind of put their faith
in Justin and myself.

You know, for us to completely disappear

for a couple weeks while we set up

and are lacking internet connectivity

is kinda stressful for them.

(Satellite Beeping)



- [Mike] It's doing a weird beep now.

- What Justin and Mike are wanting to do

with Dynasty is something
that's never been done

in the jade industry,
so they're really trying

something new.

- [Narrator] They've
brought in special wire saws

that can slice out giant blocks of jade.

- If this mining method works, and appears

to be viable and
efficient, that's huge for

the jade industry as a whole.

What's it at?

- 10-8!

- Little more.

- 12-70!

(satellite beeping)
- Kay, hold it.

- 12-93!

- We got a heartbeat!

- C'mon green check mark!

Boom!

We're done, we're good.

I got a Facebook status update.

Now let's go see how many
angry e-mails I have.

(computer notification sound)

Alan sent me an e-mail.

- Alan?

- Alan's in China this
year, he's promoting

the Canadian jade, that's
what he wants to work on.

- [Narrator] Claudia's mining partner

for the last five years, Alan Qiao,

stepped away from the
day-to-day mining this year

to focus on a bigger goal.

- This is like a 20 tons
boulder from Wolverine.

- [Narrator] Alan wants
to go beyond selling

Canadian jade jewelry and carvings.

- [Alan] This is amazing
rock from Wolverine,

and he want to buy more from us.

- [Narrator] He's keen
to see the slabs of jade

that Justin and Mike are
trying to quarry at Dynasty.

- It's a huge market,
and a huge potential.

- It's really important
that Alan comes here

and is happy with what the boys have done,

that he thinks that
they're on the right track.

- [Narrator] But with
only small pieces of jade

to show for their efforts, Justin and Mike

are in a race to get
their first block of jade

out in time for Alan's visit.

- It's good to get his
input on what's happening

with the program, and
at the end of the day

we all stand to win big
if we pull this off.

- Now we're under the gun.

- Lots of night shifts, lots of cutting.

(rocks shattering)

- Oh my god!

(truck running)

- [Man] This is gonna be
the million dollar rock!

(intense music)

- Yee-haw!

(Claudia laughs)

- [Claudia] Jade makes
people do crazy things.

(suspenseful music plays)

(car doors slam)

- [Justin] Now, we'll
just set it right here.

- [Narrator] Justin, Guy, and Gary

are aiming for a little beginner's luck.

- We're setting up to drill the third

and final hole, and hoping to meet up

with the two previous
holes drilled lower below.

There's a pretty good
chance we're not gonna

hit it, but who knows.

Might get first try lucky.

- Yeah, we're hoping for luck here.

- [Narrator] This is their first attempt

at trying to connect
three holes 20 feet deep

in the bedrock.

(mining sounds)

- Hey!

- [Narrator] To quarry jade, they need

to drill two horizontal
holes and one vertical.

From there, they will thread
the saw wire through the holes

and make three separate cuts.

If they do it properly, they
should be able to slide out

a cube of jade.

- We got a two and a half inch hole there,

this one's about 16 feet deep,

then we got another one that's 21 feet,

and we met 'em.

Now, we just gotta meet the third one.

Then, we can do three cuts
and then all come out.

(motor running)

- [Narrator] It's a game of inches to see

if the vertical hole
they're drilling will meet

the intersection of the
two horizontal ones.

- (drilling noises)

- [Guy] That's seven feet right up here.

Lucky, lucky

- [Narrator] Guy has
come up with a unique way

of knowing if they've been successful.

- I put a piece of
paper towel in the hole,

so if we did break through
the air would burst

out of both sides and the
paper towel coming out

means we hit.

(drilling sounds)

- Hey!
(suspenseful music)

Nice.

- Very lucky.

- We got her, fair enough.

We hit three holes
together, that's very good.

Our first time doing
it, too, so very happy.

That going to be a good level there, or?

- [Justin] Should be good there, yeah.

- [Narrator] Now, the crew
needs to snake the saw wire

through the two horizontal holes.

- [Guy] Which one you want, you want

to cut that bottom first, right?

- [Justin] Yeah, we'll
do the bottom cut first.

- [Narrator] Their plan is to feed a rope

through the holes, then
they'll attach the saw wire

to the rope and pull it around.

- [Justin] The key to
this working is the rope

making it to the other end.

- [Guy] Air won't push the layer

but it might move the rope.

- [Narrator] They want to propel the rope

through the two holes
by blasting in some air.

And they've brought some
high-tech mining equipment

to help keep the air pressure up.

- [Guy] All you need is
air and a beach towel!

And an old shirt! (laughs)

- I have no idea if this
is going to work or not,

but it's worth a shot.

