Gold Rush (2018) s05e16 Episode Script
Rivers of Gold
NARRATOR: In the goldfields of the Klondike It's time to finish this.
Just as winter begins knocking on the door, the Hoffmans chase their best pay streak of the season.
Yes! Great day to be a miner.
But when Jack drops a boulder into Monster Red That's a bunch of (BLEEP).
It didn't go through the grizzly bars.
They're saying that I dumped it over the side.
That's BS! You can see it didn't.
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their operation grinds to a halt.
STEVE: Hit the bypass! Big tailings conveyor's locked up! At Eureka Creek, things fall apart And we're ready, now we'll lift it.
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when Tony leaves his crew in charge of a critical piece of the dredge.
MIKE: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
No! And at Scribner Creek, Parker's quest for thawed ground We're running out of time.
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takes a drastic step It's gonna be like a treasure hunt.
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when Gene Cheeseman diverts a river RICK: Would you look at that? Yeah, that's quite a bit of water.
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to get down to big, chunky gold PARKER: That's a nice pan.
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leading to one of Parker's best clean-ups ever.
I always told you that stuff would be in the ground.
McKinnon Creek, the Klondike.
There is just three weeks left in the mining season.
And the Hoffman crew is determined to make them count.
Another beautiful morning in the Klondike.
We got one last push so we're gonna push the crew and the machinery as hard as they can go.
We have a goal and, uh, we're gonna make it, if the ice holds off long enough.
It's time to finish this.
This is the last push, so (MACHINE STARTING) All we're doing now is getting gold, no stripping.
All we got to do is haul the pay to the plant and run it and get gold.
Their gold total stands at 780 ounces, worth $936,000.
To hit their 1,000-ounce season goal, they need to keep Monster Red running 300 yards an hour for as many days as possible.
You think we can do it? I think, so long as we've got stuff to run and everything keeps running, yeah, I'm up for it.
Let's do it.
Just north of the haul road, Todd digs paydirt from their new cut.
The ground on the other side of the road yielded 132 ounces, worth over $150,000.
TODD: This stuff here, I'm starting to hit some bigger rocks, which is good.
Starting to get real, real good in here, looks like to me.
Hey, Andy.
Todd has just found ground that could lead to an even bigger payday.
Look at that weird-coloured brown stuff.
Yeah.
Is that bedrock, decomposed? Yeah.
You can see the bank of a river right here.
That's what we want.
Look at the colour of that, see that? Any time we find rocks like that that are settled right in it next to bedrock, it's just the bottom where all the heavy gold just seems to concentrate, so This was on the edge of something.
There's quartz right there.
Once you start getting into those bigger boulders, you start seeing better gold.
Means you're in a deeper river channel, a channel that could move those bigger rocks in.
Quartz and big boulders are signs of gold-rich dirt.
Todd's find could be the breakthrough they desperately need.
From all indications, this looks pretty good.
That haul-road cut, that channel that we found in there could come right through here, I don't know.
With winter coming, the crew races to get the new riverbed paydirt through the wash-plant.
We got the ground that has the gold so, uh, the morale is high, so Great day to be a miner.
STEVE: Guys, guys.
Hit the bypass, hit the bypass, hit the bypass.
The tailings conveyor's blocked up! THURBER: Shut it down! Upriver, at Scribner Creek .
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Parker Schnabel's claim is at a standstill.
He's out of paydirt and hasn't run his wash-plant for 24 hours.
So, we're losing another day of production.
We gotta get this plant running.
For the last three weeks, the 20-year-old mine boss has been on the hunt for thawed ground.
But all he's found so far is permafrost.
See, cos I just went down to 3ft of red gravel and it's frozen under that.
So that means that our pay is still froze.
We are having a really hard time finding thawed ground, you know, and that has given us a pretty big problem.
Parker has 1,508 ounces, worth 1.
8 million dollars.
But this late in the season, unless he can find thawed paydirt, he can kiss his 2,000oz dream goodbye.
It's been stressful trying to figure out where the rest of the gold is gonna come from.
We came up here with a pretty big goal and this could really, uh, throw a cog in a lot of that, you know.
(SQUEAKING) Do you hear that? It's squeaking awfully bad and that's not good.
(BLEEP) Can't one stupid thing go right? The D10 tracks are dangerously loose.
Parker needs to get the 85-tonne machine out of the cut before the tracks give out completely.
About my only option right now is to go back to the (BLEEP) yard.
(SQUEAKING) Hey, Gene, this thing's squeaking really bad.
The tracks are looser than hell.
I don't know if that would do it.
They are stretched out.
These are oiled pins, you know, if you look at them These pins? Yeah, they're See, right here, it's wore clear through.
Holy (BLEEP), that is wore out.
It's I know it's not what you want to hear, it's just it's time for it to get some attention.
Right.
All right, well, we'll have to fix it.
Parker's season has gone from bad to worse.
He's got no thawed ground and now his dozer is out of action.
We're trying to figure out what our options are because there really aren't that many now.
This time of year, it's, uh, hard to adjust to things like this.
We need to figure something out to get quick, easy, thawed pay up to the plant, and we're running out of time.
Gene heads out on a mission to find new ground.
Trying to figure out what, uh what we're going to do.
Just trying to make a plan.
Doing a little exploring around, trying to find some ground we can open up here that's not froze.
There's one place on the claim Gene thinks there's thawed ground, but it's not dirt they'll have to move - it's a river.
From the looks of the creek, it's It looks like it should be thawed, cos the river's there.
But till you really start exploring some more, you don't know for sure.
The ground under Sulphur Creek should be thawed.
If Gene's right, he could save Parker's season.
But first he has to work out how to divert a river.
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At Eureka Creek, Tony Beets has been working all season to resurrect a mining technique from a century ago.
He's vowed to have his antique dredge catching gold before winter shuts down the Yukon.
The tailings conveyor, or stacker, is 25 metres long and weighs in at seven tonnes.
Once operational, the stacker fits on the back of the dredge.
It will take worthless tailings from the trommel and move them out of the back of the dredge.
Well, the stacker has a couple of pins there on the bottom and they go on these cradles, here, and then it hangs off a cable off the other end.
But Tony is racing the Yukon winter.
He needs to push his operation into high gear.
