Original subtitles

This is the most difficult season I've ever had.

But I still believe there's great gold in Alaska

waiting to be found.

I think we've got virgin ground

that's never been mined by the old timers.

So I'm gonna come in with this excavator,

do a little prospecting and try to figure out

where we're gonna go with our next cut.

Got a lot riding on this, our season, a lot of money, a lot of gold.

What the hell is that?

*bleep*

Jason, I wanna show you something.

What the heck we got here?

An old trommel it looks like.

That means it's been mined.

Holy *bleep*.

What the hell?

Our cut's flooded.

What happened?

Apparently, the pump didn't get fueled last night. I'm not really sure.

What do you mean?

Were you down here last night when you walked out of here, you couldn't check it?

It was running and I seen the engines fuel it at about 3:30.

So, I did not check it.

At Glacier Creek, a rookie mistake leaves the Pappy cut unminable,

drowning in 4 feet of water.

These guys got to start stepping up

and I don't know what to do about it.

I mean I love these guys but, uh, *bleep* they can't even fuel their own machines?

Everyone here on this mine site is capable

of putting fuel in this pump, including me.

So, it's everyone to blame.

Fire it up, let's go.

Well, it's so damn late in the season.

So, I got to keep the plant running.

It's a damn good thing I was out here till 9.30 at night,

scratching and digging all this pay up.

It will take at least three hours to drain the cut.

So, Jason digs into his stockpile of dry pay.

The Pappy cut has been delivering some gold,

but we're not here just to have some gold delivered.

We need the most bang for our buck.

We know that lies right underneath that water right there.

The gold always sits closer to the bedrock almost every time.

Over the last six weeks,

the Pappy cut has been besieged by floods.

But Jason's not ready to call it quits

until he digs to the deepest potentially richest gold.

If we start getting down on bedrock, get that water out of the way.

Pappy cut will be paying that real money, that good gold.

So, the Pappy cut isn't paying out.

We're not anywhere close to our goal.

I'm hurting.

I've spent a lot of money here and we don't have much money coming in.

Problem we're fighting is the water

and on top of that, I'm in a predicament right now,

uh, without Casey, I don't know how long he's gonna be gone.

Last week.

He was supposed to back yesterday by 5 o'clock and he never came back.

Rock truck driver, Casey Morgan,

had to race home to Arizona to be with his wife, Vee,

after a near-fatal hiking trip.

My wife's missing. I need to get on the first *bleep* plane out of here.

Well, look, right now, we are screwed.

We're one man down.

And this cut's been a nightmare.

After pumping out over 600,000 gallons of water,

the cut is finally drained.

If this was a normal area,

I would just keep widening this pit

and I would keep mining all of this.

The problem is the larger of an opening I get,

the more water that comes in, I can't manage that big of a cut.

So, I got to open up another cut.

Hey Jason, you got a copy?

I wanna talk to you a minute.

Yeah.

I think we ought to clean up that pit, be done with it

and then, I'm gonna open up another cut.

I really think that this cut is as big as we can manage.

To get to bedrock, Jason benches down the Pappy cut,

stripping 6 feet at a time.

But every bucket he excavates, removes dirt that would otherwise

soak up run-off from the surrounding valley.

Now, 30 feet deep and a 150 feet wide

the cut is vulnerable to much worse and more frequent flooding.

You got to get her done, buddy. TIme to move on.

Digging deeper hasn't seen richer gold.

So, Dave plans to open a new smaller cut downstream.

I get that we've had some bad situations,

with pumps and water, but...

...we're still not at the bottom.

If that bedrock drops down,

it's very likely that gonna be a great pocket, you know, of gold.

The amount of time and effort and money that we're spending

to get to the bottom, it's just not worth it.

Really, it's...

It's paying about the same all the way down.

Looks like you got four days, that's the way I see it.

And by that time, I'll have you another cut on the other side

and we we'll manage it better than we managed this one.

10-4, but not happy about it.

There's always a fine line of how I manage.

I like to empower my guys to make decisions,

but I'm the one that has my retirement tied up in this.

There's times when I have to make unpopular decisions and choices

that, you know, they don't like.

There was a group, a mining company,

that was doing a testing program

and they stopped.

Years later, another mining company picks up where they left off.

They were 3 feet from hitting a $3 billion strike.

I know Dave says we have to move on,

but if I can show him good value's down there,

I bet we stay.

Just 100 yards south.

This, to me, is virgin ground.

Thick, big trees.

Thousand acres that way, there's a thousand acres that way

that's never been touched.

You know there's got to be gold under there.

