Original subtitles

I just got back from Alaska, and that went decent

here in the Klondike. Mud Mountain, we did our first cleanup there, and it was

not great.

Not even good.

Mining wonder kid Parker Schnabel started the season on the back foot.

With good ground hard to find, Parker took on Mud Mountain, a 60 -foot deep

that could hold 8 ,000 ounces of gold.

But with winter just weeks away, it's only delivered 165.

At only an ounce or two an hour, it's definitely not looking too promising

So it better pick up, because we spent a lot of money stripping that.

Foreman Mitch Blaschke.

is in charge of running Mud Mountain pay through wash plant, Big Red.

Mud Mountain is the deepest cut that we've done so far to date, and we've put

lot of money and time into it.

We're going to need to have consistently good cleanups here and some really good

ones to pay for this.

Even though Big Red's not doing great, Lucifer continues to do all right at

and Stewart, and they're just about done with the good cut.

We're about to go to the bad cut.

I hope Ken's wrong about that, because if that's the good stuff, then the bad

stuff's going to be really bad.

At the promised land, Parker opened up three cuts, totaling 19 acres.

The good, the bad, and the ugly.

After eight weeks mining, the good cut has been exhausted.

Sluicifer will now be moved 170 yards to the bad cut, which earned its name from

a poor prospect, before finishing the season at the ugly cut.

How's it going, man?

Good, how are you? Good, thanks. You called?

We've got a lot of ground to get through in a pretty short amount of time down

there at Cannon Stewards.

And we're a bit behind.

you're going to be down there on your own because everybody else has spread

really thin.

Yeah.

Just hammer out the yardage as soon as you're fired up and rolling.

For sure.

I'll do my best.

All right. Thanks, T.

Thanks, man.

Sucifer is a plant that requires a lot of maintenance, and it definitely

like running in the cold weather. So the harder we hammer it now, Hopefully the

sooner we're done and the less bad weather we have to fight.

So hopefully Tyson can get her done.

We can keep Lucifer running in the bad cut here 24 hours a day. I envision

take three weeks to get the bad cut through Lucifer, the gold in the jar,

then we can move to the ugly.

There we go.

Lucifer's ready to move to the bad cut.

You want to spot any frogs?

Yep.

Pull, baby, pull.

With all the bigger machines working at Mud Mountain, Tyson must move the plant

with the 480 excavator.

But less power means less control.

You know, I could definitely do it with a bigger machine, but right now we need

to make it work with what we got.

As you can tell, I'm having to slowly inch it up here.

Hey, hey, hey!

Whoa!

You really are at the edge there, eh?

Out of space on the pod, Tyson must trust in balance.

And gravity.

Wash plan will hold you.

We're about to find out.

On the ground.

Plant in place.

Tyson brings in the 53 -foot feed conveyor.

Lucifer's in place. The super stacker's in place.

Just six hours after leaving the good cut, Tyson and his three -man crew are

ready to start processing the bad cut.

Sweet. Let's wash some rocks.

You ready, Frog?

I think I am.

Okay, go on, throw the first scoop in her.

Just throw you the first scoop.

Here we go.

There we go, it's losing.

Now we're in the bad pet.

Hopefully she can go back to what she does best.

Catch gold and walk her off.

Last week was pretty dismal. We pulled six ounces of gold. That is a horrible

pull.

That's nowhere near what we need to be pulling.

At California Creek, 40 miles west of Dawson City, Special Forces medic Fred

Lewis has gambled his entire life savings on mining for Yukon gold.

I have to come out of the Yukon with 100 ounces of gold to be successful.

Bottom line.

At this point, we're not on track to make that goal and that scares the crap

of me.

Three quarters of the way through the season, Fred's crew of military vets

banked just 45 ounces of gold.

What's more, the claim owners will be demanding their first royalty payments.

I'm going to go pay my royalties to Sanjo and York this week. If we can't

it up, they're not going to be impressed by us and they're not going to want us

mining on their claims.

There can't be any more mistakes.

On site, Infantry Scout Sniper Stuart McKenzie runs pay to the wash plant.

Green Beret Rick Douglas loads the pay into the plant.

The amount of gold that we've pulled so far, I mean, it is not what

I thought we would have had by this time frame.