First, they rig the stacker to a pair of cranes.
TONY: OK, that's looking good, guys.
Actually, Kevin, hang in there.
Going good, one end hooked up, one to go.
(TONY SPEAKING) Piece of cake.
Awesome, catch you.
Where you going? (CHUCKLES) To hook the stacker onto the dredge, the crew must work together to carefully line up two pivot pins with a set of cradles on the body of the dredge.
Joe directs the two cranes using hand signals.
Mike has an eye line to the docking point.
As the stacker moves forward, it gets between Joe and Mike, so Mike switches to using his radio.
We want a little bit of down, now suck it in.
But Joe doesn't have a radio.
Just a little bit.
Boom up just a little bit.
He's now directing blind.
MIKE: Hold up, got to go up a little bit.
Who's doing the directing out there? Monica! MONICA: What do you want Jerry to be doing? Joe? Jerry's definitely lowering.
Eh? Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.
Who's directing this? Has he got a (BLEEP) radio? Whoa, whoa, whoa! MONICA: Hold it! Stop! No! No! I said stop! That's what I said! He should have a (BLEEP) radio.
You need a (BLEEP) radio.
I'm trying to get him to stop because we're crashing into I-beams up here.
You stand on this side.
Who else has got a radio? Nobody.
(BLEEP) MAN: What the (BLEEP) is he doing? When Tony returns, it's chaos.
He quickly takes charge.
(TONY SPEAKING) JOE: More? You wanna go up a hair or what? (TONY SPEAKING) Good.
The stacker is finally attached to the dredge, but they still have to lift it into its final position.
(TONY SPEAKING) At McKinnon Creek .
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the Hoffman crew can't mine.
In their race to hit 1,000 ounces before the end of the season, the miners have pushed Monster Red hard, and it's taken its toll.
Once we get this box cleaned out, we'll know what's going on.
I think what we got is a hole worn in the side of this box.
And it's letting the rocks drop down through here and that's what's plugging up our tail pulley.
Oh, there you go.
Holy (BLEEP)! Abrasive bedrock has worn holes in the rock-box, causing rocks to fall into the tail pulley, causing a jam.
With one end of the tailings conveyor seized up and the other end still running, the drive belt has burnt through and the conveyor has split.
And this time, there's no quick fix.
KEVIN: Hey, Steve.
STEVE: Yeah? Look at our belt.
We got into the bedrock, it's real abrasive and sharp, just wore out a bunch of stuff pretty quick.
It's always that way.
It's the best gold we've ever seen, but it's the most abrasive, causes the most problems.
They're treading water until the conveyor is repaired.
DAVE: We gotta get this going, get back up and running as quick as we can.
We got to make the most of every minute, every second.
Let's get this thing going, you guys.
Dave mobilises the crew.
Every hour that they don't run dirt, they lose gold.
It's really bad timing, man.
We're on some really hot ground right now.
We can't get this fixed fast enough.
They reinforce the tailings chute and rock-box.
STEVE: Let the rocks pound on that instead of this steel.
And when it wears out, it's real easy to change.
Kevin stitches up the torn conveyor belt.
So, right where the seam is, we'll probably have to cut it out and do a whole new seam.
And Dave replaces the burnt-out drive belt.
After six hours, it's time to find out if their fixes have worked.
The belt's fixed, drive belts are on.
Kevin, let's see if this thing will run.
Fire it up, Kevin! (MACHINE STARTING) Looks good.
Hey, it's running, Steve! STEVE: Let's get some gold.
Good job.
It works.
Yes.
Took a little bit longer than we thought.
I think we're good.
It's cost them most of the day, but the Hoffman crew is back running gold-rich ground.
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At Scribner Creek in the Klondike, Parker Schnabel's wash-plant hasn't run in two days.
He's desperate for thawed paydirt.
His foreman Gene Cheeseman thinks he's found thawed ground, but it's underneath a running river.
So what's your plan? I think I got it figured out how it'd work.
We divert our water through the shortcut there and mine that whole area.
Should be thawed cos the river's there.
We'll get the creek bed, too? We'll get the creek bed, all of that.
There's hardly any overburden on it.
We could have pay to the plant in the next day or so.
All right, that sounds good to me.
Gene's plan is to divert Sulphur Creek through an old cut and expose the creek bed.
There will be no overburden to clear and Gene's hoping that the ground will have been thawed by the water.
Rick digs an area just on the edge of the river where they will divert the creek into the old cut.
Yeah, the creek is actually a kind of freebie in itself.
With water flowing through there, it took away all the overburden.
We don't gotta strip it.
All that's left is the gravel and the gold.
Gene digs an exit for the water so that it can rejoin the river downstream.
Digging out a channel here to make a new diversion to run the water through so we can, uh, mine out against the berm over there.
Well, I just got a last little bit of dirt here.
But just as Rick is about to release the water I'll let this sucker loose.
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the 60-tonne rock truck gets stuck up to its axles in the mud.
Come on, buddy, you can get out of there.
Come on Nope.
Not gonna happen.
Rick has no choice but to enter the danger zone and push the rock truck out.
I just need that berm to hold for another three minutes.
Yeah, this isn't an ideal situation.
I got a creek rushing by directly on my right which is about 5ft higher than the bottom of this rock truck and it's trying to come in this way.
So hopefully that little berm that I left doesn't let go and let the creek in here on me.
That's quite a bit of water.
Come on, come on.
All right, he's clear.
After five hours of moving dirt, Rick is finally ready to break through the berm to divert Sulphur Creek.
Here we go.
I shouldn't have to dig that big of a hole.
It should start to just rush through and take it down itself.
Oh, yeah, that's quite a bit of water.
(CHUCKLES) Within 15 minutes, Parker has a fresh supply of what he is hoping is thawed ground.
But there's only one way to find out if it's got gold.
Yeah, I mean, basically, this stuff, right here, is the dead centre of the valley.
Since it's in the middle of the valley, it should be good.
That's a nice pan.
I think underneath all that creek there .
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could be main pay.
And I've never mined main pay before.
It could be really good ground.
You know, it could be the best gold on the claim.
Ancient, fast-flowing rivers carved valleys through the Klondike, leaving big gold deposits known as main pay.
