Original subtitles

It's normal for us to be spread thin, but right now it's a little bit too

Over halfway through the mining season, it's crunch time for 26 -year -old

Parker Snavel.

Good boy.

Mud Mountain is a big project, probably a bit bigger than I thought it was going

to be.

And there's still a lot of dirt to move.

He has to finish stripping the 60 -foot -deep mud mountain in the next month, or

he won't have time to sluice it before the end of the season, when his lease

runs long, and any gold left behind becomes someone else's to mine.

I already paid royalties on this stuff at Mud Mountain, so I have to get it

this year.

And the clock on the season is definitely ticking.

But his whole crew is already working flat out, running both his wash plants.

Stucifer.

Stucifer.

What's

happening?

How are you guys?

We got a problem.

Mud Mountain.

is a this decent thing.

We have to go in there and get it done, or else we lose hundreds of thousands of

dollars, more likely in the millions.

We need people and machines, and we just don't have anybody.

The only solution I've come up with is we've got to set a plan down.

Create some machines and people. Yeah, I think that's the real manpower suck.

Yeah. Yep. Shut down a plant.

Now is the prime sluicing time, right?

No, I think it's definitely a gamble.

Yep.

Sluicing down slucifer will cost Parker $100 ,000 a day in unmined gold.

But it's his only option if he wants to get Mud Mountain sluiced this year.

I don't like saying we bit off more than we can chew, but we did.

You know,

it's definitely a first cutting down a wash plant halfway through the season.

And chancing something like this, you know it's going to drop to minus 20 on

Right now, it's fine saluting season. We have 24 -hour daylight, good song going

on. And to set one plant down, that's risky business right there.

Obviously that cuts our production in half, and we're trying to get everything

we can out of it.

Mitch Blaschke and a small crew will keep running Big Red at the airstrip,

Tyson Lee takes his five -person team to reopen Mud Mountain.

It sounds like we will...

be shutting down the plant for a while so uh i'm just gonna be putting here the

last bucket before i shut it all down it looks like we all about to uh move to

mud mountain and uh yeah it is what it is

gutter down

this

is the first time parker has ever put down a working watch plant at peak

We're really counting on Mud Mountain having 10 ounces an hour in it. You

if it does, we'll be fine. If not, we're going to be in trouble.

Parker believes there's $14 million worth of gold under Mud Mountain.

But there's still another 20 feet of overburden to stretch before the crew

get to it.

Yeah, there's potentially 8 ,000 ounces in this hole, so we have to get it down

to pay, get all the mud out, and get it through a wash plant sooner rather than

later.

Success, failure, genius, insanity.

It's all a fine line, right?

Five weeks ago, Parker stopped work at Mud Mountain.

to concentrate on banking gold from his other cuts

but in the meantime

melting permafrost has turned mud mountain into a swampy mess meaning

can't bring in dozers right away

it's not the

right time of year to be moving this kind of mud but it's what we're gonna do

and it's So what's best for the company?

That one has a bit of mud in it.

Okay.

Right now we're dealing with very soft mud.

It looks very soupy. I've never seen anything like it.

To dry out the coat, Tyson will have to make do with the smallest pump on the

claim.

And it won't be a quick job.

All I have is a four -inch pump.

Get the water out. That's the name of the game here.

For now, this is all I have and got to make it work.

Yeah, we got the water pump going.

So now it's the hurry up and wait game.

Parker's already spent two and a half million dollars opening Mud Mountain.

I could have this buttoned up in a week.

Week? Like we don't have a week.

Having Plooper down for a week will cost half a million dollars.

And it still doesn't guarantee Parker will get to the gold before the end of

season.

It's great to have the plant up and running.

Three months into the season, Special Forces Medic Fred Lewis and his crew of

combat veterans have only run their wash plant for one full week.

Last week we beat our season total from last year. That's fantastic.

But honestly, we need to smooth things out. We need at least 100 ounces going

through this plant to make this a viable season.

At this point, the only way to make that happen is to work as a team.

Cohesion. and communication.

We can do that, we'll keep this sucker fed the entire season.

I want to go home with some gold bars.

You know, I'm not going home with empty pockets this season.

Recon Scout Sniper Stuart McKenzie feeds the plant, while Fred's wife Kara loads

pay into some Christopher's rock truck.

I like working in both, the rock truck and the excavator.

But it just makes sense to put Stuart on it for tonight because he's got more

experience on it than I do, even though I'd probably do a better job than he

would.

So I'm just going to give you a couple loads of gravel, right, Christopher?

Yeah.

What is it that's causing you to move, like, really slow?

Are you serious right now?