- I can't see it working, but, hey.

Let 'er rip!

(suspenseful music)

- [Gary] Anytime you're ready, man!

(Motor running)

(water flowing)

- [Guy] Did it go in any?

- [Gary] It was pulling it in!

I can't see it,
- [Guy] No?

- [Gary] It's not here anymore.

- [Narrator] The air
pushed the entire rope

into the drill hole.

Now, it's lodged in eight feet deep.

- [Gary] Well I'll find
a branch or something

with a stick, I'll get that outta there.

- That's (beep)-ing funny.

- [Gary] Now we just need
a screw or a small nail,

or a piece of hay wire.

- [Guy] I want in on this.

- [Gary] Well you can hold the light.

- [Guy] MacGyver 101 right here.

- [Narrator] They need
to fish the rope back out

of the hole.

- See this?

Million dollar mining outfit, we're down

to a branch, a gear
clamp, and a bungee hook.

Gentle, be one with the branch.

Jiggle it, jiggle it, jiggle it!

Eh, eh, oh, nothing.

- [Gary] I can see it balled
up and a buncha rocks.

- [Guy] Need a better branch.

- [Gary] I got a different idea, Guy.

It's called a drill steel.

- [Guy] I got an idea, too.

I ain't got time playing
no damn games, here.

(metal hitting rock)

Got something.

Uh, I think I got it.

And it broke.

Pulled the hook out, yup.

We don't have a roll
of haywire here, do we?

- [Narrator] Guy thinks
he can hook the rope

with a long piece of haywire.

- [Guy] I thought there was
a roll of haywire in here,

but no.

We're probably the only
mine site that does not have

a roll of haywire.

Haywire, duct tape, and a hammer.

Nobody forgets all that.

We did.

(dramatic music)

(dramatic music)

- It's really beautiful.

It's just a little bit far.

Otherwise I'd like to come here every day.

- [Narrator] Claudia's old
business partner, Alan Qiao,

is arriving in Jade City.

Before he goes to the Dynasty mine site,

he wants to open his cabin for
the first time this summer.

- This is my cabin, I stay here,

it's my second home. (laughs)

For me, Dynasty is a big potential, right.

Anyone who sees how the jade looks like,

"Hey, their jade is good,"

that's our future.

Let's see, ahh!

Hm, Chinese food.

Very important for me. (laughs)

Seems everything's fine.

Not showing any mouse or something.

Let's see down here.

Holy smokes.

My chair is sitting there.

The wind blow my chair to there.

Or something, maybe a squirrel?

All right, let's go.

And now the boys just do some cutting.

I want to see what jade they got.

(wind blows)

- [Narrator] At Dynasty,

- [Guy] Yeah, let's do the water trick.

That'll get (beep) moving.

- [Narrator] The crew has been trying

to thread a guide rope
through drill holes,

but the rope is lost deep in the hardrock.

- We're gonna try and
blast the air and water

and blow whatever debris in there out.

- [Gary] Okay, go crank 'er up.

- [Guy] Comin' in hot!

(machines working)

- [Guy] Kay, clear!

(water flowing)

(motor sounds)

- Hang on, Guy, it's blowing
it right back out this way.

- [Narrator] The blast of
water didn't move the rope.

- [Justin] It's in the same
spot but there's a buncha

rocks blowing in there now.

- [Narrator] But it has
pushed in more debris.

- My little coil went down here

- So it did?

- So it did go that way a bit.

Shoulda come out.

I'm just wondering if it's all balled up,

that's why the water's staying right here.

So leave the water in the top,

take the air line out.

- [Gary] We'll bring it down here.

If we get enough, we should
blow them rocks outta there, eh?

- [Guy] Yuh.

- [Narrator] By flushing
the holes out with water,

they hope to clear everything out.

- [Justin] There's gonna
be a boatload of water

coming outta that one.

(suspenseful music)

- [Gary] Fire it up!

(motor running)

- [Guy] One more time.

(water spraying)

- [Justin] Well, there's your problem.

- [Guy] She was balled up!

- Because of all the
debris and rock and stuff,

it's tangled up the rope, so
it just created a rat's nest.

- [Narrator] It's time for a new approach.

- Hey, light bulb just come on.

Gary, picking up what
I'm laying down, here?

- [Gary] Yup!

- Guy came up with the idea of sticking

a water bottle cap on.

- So the wind catches
on the inside, and yeah

(wind blowing noises)

- I smell what you're laying down.

- [Justin] And we drop
one end from the center.

(air flowing)

We blew it out the one end,
then we did the same thing

to the other end of the rope.

- [Guy] There's our rope!