Over time, the rivers slowed and changed course, laying down much smaller gold deposits known as side pay.
Over the last 100 years, miners extracted virtually all the main pay in the valley.
Parker's banking on the fact that they left a streak of main pay beneath the creek.
Rick digs the newly-exposed creek bed.
We're starting to head towards the main pay channel that they mined, uh, you know, 30 years ago or whatever it was and finding all the little chunks they left behind, and hopefully there's just gonna be a ton of gold in there.
It's gonna be kind of like a treasure hunt, you know.
We've never hit, you know, something exciting and big, so You never know, we could just all of a sudden be at 2,000oz before we know it.
Finally, they can restart the wash-plant Let's get to work.
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and Scribner Creek is back in business.
At Eureka Creek .
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Tony Beets' 75-year-old dredge is starting to look like a gold-catching machine.
With the tailings conveyor attached, Tony has left his crew to tackle the nine-tonne steel spike known as the spud.
Once the dredge is floated, the spud anchors it to the ground.
It acts as a pivot, allowing the dredge to swing side to side, carving its way through the paydirt.
Uh, pull it a little bit over.
He's trying to get this spud lifted up there in the air.
It's like a nine-ton pendulum swinging around here.
Jerry has to lift the nine-tonne spud high into the air, and then drop it vertically down into its slot.
I'm just looking at it and thinking we're going to have problems.
Mike doesn't like the angle.
Well, I don't know if it's going to go in this way because it was put in out of order, so they put up that gantry for the stacker in the rear and the tilt back on it is back over the spud keeper, so it's not allowing us to have a straight shot.
The spud was designed to be put in before the gantry.
But Mike wants to try and finish the job anyway.
I don't see anything that's gonna snag, so just keep feeding her down here.
We might end up getting lucky.
I don't think you have that much wiggle-room there.
It's going real good.
As long as we clear that beam, be all right.
Well, (BLEEP).
That don't look like it's moving at all.
She's sitting pretty tight.
Whatever.
We should have put it together in the proper order.
The crew is forced to start again.
This time, they enlarge the spud slot by loosening its bolts.
But 30 years of brutal Klondike weather has rusted the massive steel bolts in place.
That's just a little trick for getting tough nuts to crack.
(SQUEAKING) Jerry lifts the spud for one more attempt.
(ENGINE REVS) KEVIN: What's he revving up for? Now that we got those bolts out of the way and springs out the way, there should be enough space to just drop it straight down.
Keep her coming here.
Well, it looks like it's going in all right so far, but we were this far before.
Ah.
All right, it's in, guys! KEVIN: Awesome.
Let's not do that again.
JERRY: Good job.
That was a struggle all day long.
Yay! Yippee! Finally.
Done in the proper order, it should have taken no more than an hour.
But after six hours, as the sun sets on Eureka Creek, the dredge's spud is finally in position.
At McKinnon Creek, Todd digs gold-rich paydirt from his new cut north of the haul road.
We got high hopes for this cut, right here.
Curious to see what happens on this next clean-up, though, I tell you that.
Kevin hauls it to the plant .
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and Jack feeds Monster Red.
To hit their season goal before they're frozen out, they need to run at least 3,000 yards a day.
It's a horse race right now.
We're gonna make it, it's goodgood material, plant's running all right and, uh, this is a good day.
(THUDDING) THURBER: (BLEEP)! Jack, shut it down, we got a blockage, it's piling off the screen.
Leave it on, leave it on! It got blocked up somehow.
Up there.
Yeah, we got something jammed in there.
(GRUNTING) There's a rock stuck up in here.
That ain't a rock, that's a flipping boulder.
How'd that get through? It's backed up, it's backed up all through the plant, down the feeder, overflowing over the back, we got a big mess, so we gotta get it cleared out.
Right now, we're not running.
Nothing went over the sides.
Oh, no, it just magically appeared.
What is that? Look at it.
It's huge.
I don't care.
It did not come over It did not come over the side.
(BLEEP) No.
It went through the grizzly bars.
It did not come over the side.
It can't (BLEEP) fit through the grizzly bars.
It didn't go through the grizzly bars.
It did It had to, because it did not come over the top.
That went through.
That's a bunch of (BLEEP).
To prevent the oversize rocks from damaging the wash-plant, the hopper feeder is protected by a set of grizzly bars.
The crew is convinced that Jack allowed a boulder to drop onto the feed conveyor, jamming up the tailings chute.
Look how big that is, Jack.
I don't care.
I didn't drop anything over.
I would have seen that.
It can't fit through the grizzly, it's that big.
You can't see every bit of it.
Yeah, I did.
Well, then, how'd it get there? Hey, I don't know, but it didn't come over the side! Well, we got a big-ass hole in that grizzly bar, then.
The boulder won't budge.
Where is it? It's still in there.
It's still in there.
I'm just gonna do this slow.
It's dropping.
There it goes.
Here it comes.
There's no way that jumped over.
It must have got in last night.
The crew has lost two hours of running time, but gets right back to business.
(MACHINE STARTS) Yes! It started! I'm gonna go put some dry clothes on.
No.
They think they know so much but they're full of (BLEEP).
Pardon my language, but it kind of pisses me off.
Explain to me how that got through the grizzly bars, then.
Oh, whatever.
Over at Eureka Creek Tony is on site to oversee the next stage of the dredge rebuild, hanging the tailings conveyor, or stacker, in position.
Because the dredge's gantry winch is not yet operational, Jerry has to raise the stacker using the crane.
When they're all ready, we'll lift the stacker up and they'll tie the cable off.
And then I'll lift the weight off the crane and hopefully it stays up.
And we're ready, now we'll lift it.
As Jerry lifts, the rest of the crew takes up the slack on the cable.
The seven-tonne stacker will hang off the gantry by a single steel cable.
But the cable is 30 years old.
Well, all cables can just rust and rot in the middle and not be as strong as they need to be, so those old cables have to hold a pretty good load, there.
The stacker is in position, but it's still being held up by the crane.
As soon as Jerry lowers the crane, the crew will find out if the 30-year-old cable can still support seven tonnes.
Got you! (CREAKING) I'm loose.
That looks pretty good, Mike, it's sitting there hanging on its own.