Most everybody is just to the point where they're just saying, you know

just don't care anymore.

A lot of us are pretty down right now.

Our goals haven't really been awesome, so I don't think we're going to hit our

goal. I think everyone kind of is also thinking the same thing.

And the only one right now that is currently having hopes and dreams is

It's been raining since 9 o 'clock last night and it has not stopped. This is

the least amount of rain we've had in almost 12 hours.

Water level is so high.

You can see this creek is at capacity. If it wasn't for all the berms that we

constructed, this creek would be everywhere and flooded.

My major concern is losing a major wall on one of our retaining ponds. If that

were to happen, all the sediment would rush into the creek and we would for

get a call from...

The environmental police.

The team have built a system of berms to funnel water from the creek into four

settling ponds.

But heavy rainfall and runoff from the hill has raised the water level and

eroded the berms.

If they don't rebuild them, sediment from the settling ponds will flood into

creek.

That creek can't take much more of this.

We probably haven't even seen the worst of the water coming off the mountain.

It's a disaster waiting to happen.

If the creek is contaminated, Fred will be shut down and his season will be

over.

As soon as the next shift change gets here, which is any minute, we're going

have to be on creek maintenance.

and salvage this cut.

We're going to have to shut down if we don't make it right.

We're just screwing ourselves over. It doesn't do us any good to cry about it.

We just need to get it fixed as soon as we can to get back up and running.

This is not what we want to be doing.

Season's getting short.

Fred must use both his excavators.

Holy crap!

to heighten 1 ,500 yards of berms to save the ponds.

So has no choice but to shut down the plant.

I'm on my way right now to fix up a bunch of these berms that I've reached.

Have to get fixed before we can start anything.

If this water gets into our ponds, our wash ponds, our settling pond, all of

those, it causes those to actually breach back into the natural stream.

If the water board were to come out here, we could actually shut down.

Our ponds are pretty much the most important part of the mine.

Without water being held properly and within regulation, we can get shut down

pretty quick.

And right now we're sacrificing our time to run pay and we're building up these

berms because this could be a far bigger problem if it gets worse than it is

right now.

It's hard not to get upset and suck.

The season's only going to get shorter and shorter every single day, and we

can't afford to be shut down like this.

There's been a lot of stress lately by that no gold coming in.

It's just bills.

Rick Ness is in a race to hit 2 ,000 ounces of gold from the deepest cut he's

ever mined.

Last week, I was thrown quite a big curveball.

I was not prepared to hit pay so early or to have so much of it.

I don't have Monster Red set up to run it, and I don't even have enough.

Space to stockpile all this pay that's coming out of the Rally Valley.

Reports had suggested the pay they were chasing was a further 30 feet down.

But in a rare turn of good luck, it seems Rick has hit an unexpected score.

If he can run this nugget -rich pay before winter sets in, they could smash

their season goal.

and haul in a possible 3 ,000 ounces worth over $5 million.

We're just going to have to fire up the wash plant and start pounding yardage

through us.

It's crunch time.

Sure is nice being off night shift.

I'm kind of torn. I don't know if I'm happy to have you back or not.

I know.

By the end of the day, you'll probably not.

That thing sounds like it's just going to disintegrate when you pull up.

What a beauty. A lot of miles on it.

What do you got in store for us now?

Got to get Monster Red up and running.

Yeah, for sure.

I want this thing built in 48 hours, and by the end of day two, I want it maxed

out. We're running all that pay out of Raleigh Valley.

So we're going to be running around like our pants are on fire for the rest of

the year.

Nothing new.

We're going to keep the plant simple, no tailings conveyor, no big long feed

conveyor, nothing like that. So I've got this massive Elrish feeder.

It's capable of like 800 tons an hour.

It's literally twice the size of the one that we had last year. That's sweet.

It's going to give us everything we need to be over 300 yards an hour

legitimately.

Right, we've got a lot of work to do. Yeah, we do. Right.

I'm just prepping the spot for where we're going to put the wash plant.

We're going to hit our 2 ,000th goal. We have no time to prepare it or not.

We've got two days to get this plant up and running. We can't afford to be at a

standstill like this for any longer than that.