Tracing a path of the ancient riverbed

out of the Pappy cut into a Cottonwood grove,

Dave breaks new ground.

The old river channel came on this side.

So, I'm going to poke a couple holes

and see where the gold lives.

I just gotta try to figure out where we're going to go with our next cut.

Just what we have to do. That Eagle's hungry.

Man, what the hell?

Across site...

That was off plan.

A ruck jam shuts down the plant.

To stay in the race, for a 60-ounce clean-up

this week, the crew can't afford any downtime.

I thought there was something caught in there.

I thought I ran out of feed real quick.

And I was like, it don't make sense.

'Cause I can't see this.

What's wrong, Nater?

Ah, looks like something in the hopper.

Maybe it's clogged up a little bit. Dust and rock or something.

Come over here and look.

Look in there.

That's too full.

I thought we ran out of material.

That's my fault.

Chris has crammed in so much dirt,

the conveyors jam up.

It's irresponsible.

Pretty elementary.

Sorry.

Chris needs to*bleep* figure it out.

When I keep breaking down,

we're not gonna get enough gold to pay the bills.

*bleep* a *bleep* circus, is what it is.

A mother *bleep* circus.

Coming up.

I'm not leaving this cut.

Get your butt moving, Sanchez.

Trying to get the gold, Dave.

I think I overfed it, 'cause I couldn't see it.

Oh don't make *bleep* excuses.

We just gotta keep this stuff running.

At Glacier Creek,

Team Turin's new wash plant, the Eagle,

is shut down after Chris overfed the hopper.

I don't think it's the best idea, but...

I would rev it up and turn your speed up.

I hope it works out.

If the conveyor is pushed too hard,

a torn belt would cost Dave thousands of dollars to replace.

That's not right.

Come on.

That going.

Pretty simple fix,

but this isn't working.

We can't continue to do this.

Chris...

You can't keep making dumb mistakes.

But, I am loading blind.

I thought it ran out of pay.

I came back from lunch and I was like, "Oh, God Almighty," and I went up,

and whenever I started dumping, I looked,

and I was like, "Oh, we're full."

- God! - Hey, you can't see.

He can't see when it's closer.

If he fills it to those slots, that's way too much.

I thought it was a slot.

Let's just cut a little slot right here, just like this.

- I could do that. - We could do that, not here.

Here, and you keep it at that level.

That's easy.

Is that good, Chris? Okay with that?

It's good.

Start it up!

We gave Chris some sight holes.

He can see in there

and he should be able to adjust the level in the feeder.

It's the first time that I've ever been told I overfed anything.

So now they cut me two little holes out,

looking into a black box, looking for black dirt.

So, uh, not the easiest thing to do.

But I can see the dirt better.

- Oh yeah. - Go Chris!

It's good. All right, good job, Nate. See you later.

The truth is, I don't hide my emotions well.

The guys know when I'm stressed.

You know, that's my style of leadership.

I want them to know what's going on

because they're my partners.

They really are.

Full steam ahead.

Time is of the essence.

Getting the bedrock?

It has to happen.

Dave has given Jason just four days

to dig to the deepest gold in the Pappy cut

and prove its worth.

I gotta see where the bottom is

or at least see if I can reach it.

I think we're really on the right path

to some unbelievable gold down there.

Holy *bleep*.

Seemed to hit some drabbles underneath this brown layer.

And now, I gotta pan.

I just hope that as we're going down,

it's getting better.

Hmm.

There's nothing in this pan to really speak of.

Should be rich as hell.

Unless it drops off here and we're not anywhere near the bedrock.

For me, it's frustrating because I know there's better gold down there.

Problem is...

...what if it's in just another 5 foot.

Can't give up, can't stop.

We'll find it.

I don't know how to quit.

My expectations, personally, every year are to do as much as we possibly can

to obtain as much gold as we possibly can.

If it's really, really great gold,

it's gonna be super deep.

I'll keep scratching on her.

We've fought this hard so far, to get here.

I don't want to leave any gold behind.

Downstream...

Feel like I'm Jason Sanchez, I'm digging a hole, man!

Dave hunts for new ground.

I just wanna see depths, uh, see what the makeup is.

Starting to get into it now, it's pretty deep, there's uh...

Actually, it's about 4 foot overburden on this,

so I will pull a sample

at the top of this gravel zone, and hopefully find some gold.

Well, looks like main channel came through here one time.

There's been, uh, I can see one, two, three, four, five different layers.

Five different distinct zones where, uh, water flows have changed.

That's good news.

This is the first pan of a potential new kind cut, so.

You know, you're always hoping for good gold

that's up high, so I don't have to, uh,

move a lot of overburden.