The crane's unhooked, so it'd better be holding because we're standing in it and it's not going anywhere, so It's on its own.
That went (BLEEP) perfect.
Now we gotta see if she runs.
For the first time in almost three decades, the tailings conveyor has come back to life.
Off she goes.
It's the last big step.
All we got left after this is the bucket line.
That'd be great.
Told you it was gonna (BLEEP) go.
Oh, I didn't doubt you.
Within a couple of weeks, Tony could be at the helm of his million-dollar dredge, just like they did 100 years ago, catching Klondike gold.
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At Scribner Creek, after three days of running, Chris Doumitt pulls the mats for the first clean-up of the creek-bed dirt.
CHRIS: There.
Hey, look, a nugget.
There is another one.
See how coarse this all is? So if there is any fine gold, maybe it's sinking down through the mats.
We're catching coarse gold .
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and we've been catching fine gold all season, so The change from fine to coarse gold is a sign that they could have hit main pay.
I'm glad that the stuff looked good.
You know, it's, um It's the first crack at main pay we've had ever, really.
I think it's gonna be a good clean-up, I do.
I just wish we had 100,000 yards of it.
Yeah, no kidding.
At McKinnon Creek .
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the Hoffmans' operation is under threat.
So, we got a serious situation here, just like in the jungle.
We got some claim-jumpers down here.
Little outfit rolled in and, uh, we're gonna go down and try and kick 'em off.
You guys stay back, this could get dangerous.
Hey! Hey.
You guys supposed to be here? Tell us about the operation.
What do you guys call this thing? Fifi's Revenge.
(LAUGHING) Fifi's Revenge? Whoa.
When do you guys do a clean-up? GIRL: Every five minutes.
(GIGGLES) TODD: Every five minutes? DAVE: Wow! You must get a lot of gold.
TODD: Just remember, ladies, when you guys do a clean-up, 15% is ours.
Uh-uh.
No! Zero! Up at the wash-plant, another clean-up has started.
KEVIN: This is from the other side of the road cut.
The haul-road cut was fricking amazing, so .
.
thisthis should be about the same, in my eyes.
I mean, just because there's a road there that somebody built, put in, doesn't mean that that's the border for good gold.
So, I mean, this looks pretty good.
I think that we're gonna do good on this clean-up.
We've put a lot of time and effort and money into this one.
Hopefully it's good.
It'd be nice to have three triple-digit clean-ups in a row.
At the Hoffman camp, the crew waits for Jack to finish the clean-up.
They hit a great pay streak on the south side of the haul road.
Since then, they've chased the pay streak north and run 10,000 yards.
We're expecting a big clean-up.
We're coming off our biggest clean-up.
I'm saying 110 ounces, at least.
Here comes Jack.
Everybody stand up, stand up, stand up.
I saw the big boulders, saw the bedrock, all the indicators were good but, uh, it just wasn't there.
34 ounces.
THURBER: 34? Where's the other 100? Uh, that's what I thought.
34 ounces, worth just $40,000, brings their gold total to 814 ounces, worth $975,000.
Todd's new haul-road cut is finished.
That's the worst clean-up we've had in a long time.
Yeah, this is the wrong time of the season to be having lousy clean-ups.
Yeah.
We're running out of time, it's closing in, it's getting cold.
We gotta dig a little deeper.
With just two weeks left, the Hoffmans' 1,000-ounce goal is looking less and less likely.
We need gold, but beyond gold, our families and our faith are the most important.
And, Dad, can you say a prayer for us? Yeah, sure.
Heavenly Father, we ask that you would give us, uh, the rocks with gold in it and, Lord, that you would help us to just feed it through the plant.
Lord, that we would sail past 1,000 ounces, and we ask all these things in your name, amen.
ALL: Amen.
To 1,000 ounces, guys.
We can do this.
North .
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Parker's on his way to Tony Beets' Paradise Hill claim.
He's about to weigh the first of his gold from the exposed creek bed and find out if he's hit main pay.
Hey, Tony.
Hey, Parker, how's it going? Good.
How are you? You gonna weigh some stuff, are you? Yeah, I brought it up here.
Good.
It looks pretty damn good.
Yeah.
Let's find out.
Mmm.
50, 60, 70, 80, pour it faster, 90, 100.
There you go.
120, 130, 140, 150.
Jeez.
Whoa, 160, 170 215.
4.
Wow.
That's a pretty good week, huh? Yeah.
You imagine having one like that every week? We've hit a good hotspot here.
It's ended up being, you know, good main pay ground.
Awesome.
For sure.
Hopefully, get another one this week, my man.
215 ounces is worth over quarter of a million dollars.
It's one of the biggest clean-ups of Parker's career.
It takes his gold total up to 1,723 ounces.
He's now banked over two million dollars, and confirmed his hunch that they're on main pay.
So that's the 20%, huh? Yeah.
Looking pretty (BLEEP) good for me, don't it? Yeah.
Parker hands over Tony's cut - 43 ounces, worth more than $50,000.
DIRECTOR: How you feeling right now, man? That's a pretty damn good clean-out, right there.
You know, um, Tony takes his, and that hurts a little bit, but I'm damn happy with that.
I mean, it's a little late in the season to start finding the best ground, but better late than never, right? That's quarter of a million bucks right here, right? You know, we're on the right track.
Parker finished last season with less than 1.
5 million dollars in gold.
With two million already in the bank, he still has two weeks to mine, and with main pay, he has a fighting chance of hitting his 2,000-ounce season goal.
On the next Gold Rush Pull her up! .
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Tony Beets assembles the last piece of his dredge .
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the gold-catching bucket line.
Now it don't look too good, to be honest with you.
But he discovers he's missing vital parts.
Which (BLEEP) stole two buckets out of that (BLEEP) line? Parker Schnabel is on the best gold of the season Definitely some of the better stuff I've seen.
.
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main-pay gold.
It's coming together pretty nicely.
But with 2,000 ounces in sight, disaster strikes.
I've lost all controls.
We were winning the battle until now.
When the Hoffman crew wakes up to the first freeze of the season You're frickin' kidding me.
.
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an unlikely hero Why not wrap tarps around it? That'd work.
.
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leads them to a monster clean-up.
It's going to be a pay day.