We're going to have to slap that thing together as quick as we can.

I do need to go bigger.

There's no doubt about it.

Rick spent over $100 ,000 fabricating new parts to catch Duncan

Creek's monster nuggets.

I'm pretty sure that we lost good -sized nuggets last year.

These upgrades will allow Monster Red to handle the brutal rocky ground that

destroyed it two seasons ago.

Rick's crew must now rebuild Monster Red.

This time, with the tools to take on the rocky, nugget -rich Raleigh Valley.

First up is the new discharge chute.

Nailed it.

You guys do another shackle so it's sitting straight?

Right there.

Yeah, buddy.

This is the final piece of the puzzle, too. Our little discharge setup.

Monster Red's old discharge chute had a metal plate on the outside to guide

tailings away from the plant.

The new design has rubber flaps, making it quicker and easier to clear rock

jams.

This is a piece that me and Carl built while we were out in Colorado this

winter.

And I'll be honest, I'm kind of excited to see something I build be put into

use.

You ready to yank it in place? Yeah, just got to put the straps on the bucket

here and we'll be ready.

Oh, bugs.

Okay, man, she's all hooked up, ready to roll.

I'm going to yank her then.

Pulling it right in the ground.

Our cables are short and that chute's sticking out in a way that won't allow

to get any real lift on it.

All I need to do is get it up.

Get it to ride up on top again.

The heavy new chute is stopping rig from getting enough lift on the tow.

So we're going to re -rig around that beam.

That's part of the frame, so that should be strong enough.

All I need is to get it up, riding up on top of the dirt again, rather than

digging in.

Monster Red is a half a million dollar plant.

I'll kill everybody if this thing breaks.

Like, there's no one getting out of here alive.

I'll dig a giant hole, I'll bury it, and I'll bury everybody on site with it.

Okay, go straight up!

Oh! Whoa, whoa, whoa!

Just bent that front frame in there.

No, really?

Like it's just that cross beam.

Let me... What if we just try and hook that one outside strap?

You know what I mean? And then you might be able to just pull it up on the

ground here?

Yeah.

To avoid any more damage, Brennan replaces the strap with a single cable

attached to the base.

Go up.

Come on, baby.

Yeah, keep going, gentle.

I think if we get the two hooked up, it'll be good.

Okay.

Let's go hook the other one up.

There you go.

Watch that shoot.

Yeah, you're good.

I'd probably bow where you want.

just get the sluice runs hooked up here. We're going to walk them to the wash

clamp.

Looking good.

This is the last sluice box that's got to get put in place. This is the nugget

sluice. We've never actually used this on the plant before.

These things are all set. They're in place.

Well done, boys.

With just the new hopper feeder to attach, Monster Red will be ready to run

richest pay dirt.

It's ever mined.

I'm so excited.

Now we just got to get Monster Red running. Doing that, we should be able

smash 2 ,000 ounces.

Tyson's still plugging away. You know, he's doing a good job of keeping plants

running.

Plant moves used to just be a nightmare, it seems like.

But now they're getting them done pretty often and pretty quick.

Parker Schnabel has tasked Sluicifer plant boss Tyson Lee with keeping the

coming in at the bad cart.

At full power, Sluicifer runs 240 yards of dirt an hour, weighing in

at over 650 ,000 pounds.

It looks like our shoot's backing up.

Fresh metal's got sharp edges, eh?

This cross piece here, like, this is where they were catching?

Yeah, right here as well.

Yeah. We'll just tune all the edges down.

Well, because we armored up the chute, all the rocks are just kind of coming

down and getting caught like that.

And then they build up and they build up and they'll build up into the shaker

deck and the shaker deck will power down because it's got too much weight in it.

There's definitely a little bit of a hiccup right here. Did not expect this

all.

The edges are a little too sharp. The rocks are getting caught.

We'll figure out if beveling the edge like Nick's doing is going to solve the

problem or not.

I almost burnt this grinder out.

I did not expect that at all. That's hot right there.

We're turning our back on.

Ready for water?

We did it.

Yeah.

Nope. Back up and running.

We'll figure out what the bad cat has in store for us.

A California creep.

A battle rages on.

Everything's going wrong. It could go wrong right now.

Just days before his first royalty fees are due.