That's just 3 feet.

Then, you got three, four little ones, and then, a decent size right there.

That's encouraging.

What I found there, it's a good indication there's gold.

I know that as you go down, it's going to get better, so at the bottom of that

will be bigger gold.

And that's our cut.

Whoo!

Dave must now clear all the trees and vegetation,

before his new cut is ready to mine.

Hey, Jason.

Pushing all these pinewood trees,

so I think our new cut's gonna be the Cottonwood Pass.

I can see those trees from here.

Cottonwood cut it is, I like it!

What the hell is that?

*bleep*

Jason, I want to show you something.

What the heck is out here?

I don't know what it is.

An old trommel, it looks like.

That means it's been mined.

That's not good.

On the hunt for virgin ground,

Dave discovers old mining equipment.

I think this was a hydraulic mine thing.

It's half of the pipe, and he probably just

hydraulic-ed into it, and then out the bottom through those holes,

went to a sluice.

Hydraulic mining was a technique favored by the Alaskan old-timers.

Water cannons washed banks of gold-rich material

into a basic handmade sluice.

The process was cheap and easy,

and is still, sometimes used today.

It's not that old, I mean, modern day welding.

They got galvanized stuff, they didn't have that till maybe the '40s.

I think this was just a really cheap way to mine.

That's amazing though, that they were hand working in the '40s.

You know, with all the equipment and technology that was advancing.

I think it was just somebody came in here and tried to get a quick buck.

You know? Dragged that old piece of pipe in here and,

you know, tried it.

We go below where they mined,

we should find a lot of gold.

- They never got to see bedrock. - No.

Nope.

They were in here mining with old-style hand workings.

Who knows what's below here?

At the wash plant...

Oh, it's been a week now, and Casey's been home.

So, it's been kind of rough, you know,

I've been running the whole truck around

and trying to do two or three jobs at once.

With Casey off-site,

Nate, Chris, and Andrew have to work overtime just to keep the Eagle running.

As long as they keep bringing the material to us,

I'll keep putting rocks in the box.

Hey, shut it down, shut it down.

What's going on?

We got a grizzly squawking around.

I think the*bleep* grizzly's loose.

See that? Loose.

The grizzly box bolts to the main shaker box

and these bolts that go through here, that actually hold it up

against there, came loose.

The Eagle's grizzly bars bolt to the shaker box

that vibrates to prevent larger rocks slipping inside.

A constant vibration has loosened the bolts,

and left the Eagle unable to process the pay.

So, we'll just tighten 'em all up real quick,

go to the other end and tighten the *bleep* out of them.

And, fire it back up, man.

All right.

Dave, we're gonna fire it up real quick.

Damn it!

It vibrates so aggressive,

that it is basically beats itself to death.

And, it don't take no time.

I mean no time.

I mean, five minutes...

She done and it comes loose, no matter what.

It's the nature of a frickin' screen, man.

They wanna tear themselves apart.

They just tightened them, and then, they just came loose.

Loose.

Loose.

That's a stout piece of steel.

Um, if a guy can get a...

...A damn good weld here,

it ain't going anywhere.

It's all held together with nuts and bolts.

You weld them in, then you're done.

You'll never tighten it up again.

That's frustrating.

It was running so good, and then...

It's always something.

Hi, babe. Got you some food.

Oh, awesome.

10 days ago,

Casey had to return home to Arizona

to look after his wife, Vee.

- She's looking for a treat. - She is.

Who the hell gets a call that their wife disappeared

in the Grand Canyon?

I did.

It was the most devastating thing I've ever gone through.

My brother called me to see if I wanted to go hike the Grand Canyon,

and I'm always down for new adventure.

We started our descent down and all of a sudden

my brother started cramping,

and he asked me to get help.

So, I started hiking back and I realized that I was off track.

So, I slept there overnight,

and as soon as the sun came up,

made it to the top and I waved down a bus driver.

It took 'em two more days to find my brother.

I thought he was not gonna make it.

I'm glad you're okay.

And, I'm glad you're here. I need you.

I don't know if I want you to go back.

To be honest.

It was super, super hard being away from my wife and son.

This is a lot of seasons of me being gone.

It beats up on her, and I'm not there to help.

Let's show 'em what you're building. Come on.

If you're going to be in this gold mining game,

you're going to pay a price.

And, you have to decide when that price

is too high to pay.

- Bam! - Good job.

Hey, let's go check on Mom, okay?

My wife's gone through a pretty traumatic event.

And, right now I'm not sure I'm gonna go back to Alaska.

I'm not leaving this cut until I punch down

and I see what's down there.