(ALL CHEERING)
Just as winter begins knocking on the door, the Hoffmans chase their best pay streak of the season.
Yes! Great day to be a miner.
But when Jack drops a boulder into Monster Red That's a bunch of (BLEEP).
It didn't go through the grizzly bars.
They're saying that I dumped it over the side.
That's BS! You can see it didn't.
.
.
their operation grinds to a halt.
STEVE: Hit the bypass! Big tailings conveyor's locked up! At Eureka Creek, things fall apart And we're ready, now we'll lift it.
.
.
when Tony leaves his crew in charge of a critical piece of the dredge.
MIKE: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
No! And at Scribner Creek, Parker's quest for thawed ground We're running out of time.
.
.
takes a drastic step It's gonna be like a treasure hunt.
.
.
when Gene Cheeseman diverts a river RICK: Would you look at that? Yeah, that's quite a bit of water.
.
.
to get down to big, chunky gold PARKER: That's a nice pan.
.
.
leading to one of Parker's best clean-ups ever.
I always told you that stuff would be in the ground.
McKinnon Creek, the Klondike.
There is just three weeks left in the mining season.
And the Hoffman crew is determined to make them count.
Another beautiful morning in the Klondike.
We got one last push so we're gonna push the crew and the machinery as hard as they can go.
We have a goal and, uh, we're gonna make it, if the ice holds off long enough.
It's time to finish this.
This is the last push, so (MACHINE STARTING) All we're doing now is getting gold, no stripping.
All we got to do is haul the pay to the plant and run it and get gold.
Their gold total stands at 780 ounces, worth $936,000.
To hit their 1,000-ounce season goal, they need to keep Monster Red running 300 yards an hour for as many days as possible.
You think we can do it? I think, so long as we've got stuff to run and everything keeps running, yeah, I'm up for it.
Let's do it.
Just north of the haul road, Todd digs paydirt from their new cut.
The ground on the other side of the road yielded 132 ounces, worth over $150,000.
TODD: This stuff here, I'm starting to hit some bigger rocks, which is good.
Starting to get real, real good in here, looks like to me.
Hey, Andy.
Todd has just found ground that could lead to an even bigger payday.
Look at that weird-coloured brown stuff.
Yeah.
Is that bedrock, decomposed? Yeah.
You can see the bank of a river right here.
That's what we want.
Look at the colour of that, see that? Any time we find rocks like that that are settled right in it next to bedrock, it's just the bottom where all the heavy gold just seems to concentrate, so This was on the edge of something.
There's quartz right there.
Once you start getting into those bigger boulders, you start seeing better gold.
Means you're in a deeper river channel, a channel that could move those bigger rocks in.
Quartz and big boulders are signs of gold-rich dirt.
Todd's find could be the breakthrough they desperately need.
From all indications, this looks pretty good.
That haul-road cut, that channel that we found in there could come right through here, I don't know.
With winter coming, the crew races to get the new riverbed paydirt through the wash-plant.
We got the ground that has the gold so, uh, the morale is high, so Great day to be a miner.
STEVE: Guys, guys.
Hit the bypass, hit the bypass, hit the bypass.
The tailings conveyor's blocked up! THURBER: Shut it down! Upriver, at Scribner Creek .
.
Parker Schnabel's claim is at a standstill.
He's out of paydirt and hasn't run his wash-plant for 24 hours.
So, we're losing another day of production.
We gotta get this plant running.
For the last three weeks, the 20-year-old mine boss has been on the hunt for thawed ground.
But all he's found so far is permafrost.
See, cos I just went down to 3ft of red gravel and it's frozen under that.
So that means that our pay is still froze.
We are having a really hard time finding thawed ground, you know, and that has given us a pretty big problem.
Parker has 1,508 ounces, worth 1.
8 million dollars.
But this late in the season, unless he can find thawed paydirt, he can kiss his 2,000oz dream goodbye.
It's been stressful trying to figure out where the rest of the gold is gonna come from.
We came up here with a pretty big goal and this could really, uh, throw a cog in a lot of that, you know.
(SQUEAKING) Do you hear that? It's squeaking awfully bad and that's not good.
(BLEEP) Can't one stupid thing go right? The D10 tracks are dangerously loose.
Parker needs to get the 85-tonne machine out of the cut before the tracks give out completely.
About my only option right now is to go back to the (BLEEP) yard.
(SQUEAKING) Hey, Gene, this thing's squeaking really bad.
The tracks are looser than hell.
I don't know if that would do it.
They are stretched out.
These are oiled pins, you know, if you look at them These pins? Yeah, they're See, right here, it's wore clear through.
Holy (BLEEP), that is wore out.
It's I know it's not what you want to hear, it's just it's time for it to get some attention.
Right.
All right, well, we'll have to fix it.
Parker's season has gone from bad to worse.
He's got no thawed ground and now his dozer is out of action.
We're trying to figure out what our options are because there really aren't that many now.
This time of year, it's, uh, hard to adjust to things like this.
We need to figure something out to get quick, easy, thawed pay up to the plant, and we're running out of time.
Gene heads out on a mission to find new ground.
Trying to figure out what, uh what we're going to do.
Just trying to make a plan.
Doing a little exploring around, trying to find some ground we can open up here that's not froze.
There's one place on the claim Gene thinks there's thawed ground, but it's not dirt they'll have to move - it's a river.
From the looks of the creek, it's It looks like it should be thawed, cos the river's there.
But till you really start exploring some more, you don't know for sure.
The ground under Sulphur Creek should be thawed.
If Gene's right, he could save Parker's season.
But first he has to work out how to divert a river.
.
.
At Eureka Creek, Tony Beets has been working all season to resurrect a mining technique from a century ago.
He's vowed to have his antique dredge catching gold before winter shuts down the Yukon.
The tailings conveyor, or stacker, is 25 metres long and weighs in at seven tonnes.
Once operational, the stacker fits on the back of the dredge.
It will take worthless tailings from the trommel and move them out of the back of the dredge.
Well, the stacker has a couple of pins there on the bottom and they go on these cradles, here, and then it hangs off a cable off the other end.
But Tony is racing the Yukon winter.
He needs to push his operation into high gear.
First, they rig the stacker to a pair of cranes.