Fred Lewis risks shutdown unless he can tame the torrent of water ravaging his

mine site.

We're having to shut down our wash plant and divert to creek control to keep our

firm from breaking its mast.

Drop it off.

Yeah.

Right now it actually is the really bad cliche race against time.

All of this firm is waterlogged.

And if we lose this, we lose that dam, we lose that dam.

So losing this could be a big nightmare.

Hey, Jimmy, you copy on this?

Yep, got it, bud.

I broke a freaking pin, man.

Gosh, man.

What's happened here is the rail here, about an inch and a half diameter pin

that goes through there, they can break internally.

Yeah, we got to get this done quick.

Yeah, man, man, it sucks.

With JB and Buzz now offline, Fred takes over reinforcing the berms in the one

working excavator.

It just never stops.

Those tracks are the bane of my existence.

This is costing us money.

Costing us money right now, and I'm fencing up.

Buzz, hopefully we can get it fixed quick.

In such a remote location, ordering a new pen could take weeks.

But every hour the 250 is down makes a catastrophic flood ever more likely.

So JB and Buzz rush to salvage and repurpose a pen from a neighbor's

A place where excavators are laid to rest.

Hope for the best.

Expect the worst.

Well, this one's got a bushing or something.

Look at that.

See an inch and a half.

Ready for power.

Watch your eyes.

This is the pin we actually need.

They're pressed in.

So they're in there pretty tight.

So we're going to attempt to cut the rail itself off the pin.

One side.

Looks good. Other than just being rusty, it looks like a new pin.

Fingers crossed it fits.

Back at the claim, the water is rising faster than Fred can plug the gaps.

This is definitely an area of concern.

I feel like I'm a medic again, plugging holes after combat.

There it is.

So the true test is, is this pin going to work?

Oh yeah, look at that.

She's going to go in there nice.

Yep. And then in the receiving end, yeah.

All right, we just got one more to take out, and let's put her back together.

Yep. We got lucky.

It could have been a week, two weeks before we get a pin, you know, shipped

here.

We'll load this sucker up.

We'll get back to work, man. We're done.

With both excavators back at work, Fred's crew can finally raise the berms

six feet needed to stop the silt -heavy water flooding into the creek.

Well, that's sealed up.

I think we've got these berms situated for about the highest our water is ever

going to be all season.

And now I'm walking the excavator back over and get them back to feeding the

plant because it's time to make some money.

It's time. We've got to get this thing rolling, man. We're ready to roll.

You ready for the pump, JB?

Yep, roger that, Clint. Thanks.

All right, I'm turning around.

Fixing the berms has cost Fred four valuable days of sluicing time and has

two days left to catch enough gold to pay his landlords.

All this stuff is going to make it tough to pay this royalty.

Time to start making money.

It's crunch time right now.

The leaves have all changed already.

We are running out of time quick.

Rick Nurse is bringing Washplant Monster Red back to life.

In a mission to start running the nugget -rich Raleigh Valley pay dirt, all

that's missing is the final piece of the jigsaw, a new 66 -foot -long hopper

feeder. I want to get up here, too.

Capable of moving 400 yards of dirt an hour, allowing Rick to run Monster Red

four times faster than his old wash plant.

Capable of keeping up with Monster Red and then some.

That's the piece of equipment that I can grow into.

Huge.

Go time.

Let's get this done.

These things are made to be moved with a, you know, a semi -tractor, which I

don't have. And so this is a chain and an exclamator.

This makes me nervous.

Jesus Christ.

shaky as...

You're

going to have to lift that conveyor with the loader.

They must lift the feed conveyor on the hopper to ensure it perfectly aligns as

it slowly inched toward Big Red.

Don't f*** it up, Kyle.

I'm on it.

Keep going.

We're out.

It looks good, doesn't it? It does.

It made me think, like, all we've been doing is putting money, throwing money

this thing for, what, the last couple of years. It's just kind of been a big

dumpster for money.

And so I kind of thought I'd rename it the Monster Gold Dumpster.

Yeah. But anyways, it's ready to roll.

And we've got a huge amount of pay to run through it.

So let's fire it up and see what Rally Valley has to offer, right? Hell yeah.