With the Eagle down and with just three days left

until Dave pulls the plug on the Pappy cut,

Jason targets a 20 square foot section of ground

to fight down to bedrock.

I'm trying to get through this as quick as possible.

That way I can dig and see if...

...I'm gonna have to ask for more time in this cut.

Gold fever is when you start making decisions

that make absolutely no sense.

And, you start running off of instincts and gut feelings

of something that's in the ground that you can't see.

There's a grilled cheese sandwich of gold sitting down there.

I just gotta get to it.

Now is that bedrock or frickin' boulders?

Yep, that's bedrock.

Whoo!

This is one of those things where...

When your job is to find the gold,

stay on the gold and chase the gold,

you gotta know what's at the bottom.

You don't give up till you see the bottom

or the boss man says, "No offence, but you're done."

We got one piece and a bunch of fines.

Hey, Nater!

Look how round, like, how thick this one is.

I wanted to see that thick, coarser, nuggety-looking gold.

In the first pan, to grab something, have a little thicker,

little bit of that bedrock gold look.

I'm pretty confident.

We'll send it to the burner pay. Let's go.

Yeah!

That's what we've been saying all along.

Good gold should be down on bedrock.

Now, Jason must send as much bedrock pay

to the plant as he can,

before this week's gold weigh.

Now, I'm feeling pretty optimistic.

The particle size was... It was decent.

I know there's good gold down there.

At least I think there is.

Damn, I hope I'm right.

This is, uh, Alaska weather at its best, right here.

A violent thunderstorm sweeps through Glacier Creek

at the worst possible time.

These breakdowns are costly.

Every minute you're not sluicing, you're losing money.

The wash plant's been out of action for two hours.

Dave has no choice.

He must weld the bolts to the grizzly bars

in the middle of the downpour.

I've got to tighten it down as tight as we can get it.

And then, we will weld it.

Problem is that it's raining.

Welding in the rain can be difficult at times.

But, we'll put a tarp over us, and then weld it.

That's all we can do.

*bleep*

That electricity and water don't mix very well.

You're welding up there, you get zingered,

and you go, "Zzzt!"

Zingered!

*bleep*

Well, I could wait for better weather, but

I'm running out of time on this claim.

Always moving.

Hey, Nate! Think we're set.

Welded up. Bolted up tight.

Just hope and pray it holds.

Okay Chris, load it up. We're ready to go.

Oh, Lord, please let this thing stay together.

That's the sound I wanna hear.

Grizzly sounds good.

Eagle's running. Eagle's flying again.

Back in business.

It's a wet, nasty day, but we're making gold.

Now, the Eagle is back running.

There's evidence that the Cottonwood cut

had been mined by the old timers.

And, I don't think it's been mined very deep.

But, I wanna make sure.

Dave heads to Valdez to search for more clues

of historical mining at the Cottonwood cut.

I love to go into the archives,

libraries and museums and find out

who's mined here before.

Any information I can gather will help all of us

go home with more gold in our pockets.

Pretty neat, I love history.

Um, it just gives me such a appreciation for what the old timers did.

You know, they didn't have pickup trucks and excavators.

They really either had a mule or a dog team

and they just went out prospecting, so.

I love this part, it's pretty amazing.

Here's what I'm looking for.

Plaster mines,

and they actually talk about Glacier Creek here.

The surface gravels on some of the streams have been sluiced in a small way.

Gold content was not high enough to warrant profitable exploitation

by the simple methods used.

Their simple methods probably were old-time equipment, right?

It's kind of good news.

Means it shows me that there's gold there.

They mined it, but they couldn't get deep enough.

Which then, opens it up for us with our equipment.

We can get down to bedrock.

It really encourages me to keep going.

So, now we just gotta get after it and start mining.

Morning at Glacier Creek.

Yeah, the Cottonwood cut's ready to go.

Last of the cottonwood trees.

Jason's got about 12 hours left, that's it.

As Dave clears the new Cottonwood cut,

the crew has already sluiced

over 2,500 yards of Jason's bedrock pay.

We're running more than we've ever ran before.

But this property has definitely shown that we're gonna have to run

high volume to make any gold here.

Jason has just one day left

to prove the Pappy cut holds good gold.

I'll dig down to the core if there's gold down there.

Dave will probably get mad, "Jason, why you digging another hole?"

Trying to get the gold, Dave.

I'm learning to, uh, figure Jason out.

He wants to do the right things.

He hates to make a mistake.

But I'm so proud of him for learning and conquering and adapting.

I think Jason's gonna make a great mine-boss some day.

He's on the way.

Whoo-hoo! Yeah, baby.