TONY: OK, that's looking good, guys.
Actually, Kevin, hang in there.
Going good, one end hooked up, one to go.
(TONY SPEAKING) Piece of cake.
Awesome, catch you.
Where you going? (CHUCKLES) To hook the stacker onto the dredge, the crew must work together to carefully line up two pivot pins with a set of cradles on the body of the dredge.
Joe directs the two cranes using hand signals.
Mike has an eye line to the docking point.
As the stacker moves forward, it gets between Joe and Mike, so Mike switches to using his radio.
We want a little bit of down, now suck it in.
But Joe doesn't have a radio.
Just a little bit.
Boom up just a little bit.
He's now directing blind.
MIKE: Hold up, got to go up a little bit.
Who's doing the directing out there? Monica! MONICA: What do you want Jerry to be doing? Joe? Jerry's definitely lowering.
Eh? Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.
Who's directing this? Has he got a (BLEEP) radio? Whoa, whoa, whoa! MONICA: Hold it! Stop! No! No! I said stop! That's what I said! He should have a (BLEEP) radio.
You need a (BLEEP) radio.
I'm trying to get him to stop because we're crashing into I-beams up here.
You stand on this side.
Who else has got a radio? Nobody.
(BLEEP) MAN: What the (BLEEP) is he doing? When Tony returns, it's chaos.
He quickly takes charge.
(TONY SPEAKING) JOE: More? You wanna go up a hair or what? (TONY SPEAKING) Good.
The stacker is finally attached to the dredge, but they still have to lift it into its final position.
(TONY SPEAKING) At McKinnon Creek .
.
the Hoffman crew can't mine.
In their race to hit 1,000 ounces before the end of the season, the miners have pushed Monster Red hard, and it's taken its toll.
Once we get this box cleaned out, we'll know what's going on.
I think what we got is a hole worn in the side of this box.
And it's letting the rocks drop down through here and that's what's plugging up our tail pulley.
Oh, there you go.
Holy (BLEEP)! Abrasive bedrock has worn holes in the rock-box, causing rocks to fall into the tail pulley, causing a jam.
With one end of the tailings conveyor seized up and the other end still running, the drive belt has burnt through and the conveyor has split.
And this time, there's no quick fix.
KEVIN: Hey, Steve.
STEVE: Yeah? Look at our belt.
We got into the bedrock, it's real abrasive and sharp, just wore out a bunch of stuff pretty quick.
It's always that way.
It's the best gold we've ever seen, but it's the most abrasive, causes the most problems.
They're treading water until the conveyor is repaired.
DAVE: We gotta get this going, get back up and running as quick as we can.
We got to make the most of every minute, every second.
Let's get this thing going, you guys.
Dave mobilises the crew.
Every hour that they don't run dirt, they lose gold.
It's really bad timing, man.
We're on some really hot ground right now.
We can't get this fixed fast enough.
They reinforce the tailings chute and rock-box.
STEVE: Let the rocks pound on that instead of this steel.
And when it wears out, it's real easy to change.
Kevin stitches up the torn conveyor belt.
So, right where the seam is, we'll probably have to cut it out and do a whole new seam.
And Dave replaces the burnt-out drive belt.
After six hours, it's time to find out if their fixes have worked.
The belt's fixed, drive belts are on.
Kevin, let's see if this thing will run.
Fire it up, Kevin! (MACHINE STARTING) Looks good.
Hey, it's running, Steve! STEVE: Let's get some gold.
Good job.
It works.
Yes.
Took a little bit longer than we thought.
I think we're good.
It's cost them most of the day, but the Hoffman crew is back running gold-rich ground.
.
.
At Scribner Creek in the Klondike, Parker Schnabel's wash-plant hasn't run in two days.
He's desperate for thawed paydirt.
His foreman Gene Cheeseman thinks he's found thawed ground, but it's underneath a running river.
So what's your plan? I think I got it figured out how it'd work.
We divert our water through the shortcut there and mine that whole area.
Should be thawed cos the river's there.
We'll get the creek bed, too? We'll get the creek bed, all of that.
There's hardly any overburden on it.
We could have pay to the plant in the next day or so.
All right, that sounds good to me.
Gene's plan is to divert Sulphur Creek through an old cut and expose the creek bed.
There will be no overburden to clear and Gene's hoping that the ground will have been thawed by the water.
Rick digs an area just on the edge of the river where they will divert the creek into the old cut.
Yeah, the creek is actually a kind of freebie in itself.
With water flowing through there, it took away all the overburden.
We don't gotta strip it.
All that's left is the gravel and the gold.
Gene digs an exit for the water so that it can rejoin the river downstream.
Digging out a channel here to make a new diversion to run the water through so we can, uh, mine out against the berm over there.
Well, I just got a last little bit of dirt here.
But just as Rick is about to release the water I'll let this sucker loose.
.
.
the 60-tonne rock truck gets stuck up to its axles in the mud.
Come on, buddy, you can get out of there.
Come on Nope.
Not gonna happen.
Rick has no choice but to enter the danger zone and push the rock truck out.
I just need that berm to hold for another three minutes.
Yeah, this isn't an ideal situation.
I got a creek rushing by directly on my right which is about 5ft higher than the bottom of this rock truck and it's trying to come in this way.
So hopefully that little berm that I left doesn't let go and let the creek in here on me.
That's quite a bit of water.
Come on, come on.
All right, he's clear.
After five hours of moving dirt, Rick is finally ready to break through the berm to divert Sulphur Creek.
Here we go.
I shouldn't have to dig that big of a hole.
It should start to just rush through and take it down itself.
Oh, yeah, that's quite a bit of water.
(CHUCKLES) Within 15 minutes, Parker has a fresh supply of what he is hoping is thawed ground.
But there's only one way to find out if it's got gold.
Yeah, I mean, basically, this stuff, right here, is the dead centre of the valley.
Since it's in the middle of the valley, it should be good.
That's a nice pan.
I think underneath all that creek there .
.
could be main pay.
And I've never mined main pay before.
It could be really good ground.
You know, it could be the best gold on the claim.
Ancient, fast-flowing rivers carved valleys through the Klondike, leaving big gold deposits known as main pay.
Over time, the rivers slowed and changed course, laying down much smaller gold deposits known as side pay.