- [Narrator] The bottle cap trick works.

The air pushes the rope through.

[Justin] Start sawing!

- [Narrator] Now, they
can attach the saw wire

to the rope and thread
it through the hole.

- [Gary] Should be getting
to the corner right away.

There it is.

- Give her a tug back.

- Nice.

- We got her!
- [Gary] Hoo, yeah!

- Nice!
- [Justin] Good job.

- Happy dance!

(country music)

- [Guy] Little more...good.

Ready, Gary?

- [Gary] Yup, I'll see what happens.

- [Narrator] After hours of delays,

the first quarry cut of jade is underway.

(motors running)

(country music)

- Just down the road, Alan
is heading towards site.

- My big concern, you know, is

how good the Dynasty jade is.

(door slams)

- [Narrator] If he likes what he sees,

Alan could help Justin
and Mike create demand

for jade tabletops in the
lucrative Chinese jade market.

- [Alan] Hello.
- [Gary] How ya doing?

- [Alan] Good.
- [Gary] Alan, I presume?

- Alan, nice to meet you.
- Gary.

- Alan's opinion about
jade quality is important

because he still is
the one that's in China

trying to sell the jade.

- [Justin] Guy and I are
starting night shifts tomorrow.

- [Alan] Oh.

- [Justin] Yeah, two
on days, two on nights.

So this one goes in 15 feet,
there's one on the back

that goes in 22, and they
all meet in the one spot.

Another hole up here.

- [Alan] This is good way to cut the jade.

- [Justin] Oh, yeah.

This is way better, we
did this whole piece

and that whole piece in one day.

- One day.

- And then, this big piece
up here was in two days.

- [Narrator] The cutting may be fast,

but Alan's not so sure
about the jade here.

- I have a feeling, in
this area, you know,

too fractured.

There's a lot of fractures so far.

And I want to see some,
like really good quality

and least you can make it for, like

high-end construction material.

If everything's like that, it's going to

be a problem for you.

- [Justin] Could be, yeah, for sure.

- [Alan] Cause a big
issue for you is to get

your money back.

- [Justin] Yeah.

- [Alan] I saw very good stuff over here.

- The color's nice but it needs
a lot of drilling, though.

- [Narrator] The higher
quality jade is deeper down,

but they might not reach
it before the snow hits.

Alan is concerned Justin and Mike may not

see any return on their
$300,000 investment.

- [Alan] The big problem is the time.

I'm worried about your investment.

- [Justin] I took a big risk doing this.

- The big problem is
that so many fracture,

it's not useful.

I think it's not really good jade.

- [Mike] What's wrong?

- Obviously, Alan's
opinion of the jade quality

is a large factor.

- I think Alan was hoping for
some jewelry-grade material.

- [Justin] We're back to Stage One again.

(guitar country music)

- [Narrator] In Jade
City, the mining program's

about to go under the lights.

The crew hopes working around the clock

will make up for a slow start.

- So looking forward to night shifts.

- This is a light tower
we're going to rent

off of a friend of mine.

There should be no tripping
and no running into stuff.

- [Narrator] Justin and Guy
have drawn the short straw,

they're the night crew.

- So you got no problem
with mining at night?

- [Guy] No problem!

Night shift is like walking
into a piece of equipment

at Wolverine, you don't want to do it,

but you have to.

- [Justin] We're running out
of time, weather's coming in,

so we need to start
ramping up our production,

so, for us to do that, we're
gonna start night shift.

So we're trying to
maximize everything we got.

- Justin, come hug your mother.

- Look...oh yeah, milk.

Justin, go hug your mother.

(truck motor running)

- Remember, you'll stay
warmer if you cuddle naked.

(truck motor running)

- Quit trying to make me
feel good about night shift,

okay, just let it go.

- [Claudia] Wahoo!

- [Guy] Yeah, yeah, yeah, oooooh!

- [Claudia] Have fun!

(slow electric guitar music)

- [Guy] Night shift,
it's dark, imagine that.

(laughs)

- Nobody likes working night shift.

Not very many people anyways.

It's a terrible shift to work.

- [Guy] Pouring rain,
but we'll get night shift

organized here.

We'll ladder up here in a bit.

Eight kilowatt light power,
she'll light up the whole pit.

When my buddy bought this, we set it up,

that was quite a few years ago.

We had a few beers in us, so,
gotta read the instructions,

cause I wasn't exactly
sober when we first did it.

C'mon.

- We're gonna try and aim the lights

towards the face and see if
we're in a good position.

Right here.

(cranking noises)

- [Guy] Aha! Let 'er rip.

(motor starts)

Okay, there she goes.

It's gonna be like downtown Montreal!