I was three years old when I first came up to see my papa mining.

And I always liked it.

When I got here, this year,

the Dempseys had actually left a little sluice.

Let's try it.

There we go! Looks like we have enough water to run some dirt.

I'm just gonna keep scooping some dirt on,

keep rinsing it through.

Feel pretty lucky having my grandpa being a gold miner.

It's a really cool profession.

I just love having Micaiah here.

To see my grandson enjoying

the Alaska experience

and getting gold out of the ground, it's priceless.

So for a little bit of gold... Holy crap! That's quite a bit.

That's way more than I thought.

Yeah, this is awesome.

Whoo!

Go big or go home, right?

I just don't wanna go home without hitting that gold.

In Alaska,

after a four-day dig to bedrock,

Jason's quest to prove the Pappy cut

can yield good gold is almost over.

I believe that our 600 ounces

is sitting down on bedrock.

But, you know,

I am definitely feeling the pressure,

If this fails,

it's not just a failure for me,

it's a failure for the team as well.

Now, his bedrock theory will be put to the ultimate test.

All right, shut her down, boy.

It's time to make a call on the Pappy cut, see if it's over with.

How's it look, boys?

We're onto gold.

- See here. - Oh, yeah!

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah, both sides.

It's laying on top.

Look at that *bleep*.

I think Jason's on it.

He's on bedrock.

We're onto gold.

How's it look?

The box is looking really good.

That's what I like to hear.

Been a grind.

Yeah.

Hope we did it.

Gonna be pretty anxious to see this, uh, outcome.

Sluice boxes lie.

So gotta wait till I see it on the scale.

Yeah, there wasn't much black sand in that one last one, but...

Ooh!

Hi, guys.

Hey, you.

- How you doing? - Welcome back.

Yeah.

Come on, give me a hug.

- How you doing? - Good to see you, man.

After two weeks nursing his wife back home in Arizona...

Hey guys! Hey, good to see you guys.

What's up, Morgan?

...Casey returns

- and brings the crew back to full strength. - What's up, buddy?

Welcome back, brother.

Things at home are a lot better, so

it's time for me to come back up and help my other family, mining family.

Yeah, I missed you guys but I had to take care of family first.

Absolutely.

Well, you came back at the right time. We're gonna do a gold weigh tonight.

Sweet! Where's my gold?

- About time you did something. - Come over, Casey.

So, with that,

that gold is at the bottom of the Pappy cut.

Let's weigh it up. See what we got!

I'm excited.

But I'm nervous.

This*bleep* is all on me.

You know, guys...

With a target of 60 ounces...

- You count. - Three.

Four.

... it's make or break for Jason and the Pappy cut.

17.

Oh.

- 27. - 27.

27.

Worth less than $50,000.

We're way short.

Damn it.

That's bad.

You know, we hit bedrock all the way down to the pump.

It's the most bizarre

deposit ever.

- The Pappy cut? - Yeah.

- It's done. It's over. - Yeah.

There's no gold at the bottom.

It was all in the top gravels.

It was honestly, a waste of time for us.

Big waste of time.

A 27-ounce cleanup was

not what I expected from bedrock.

But it gave me an answer.

I'm ready to be done with the Pappy cut.

It's time to move on to the Cottonwood.

I really appreciate you guys,

how hard you all worked.

But I just feel like time is slipping away.

How do I get to 600 ounces?

We're not even halfway there.

Good news is,

I'm looking forward to the next cut.

We're moving to the Cottonwood cut.

The whole team's back.

We can hit our goal here.

But, we've gotta really step up our game.

Good with that? All in?

- All in. - Guys, let's do it.

All in!

It's been a really hard, frustrating week.

It sucks for our gold total.

So there's quite a bit of pressure right now.

But we're moving on to a new cut and

hopefully we can milk out his 600 ounces.

Super happy to be back, just wanna get back to work.

Get as much gold as we can before winter gets here. You know the clock's ticking.

This week was bad.

And it's time you never get back,

Am I happy about 27 ounces? Hell no.

But, as the leader, you have to,

you know, keep your spirits up.

Why I love this guy, man.

We're moving on to the Cottonwood cut.

Future looks good.

And I feel good about our goals.

On the next episode.

It's go time.

A new cut.

Who's blocking the Cottonwood pay?

And old faces.

Lance is my partner. He's gonna have some things to say.

Turn up the heat on Team Turin.

The weak link is the loading.

*bleep* you!

I think he ought to stick to his spreadsheet.

In an instant, everything changed.

But when the going gets tough...

Whoa! Whoa!

...the tough get gold.

Come on, big money.