Yeah.

Hey, Mom.

What? When are you going to learn to not hit the bucket?

I'm not trying to hit the bucket, Christopher.

You are hitting the truck.

The way you're speaking to me right now, the way you speak to people is very

arrogant.

Nobody's going to work for you. I speak to people this way when they refuse to

listen. All right, Christopher, I'm out.

Hey, can you hop out real quick?

Yeah, sure.

You're not going to speak to me like that. Flat out. But listen. So you might

know a little bit more than me, but I'm still the hand that feeds you, so I

don't care. Then you still need to listen when you're doing it, and it's

Hey, day nine.

Christopher, the way that he says things comes off pretty button heads with

everybody. There is not one person here that has not, you know, thought about,

you know, tackling down and beating out of them.

We need a team player. We don't need somebody who is the know -it -all who

thinks that there's nothing left for him to be taught.

Christopher's a good kid, but he's got a hot head.

You know, he's 21 years old.

But the Misfits, we're all about teamwork and team cohesion.

And at this point, I've got to come up with a solution and see if he can learn.

Big hole we dug.

This is the money pit.

Last season.

Rick gambled big on a piece of ground he christened the Deep Cut.

Ground which promised twice as much gold as the rest of Lower Duncan Creek.

Only to discover that 90 % of it was barren.

We spent a quarter million dollars going down into this last year. We didn't

pull a ounce of gold out of it.

Now, a year later, Rick has a hunch there's still gold.

Somewhere in the deep cut.

We tested down here. This was a continuation of what the previous guys

And they were pulling great numbers. So on the Indian River, it's a little more

easier to follow. All that gold's been spread by water events.

And so it just spreads more or less evenly.

And it's a game of numbers. You kind of know what you're going to get, right?

Through here, there's been seven major glacier events come through here.

And that just took everything.

It's a tough valley to mine. Yeah, no kidding.

Thousands of years ago, a glacier cleaned out the gold -rich pay dirt from

of the area, leaving only a small section untouched at the northeastern

There is that one half of a football field out of 20 where all the gold got

pushed to by a glacier, and it's just sitting there in one little pile.

Yeah, if you left it, someone else come and mine it later on. Well, that's just

it. Yeah.

Rick believes the edge of the glacier, and its pocket of gold -bearing gravel,

is under the access road.

There's got to be something in there, so, I mean, best case scenario, maybe we

get a couple weeks worth of running out of there, you know, get three, four,

five hundred ounces.

Well, since the 700 and 750 are up and running now, should I head down there

start digging around?

I'm good with that.

Alrighty. Alright. Okay, man. Good work.

Let's go. Let's do this.

Following our first few loads of overburden out of Stigway, trying to get

to that pay layer. If we're lucky, we can make up for some lost time and help

Rick get back some of the money spent on opening up this massive hole to find

out that 90 % of it had no gold in it.

This is my third tour of duty in this stupid hole here, and it gave us

Oh, I guess I'm glad we're not giving up on it.

Like I said, I feel like it still owes us money.

Third time's a charm, maybe.

Fingers crossed. Hopefully it's the mother load.

That's more like it.

You ready?

What's going on here, buddy?

Oh, I think we're kind of finding the outer edge of this palier down here.

What are you thinking?

You think we found it?

You pulled that big rock out of there?

I did. Two of them. Building stone hens here.

Where you start hitting those big, big boulders like that, like you're in the

right spot.

Brennan Rualt has discovered the edge of a layer of rocks and gravel, indicating

the start of the pay dirt.

If Rick's right,

it could hold hundreds of ounces of gold.

I mean, we'll get a week's worth of run time out of this. Like, that'll

certainly give us a boost.

Yep, that'd be nice. Not bad. I like the sound of that.

Yeah. About time this hole pays up.

Yeah. Okay, well, let's get at it.

This is still mining. It's still gambling.

You just never know what's down there.

Maybe there's a reason we're back in here. If there's still a lot of 2 -hours

-per -hundred ground in here, it's a pretty damn good reason.

You know, Parker's putting all his eggs in one basket right now, and that's in

Mud Mountain.

Lucifer's shut down because my whole Lucifer crew is in trucks right now

me get Mud Mountain squared away.

For three days, Parker's naval plant boss, Tyson Lee, has been struggling

the sloppy overburden at Mud Mountain, trying to remove it so Parker can bring

in dozers and start stripping.

Yeah, you can see down there it's starting to build up.

Yeah, it looks good, man.

You know, this is just a real bad time to be doing this. I mean, done when it's

cold, not in the middle of summer.

The issue we're fighting here, as the temps have come up, all that mud, those

high walls, it's melting.