Over the last 100 years, miners extracted virtually all the main pay in the valley.
Parker's banking on the fact that they left a streak of main pay beneath the creek.
Rick digs the newly-exposed creek bed.
We're starting to head towards the main pay channel that they mined, uh, you know, 30 years ago or whatever it was and finding all the little chunks they left behind, and hopefully there's just gonna be a ton of gold in there.
It's gonna be kind of like a treasure hunt, you know.
We've never hit, you know, something exciting and big, so You never know, we could just all of a sudden be at 2,000oz before we know it.
Finally, they can restart the wash-plant Let's get to work.
.
.
and Scribner Creek is back in business.
At Eureka Creek .
.
Tony Beets' 75-year-old dredge is starting to look like a gold-catching machine.
With the tailings conveyor attached, Tony has left his crew to tackle the nine-tonne steel spike known as the spud.
Once the dredge is floated, the spud anchors it to the ground.
It acts as a pivot, allowing the dredge to swing side to side, carving its way through the paydirt.
Uh, pull it a little bit over.
He's trying to get this spud lifted up there in the air.
It's like a nine-ton pendulum swinging around here.
Jerry has to lift the nine-tonne spud high into the air, and then drop it vertically down into its slot.
I'm just looking at it and thinking we're going to have problems.
Mike doesn't like the angle.
Well, I don't know if it's going to go in this way because it was put in out of order, so they put up that gantry for the stacker in the rear and the tilt back on it is back over the spud keeper, so it's not allowing us to have a straight shot.
The spud was designed to be put in before the gantry.
But Mike wants to try and finish the job anyway.
I don't see anything that's gonna snag, so just keep feeding her down here.
We might end up getting lucky.
I don't think you have that much wiggle-room there.
It's going real good.
As long as we clear that beam, be all right.
Well, (BLEEP).
That don't look like it's moving at all.
She's sitting pretty tight.
Whatever.
We should have put it together in the proper order.
The crew is forced to start again.
This time, they enlarge the spud slot by loosening its bolts.
But 30 years of brutal Klondike weather has rusted the massive steel bolts in place.
That's just a little trick for getting tough nuts to crack.
(SQUEAKING) Jerry lifts the spud for one more attempt.
(ENGINE REVS) KEVIN: What's he revving up for? Now that we got those bolts out of the way and springs out the way, there should be enough space to just drop it straight down.
Keep her coming here.
Well, it looks like it's going in all right so far, but we were this far before.
Ah.
All right, it's in, guys! KEVIN: Awesome.
Let's not do that again.
JERRY: Good job.
That was a struggle all day long.
Yay! Yippee! Finally.
Done in the proper order, it should have taken no more than an hour.
But after six hours, as the sun sets on Eureka Creek, the dredge's spud is finally in position.
At McKinnon Creek, Todd digs gold-rich paydirt from his new cut north of the haul road.
We got high hopes for this cut, right here.
Curious to see what happens on this next clean-up, though, I tell you that.
Kevin hauls it to the plant .
.
and Jack feeds Monster Red.
To hit their season goal before they're frozen out, they need to run at least 3,000 yards a day.
It's a horse race right now.
We're gonna make it, it's goodgood material, plant's running all right and, uh, this is a good day.
(THUDDING) THURBER: (BLEEP)! Jack, shut it down, we got a blockage, it's piling off the screen.
Leave it on, leave it on! It got blocked up somehow.
Up there.
Yeah, we got something jammed in there.
(GRUNTING) There's a rock stuck up in here.
That ain't a rock, that's a flipping boulder.
How'd that get through? It's backed up, it's backed up all through the plant, down the feeder, overflowing over the back, we got a big mess, so we gotta get it cleared out.
Right now, we're not running.
Nothing went over the sides.
Oh, no, it just magically appeared.
What is that? Look at it.
It's huge.
I don't care.
It did not come over It did not come over the side.
(BLEEP) No.
It went through the grizzly bars.
It did not come over the side.
It can't (BLEEP) fit through the grizzly bars.
It didn't go through the grizzly bars.
It did It had to, because it did not come over the top.
That went through.
That's a bunch of (BLEEP).
To prevent the oversize rocks from damaging the wash-plant, the hopper feeder is protected by a set of grizzly bars.
The crew is convinced that Jack allowed a boulder to drop onto the feed conveyor, jamming up the tailings chute.
Look how big that is, Jack.
I don't care.
I didn't drop anything over.
I would have seen that.
It can't fit through the grizzly, it's that big.
You can't see every bit of it.
Yeah, I did.
Well, then, how'd it get there? Hey, I don't know, but it didn't come over the side! Well, we got a big-ass hole in that grizzly bar, then.
The boulder won't budge.
Where is it? It's still in there.
It's still in there.
I'm just gonna do this slow.
It's dropping.
There it goes.
Here it comes.
There's no way that jumped over.
It must have got in last night.
The crew has lost two hours of running time, but gets right back to business.
(MACHINE STARTS) Yes! It started! I'm gonna go put some dry clothes on.
No.
They think they know so much but they're full of (BLEEP).
Pardon my language, but it kind of pisses me off.
Explain to me how that got through the grizzly bars, then.
Oh, whatever.
Over at Eureka Creek Tony is on site to oversee the next stage of the dredge rebuild, hanging the tailings conveyor, or stacker, in position.
Because the dredge's gantry winch is not yet operational, Jerry has to raise the stacker using the crane.
When they're all ready, we'll lift the stacker up and they'll tie the cable off.
And then I'll lift the weight off the crane and hopefully it stays up.
And we're ready, now we'll lift it.
As Jerry lifts, the rest of the crew takes up the slack on the cable.
The seven-tonne stacker will hang off the gantry by a single steel cable.
But the cable is 30 years old.
Well, all cables can just rust and rot in the middle and not be as strong as they need to be, so those old cables have to hold a pretty good load, there.
The stacker is in position, but it's still being held up by the crane.
As soon as Jerry lowers the crane, the crew will find out if the 30-year-old cable can still support seven tonnes.
Got you! (CREAKING) I'm loose.
That looks pretty good, Mike, it's sitting there hanging on its own.
The crane's unhooked, so it'd better be holding because we're standing in it and it's not going anywhere, so It's on its own.