What do you think?

- [Justin] It's about as
good as night shift gets.

- [Guy] She all lit up! (laughs)

Let her warm up for a bit.

- [Narrator] They want to
have better quality jade

to show Alan before he
heads back to China.

- The wire saw's cutting
for 20-sum hours a day

is gonna be huge.

It's gonna get us toward
our goal a lot faster.

Cutting really good.

First pot of coffee's brewing,
everything's looking good

right now.

- (Guy) Night shift's
for whores and thieves.

I ain't wearing a skirt,
and there's nothing here

for me to steal.

- [Narrator] Just a few hours
into their first all-nighter,

the cuts are done, and they're ready

to extract the first block from the site.

(dramatic music)

- [Justin] Cut in, quite a way's here.

- [Guy] That's not bad.

- The one vertical cut's about a foot away

from finishing, so we're
just gonna go remove

the first cube that we cut out.

Should be exciting to see the way that

this pit finally take a quarry form.

Our whole project is based on getting that

dimensional stone block.

- [Guy] Because we get
three cuts all around it,

should just naturally move.

Now we'll try and bring
the jade out in one piece.

(heavy machines working)

- [Narrator] Guy carefully
positions the bucket's teeth

on the cut line.

(machine cutting into rocks)

- [Guy] There's a chunk of it moving.

- [Justin] I can see something moving.

- [Guy] Oh, yeah.

- [Narrator] Rather than
sliding out in a solid cube,

the jade is full of
fractures and crumbles away.

- [Guy] There's one or two pieces there

that are kinda good.

So, that's one.

- [Justin] This one here, is jade, too.

- [Guy] How 'bout that one, right here?

- [Narrator] At Dynasty,

- [Claudia] Show us what you guys found.

Claudia, Alan, and the rest of the crew,

are checking out the fruits
of the night crew's labor.

- [Claudia] Wow, okay,
lots of little pieces.

- [Justin] Yeah.
- [Claudia] (laughs)

- [Narrator] It's the last
chance for Justin and Mike

to impress Alan.

- Alan's concerned about the fractures,

and he's concerned about
how far along the boys

have gotten.

He cares that the boys don't
lose money and don't lose face.

- [Justin] We've drilled,
these two holes meet perfectly,

we're just drilling the vertical one now.

You can see, the lenses just pop out.

There's one there...

- [Narrator] The first
quarry attempt may not have

gone as planned, but it has exposed

more jade lenses underfoot.

- [Guy] There's one
right behind Alan's foot.

- [Mike] There's one underneath Alan.

- [Guy] You're standing on it right now.

- [Mike] There's another guy right there.

- [Claudia] Oh my god,
it looks like a quarry.

- [Mike] That's the point! (laughs)

- This is a really good way to mine jade.

Chunk by chunk
- [Claudia] Yeah.

- [Narrator] Alan thinks
Justin and Mike are

on the right track.

- [Alan] That's pretty good.

- [Narrator] And he's
changed his mind about

the quality he's seeing at Dynasty.

- Today what I saw is way
better than the other day.

They did a wonderful job.

And they're on the right way.

Two or three meters down,

it's going to meet the
better quality stuff.

- [Narrator] But, with
colder weather creeping in,

they may not be able to
get to the good stuff

before freeze-up.

- The only thing I'm
worried about is the timing.

- Oh, yeah, we're going
to run out of time.

- We need to go down deeper,
but the weather is pretty cold.

And I'm worried about the
water is going to frozen,

and stop the wire saw.

(zipping tent)

- [Guy] Might want to phone Mother Nature.

- [Narrator] Mike hops online to check

the latest weather report.

- Dease Lake weather.

There's snow in the forecast tomorrow,

praying that isn't the case.

(wind blows)

- Justin and Mike are running out of time,

because the snow's coming.

They need to get the Jade down.

(motor running)

- [Narrator] Mike wants to see for himself

how close the snow line is getting.

- Hmm.

Hey, Gary, do you copy?

- [Gary] Sure, right ahead.

- Kay, it looks very cold up there.

There's even a cornice.

I'm hoping it stays up there.

- [Narrator] Next time, on Jade Fever.

(metal hitting rock)

(dramatic music)

- So that water we shut down.

- [Guy] Got caught.
That time of year, man!

- The night shift always (beep)s it up.

- [Guy] Son of a bitch, eh!

Cursed fin.

- Our whole program's based
on that thing coming down.

- [Guy] Well, you gotta
hold onto her, man!

- [Mike] I (beep)ing hate this (beep).

- [Guy] If anything goes wrong,

they're gonna lose everything.

(dramatic music)

- [Guy] Is it still frozen?