It's running out and seeping onto the floor.

Right now there's definitely a lot of press and we can definitely feel it.

Tyson, you got a copy, Tyson?

I'm getting stopped at the top.

Copy that, Tater Totem. I'm on my way with the 700.

Right now we're going to have to get this thing moving again, but the big

struggle here is there's no more spares. There's nothing else you can go grab or

take from.

So I'm going to have Tyson push from the back.

I'll have you turn the wheels to the left here a little bit. We'll just try

get you straight.

So go ahead, take the brake off, put it in gear.

Let's make it happen. Good work, man. Thanks, man.

I don't care too much about sluicing or wash plants or any of that stuff right

now. I just want to get the stupid mud out of this stupid hole.

Tyson is done with Mud Mountain.

Oh, yeah. Here we are.

His mission accomplished.

He now heads back to the promised land.

You know, right now I'm just going to go ahead and get Lucifer back, Jake, and

the conveyors turning and...

Get everything warming up. It's been a long week of not sluicing.

Come on, Nerv.

Fire up the water pump.

Finally, Lucifer is back on the gold.

I need everything to happen smoothly.

At California Creek, Fred Lewis' crew is a man down.

Right now I've got Christopher over at Tony Beats, hopefully getting a pretty

good lesson.

A little worried that he's going to say something he shouldn't and somebody off.

40 miles away on Paradise Hill, Tony Beats puts Fred's son Christopher on

truck duty.

I hate being awake this early.

I'm more of a night person.

This is rough.

Is everyone leaving?

Okay.

So whatever I ask these people to do here, I can do myself.

This truck has got to get in.

Tony is loading pay into trucks headed for the trommel.

Chris D. Garvey, Chris D. Garvey.

You talking to me?

We got a live one, hello?

Hey, why do you want to be a gold miner? What's the matter with you?

It doesn't all happen all by itself, believe me.

Okay, back it up, Chris.

Yeah, if you want to come in clear with Lyle, like he's telling you, if you just

look at your beard, you line your box up.

Like they say, that's what happened, buddy.

Bye.

Probably good because his dad says he's a good kid.

That don't mean all my wife says that about my kids, too.

Okay, then you stop right there.

Next time, get right beside the other one, okay?

I mean, it's not that difficult driving a rock truck.

For a long time, it's intimidating because, like, he knows it.

And I don't know anything.

Oh, he wants to be a good old miner like me.

All good.

Mark, I can tell you what.

That ain't going to happen overnight.

Ah, I see. Hey, can you back up a little bit, Mark?

Yeah, I can.

Let's get back the truck up a bit, please.

There you go. That's good.

His first day working for Tony has taught Christopher a few valuable

But day two brings him new set of challenges.

How's it going, man?

Not too bad. How was the rock truck yesterday?

Fun as it can be.

The next generation is going to have to do things too, right?

If you can help them with that, hey man, that's a plus.

Today, Christopher will be in the excavator, removing tailings.

Hey, Jody.

How's it going, Cap?

This is Chris.

We're going to get him to run the 460 for you for a little bit. Okay.

Excavator operator Cody Russo... Make sure we don't hit anything.

...has been on the beach crew for three months.

Have fun, guys. Sounds like fun. Let's get it done.

Cool.

I heard yesterday.

We were having some trouble.

That was brutal.

So what's the life we're going to have to do? Beach plan, 24 -7.

You know, when Tony's in a good mood, I'm in a good mood.

Yeah, how often is that?

Tony's actually in a good mood most times.

I haven't seen Tony angry yet.

As long as you're doing your job and keep it quiet.

Don't hit the drum.

I swear Tony will kill us.

Kill me, not you.

Wow.

as long as you don't stockpile it out of reach that okay i'm gonna put it over

that berm

We appreciate you taking that time. Yeah, bud.

Hey, Chris, how'd you go?

How's it going, man?

How's your morning going?

So far this morning, we did an H -beam replacement.

One of these days, a transmission on a D6.

Never -ending.

If I can give you one bit of advice, I'd say a lot of folks think you've got to

be a real hard -ass all the time.

to get the results you want but really most of the time that ain't true if your

crew respects and likes you they're going to do more work for you of better

quality with a lot less complaining you got to give them a little bit of trust

and you're going to get a lot more back in return

After two full days at the beach claim, Christopher's eager to head home.

Beach boot camp.

Definitely a different environment for sure versus back at my own claim.

Being out here, I've been learning stuff.

I'm pretty aware I need to change my attitude.

I actually got out of the Army early on my contract because...

That was a couple times.

And I was down bad after that.