It's go time.

Yeah,

buddy. Yeah.

Can't wait, man. I want to see what he cut us off.

Two years after being destroyed, Monster Red is alive and

ready to run hundreds of yards of Raleigh Valley's Goldrich Pay Dirt.

You know, this is the moment we've been waiting for the whole season to get this

wash plant set up down here and start making us some real money.

Rick Ness is now one step closer to 2 ,000 ounces and joining the big leagues.

It's all coming together.

It's been a stressful month, not sluicing, but all that's about to

This week has been one of those weeks.

Cara just laughs.

It's frustrating.

Yeah.

After one of his toughest weeks ever working on the mine, Fred's wife Cara

to return home due to other job commitments, leaving Fred, a crew

How many days or hours were we running?

You know, totally, I'd say for the whole week, we only ran three half days.

Yeah. Really?

Just because of all the problems and everything that went down.

JB, I think it's your honor this time. All right.

And one.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Come on. Five.

5 .6.

For the week, this doesn't cover our fuel bill.

We're going negative.

We obviously need way more than this.

So, you know, this is what we get when we run that much. So we need to make

every chance we get, we're running.

I'll get this to Jorg, and I'll deal with that.

And see what Sander and York say.

Yeah. All right. Get back at it. Back to work.

We need four times this every week.

Fred and Brother -in -Arms Clint set off for Dawson to pay claim owner York his

10 % royalty.

Hello?

With his season total at 52 .46 ounces, Fred owes this week's entire gold

hole.

All right, there's your cut. Hopefully bigger next time. Yeah.

The ground is good, but the amount of gold for the amount of time is not that

good.

The season could be done very soon.

Sandra and I will come up and have a look at your operation and see what

doing there. We need you to lose more.

All right.

If they want to continue next year, we need to find a solution to scale up the

operation to the goal that they lose more material.

We'll go up and have a look at that.

Lucifer all moved over.

Yeah, she's in the bad cut, and hopefully it's not bad.

So all in all, I mean, you know, we washed a lot of rocks. Yeah. How did it

How did it go? Well, you want to check it out?

There you go, big red right there. You ready?

Parker gambled $4 million on Mud Mountain in the hope of pulling out 8

ounces. Let's see what we got here.

20. He needs it to deliver 400 ounces a week just to recover his investment.

170, 180, 190 .45.

Worth $343 ,000.

So Mud Mountain again is a little bit of a disappointment.

Next up, Sluicifer, after its move to the bad cut.

Here we go. Let's see it.

10, 40, 80, 100,

120, 140, 170, 180,

192 .05.

Worth $346 ,000, the bad cut has delivered more gold than Mud Mountain,

despite less run time.

That's really good for a first clean -up. That is. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's

good. Yeah.

Probably one of the best, really.

You've been doing a great job down there.

Thanks, T.

For the week, you guys, we got 382 .5 ounces.

With the money that Parker spent, we need a lot more gold than that.

All righty.

Well, thanks, Dumit. All right.

Yeah.

Catch you guys later.

Send Mitch back to Dud Mountain.

Am I right there, Nate?

Oh, yeah. Okay.

He looks like Harry off of Home Alone there, and he touches the electricity.

He's grumpy.

No. Don't poke the bear.

Don't poke the bear.

You guys killed it. I mean, that's a big plant set up.

There's a lot of pieces there. You know, you guys did a great job. I really

thank you for, you know. all piling in and making it happen.

Obviously, with plant moves and setting up and all that stuff, that takes time,

and we only had a couple days to run.

We haven't really seen much gold for how many weeks now? Yeah.

So far this season, Rick's averaged three -quarters of an ounce an hour,

Monster Red running triple the amount of Rich Raleigh Valley pay dirt.

They're hoping for a big score.

Two days running, 20 hours. What did it give us?

5, 10, 20, 30,

over 40. Holy.

Yeah, yeah.

Over 40.

43 .53.

Yeah. My man.

If the 100 -foot deep pay layer continues to deliver like this, Rick

his best season ever.

Hey, buddy.

That adds up.

Well, now we just need to keep doing that 24 hours a day. We need to do

than that. The pay at the bottom is going to be better than that.

I think 2 ,000 ounces is ours.