That went (BLEEP) perfect.
Now we gotta see if she runs.
For the first time in almost three decades, the tailings conveyor has come back to life.
Off she goes.
It's the last big step.
All we got left after this is the bucket line.
That'd be great.
Told you it was gonna (BLEEP) go.
Oh, I didn't doubt you.
Within a couple of weeks, Tony could be at the helm of his million-dollar dredge, just like they did 100 years ago, catching Klondike gold.
.
.
At Scribner Creek, after three days of running, Chris Doumitt pulls the mats for the first clean-up of the creek-bed dirt.
CHRIS: There.
Hey, look, a nugget.
There is another one.
See how coarse this all is? So if there is any fine gold, maybe it's sinking down through the mats.
We're catching coarse gold .
.
and we've been catching fine gold all season, so The change from fine to coarse gold is a sign that they could have hit main pay.
I'm glad that the stuff looked good.
You know, it's, um It's the first crack at main pay we've had ever, really.
I think it's gonna be a good clean-up, I do.
I just wish we had 100,000 yards of it.
Yeah, no kidding.
At McKinnon Creek .
.
the Hoffmans' operation is under threat.
So, we got a serious situation here, just like in the jungle.
We got some claim-jumpers down here.
Little outfit rolled in and, uh, we're gonna go down and try and kick 'em off.
You guys stay back, this could get dangerous.
Hey! Hey.
You guys supposed to be here? Tell us about the operation.
What do you guys call this thing? Fifi's Revenge.
(LAUGHING) Fifi's Revenge? Whoa.
When do you guys do a clean-up? GIRL: Every five minutes.
(GIGGLES) TODD: Every five minutes? DAVE: Wow! You must get a lot of gold.
TODD: Just remember, ladies, when you guys do a clean-up, 15% is ours.
Uh-uh.
No! Zero! Up at the wash-plant, another clean-up has started.
KEVIN: This is from the other side of the road cut.
The haul-road cut was fricking amazing, so .
.
thisthis should be about the same, in my eyes.
I mean, just because there's a road there that somebody built, put in, doesn't mean that that's the border for good gold.
So, I mean, this looks pretty good.
I think that we're gonna do good on this clean-up.
We've put a lot of time and effort and money into this one.
Hopefully it's good.
It'd be nice to have three triple-digit clean-ups in a row.
At the Hoffman camp, the crew waits for Jack to finish the clean-up.
They hit a great pay streak on the south side of the haul road.
Since then, they've chased the pay streak north and run 10,000 yards.
We're expecting a big clean-up.
We're coming off our biggest clean-up.
I'm saying 110 ounces, at least.
Here comes Jack.
Everybody stand up, stand up, stand up.
I saw the big boulders, saw the bedrock, all the indicators were good but, uh, it just wasn't there.
34 ounces.
THURBER: 34? Where's the other 100? Uh, that's what I thought.
34 ounces, worth just $40,000, brings their gold total to 814 ounces, worth $975,000.
Todd's new haul-road cut is finished.
That's the worst clean-up we've had in a long time.
Yeah, this is the wrong time of the season to be having lousy clean-ups.
Yeah.
We're running out of time, it's closing in, it's getting cold.
We gotta dig a little deeper.
With just two weeks left, the Hoffmans' 1,000-ounce goal is looking less and less likely.
We need gold, but beyond gold, our families and our faith are the most important.
And, Dad, can you say a prayer for us? Yeah, sure.
Heavenly Father, we ask that you would give us, uh, the rocks with gold in it and, Lord, that you would help us to just feed it through the plant.
Lord, that we would sail past 1,000 ounces, and we ask all these things in your name, amen.
ALL: Amen.
To 1,000 ounces, guys.
We can do this.
North .
.
Parker's on his way to Tony Beets' Paradise Hill claim.
He's about to weigh the first of his gold from the exposed creek bed and find out if he's hit main pay.
Hey, Tony.
Hey, Parker, how's it going? Good.
How are you? You gonna weigh some stuff, are you? Yeah, I brought it up here.
Good.
It looks pretty damn good.
Yeah.
Let's find out.
Mmm.
50, 60, 70, 80, pour it faster, 90, 100.
There you go.
120, 130, 140, 150.
Jeez.
Whoa, 160, 170 215.
4.
Wow.
That's a pretty good week, huh? Yeah.
You imagine having one like that every week? We've hit a good hotspot here.
It's ended up being, you know, good main pay ground.
Awesome.
For sure.
Hopefully, get another one this week, my man.
215 ounces is worth over quarter of a million dollars.
It's one of the biggest clean-ups of Parker's career.
It takes his gold total up to 1,723 ounces.
He's now banked over two million dollars, and confirmed his hunch that they're on main pay.
So that's the 20%, huh? Yeah.
Looking pretty (BLEEP) good for me, don't it? Yeah.
Parker hands over Tony's cut - 43 ounces, worth more than $50,000.
DIRECTOR: How you feeling right now, man? That's a pretty damn good clean-out, right there.
You know, um, Tony takes his, and that hurts a little bit, but I'm damn happy with that.
I mean, it's a little late in the season to start finding the best ground, but better late than never, right? That's quarter of a million bucks right here, right? You know, we're on the right track.
Parker finished last season with less than 1.
5 million dollars in gold.
With two million already in the bank, he still has two weeks to mine, and with main pay, he has a fighting chance of hitting his 2,000-ounce season goal.
On the next Gold Rush Pull her up! .
.
Tony Beets assembles the last piece of his dredge .
.
the gold-catching bucket line.
Now it don't look too good, to be honest with you.
But he discovers he's missing vital parts.
Which (BLEEP) stole two buckets out of that (BLEEP) line? Parker Schnabel is on the best gold of the season Definitely some of the better stuff I've seen.
.
.
main-pay gold.
It's coming together pretty nicely.
But with 2,000 ounces in sight, disaster strikes.
I've lost all controls.
We were winning the battle until now.
When the Hoffman crew wakes up to the first freeze of the season You're frickin' kidding me.
.
.
an unlikely hero Why not wrap tarps around it? That'd work.
.
.
leads them to a monster clean-up.
It's going to be a pay day.
(ALL CHEERING)