I kind of felt like I had let a bunch of people down.

I'm disappointed in myself, and I will be disappointed in myself until the day

die.

It's a weird feeling when you're only 21 and it feels like your life's gone

hard.

Fred reached out to me and was saying, like, hey, man, look, I need guys

up here, and I know you need help.

I do know there's gold down here. I just don't know how much.

With his work plant shut down, Rick Ness is on the hunt for paid herb.

And he's returned to an old familiar.

The plan is to get this bad boy fired up.

Hey Kyle, I need you to get that loader up here to the lay down yard and get

this pump down by the creek so we can see if it'll move any water.

Alright, I'll meet you down by the creek.

We're running out of time.

They need to get a pump in here right away before I end up with a mess that's

out of control.

Before Chris Cruz can start the pump, he has to prime it.

Three years of the work in the deep has come down to whether or not we can get

this pump running.

I'm going to try to fire this up.

I got this thing running, but now the pump doesn't want to pump water, so...

I don't know.

This is a one -way valve.

It'll only suck water in. It won't let water come back out.

And I think if I get that on in place of that cage, we'll be able to fill the

whole pump system up, get all the air out of it, and hopefully it can pump

water.

Pumping water uphill and out of the cut requires a huge amount of pressure.

Too little, and gravity will force the water back down the supply pipe, causing

air pockets, which can stop the pump.

The spring -loaded one -way valve ensures water can't return, allowing the

to run smoothly.

Make that go in there.

Come on over here, buddy.

Chris brings in Nathan Thornington as extra muscle.

It's your lucky day.

You're just a massive job, buddy.

I'll get this thing chucked in the water, and we're going to try it.

If you want to look down in that tube right there, when you see the water

out, yell.

This pump is very pump water.

Crank it up.

Yeah!

Let's go.

Hey, let's go.

She's pumping.

Six hours after water started to fill the deep cut, The crew is able to start

pumping it dry again.

Water's out of the cut. Get the trucks down here, huh? All right, buddy.

We should be hauling out of here and have the plant running with it in about

minutes.

What about Rocky?

He's finally chewing through deep cup hay.

At this point, it's done nothing but cost me money. So right now, this is the

time to make it pay up.

Six.

Seven.

Nine point three five.

Worth over $16 ,000.

Hey, so we're going up, guys. Yeah. This is our second Goldway.

What? Ten more. If we can replicate this, we're hitting our goal. All right.

right. Get back to work.

Thank you, guys. Find some more.

All right, we're two Goldways in right now. We've got almost 18 ounces. That's

pretty much three times our season last year. For the most part, our team is

really hitting it right now.

I'm super proud of this goal.

Oh, hello.

Oh, hello.

Hello. At Duncan Creek, it's time to find out if Rick Ness' hunch about the

cut access road has paid off.

I lost a quarter million dollars on it last year, but we had a successful

season, and I absorbed that loss, so now it seems just kind of like free gold. I

don't think that's actually how it works, but it makes me feel better.

So far, Rick has averaged 70 ounces a week, but to keep him on course for his

,000 -ounce season goal, he needs the last of the deep cut to deliver at

least 100 ounces.

Well, we're going to test how high you can count there, Brennan.

20, 40, 60, 80,

100, 110, 20,

126, 46.

That's your biggest lead -up of the year.

Sweet.

Rick Scamble on the Old Access Road has landed him on a pocket of extremely

lucrative gold -rich pay.

It's the crew's biggest haul of the season so far, worth $220 ,000,

putting Rick's total to date at 687 .68 ounces.

That's a good week. I'm happy with that.

Numbers like that's what we need, though. But, you know, at this point,

only numbers like that that we need. They've got to keep going up.

Yeah. And I know there's a lot more of it out here, right, on this property.

I don't know about you guys, but this is exactly what I need.

Yes, sir.

That and some cold beers.

That and some cold beers. About damn time.

About damn time.

Hey,

Tyson. How's it going, Dumit? Oh, huh?

Still kicking.

Hey, Mitchell.

Chris, what's happening?

How you doing, bud? Going on about yourself?

Good.

You watching rocks?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah? Yeah, you know, just fired back up for the first time in a week.

Let's hope the sacrifice was worth it. Season total so far is over $5 million.

But that's barely enough to cover the cost of his ongoing gamble at Mud

Mountain.

regretting it? Well, I regret it until there's a ton of money made out of it.

I'll leave this to you guys.

Thanks, guys.

Well, Tyson started bringing in the gold because we don't really know for 100 %

fact that Mud Mountain is just ripping in gold.

So until we get it sluiced up, everything's still up in the air.