Original subtitles

We definitely got a little ahead of ourselves this year.

I don't know, we just have a mountain of ground to move.

27 -year -old Parker Schnabel is on an all -out gold blitz.

In the Yukon, he's attempting to mine more ground than ever before.

And 300 miles west in Alaska, he's going to open a new claim that holds the key

to his mining future.

But before he can move resources, Parker wants every last bit of the 90 acres

he's working on in the Klondike to be down to gold -rich pay dirt.

Right now we're tackling this next section right here, and it's just a bit

going. It's just a mountain of ground to get through, and we need more people.

Parker's crew is split between two groups.

The bulk are focused on stripping, while a skeleton crew keeps running pay dirt

from the keyhole cut.

To help him survive his toughest season yet, Parker's called in an old friend.

So Parker has asked me to come over, all the way from Australia, to help him

with his new Alaskan operation, which is not quite ready to go yet. So in the

meantime, he needs me to come over and help him here on the Indian River on his

Yukon claim.

I feel like a little bit of fish out of water just because I'm not used to this

style of mining or this style of gold.

So this is going to be a huge learning curve for me.

Hoping Parker's going to give me a bit of a tour around and I'll get to see the

operation, the cut.

Yeah, I'll probably get stuck into it now.

Like Parker, Tyler Mahoney grew up on a family mine, becoming an expert in

nugget hunting.

Three years ago, she guided Parker... Howdy, stranger.

What's up?

..around the goldfields of Australia, Helping him unearth big nuggets.

I'm shaking.

It's not bad, hey.

Hello. How you doing? Good, how are you?

Good.

I just can't believe how much dirt there is.

We're throwing everybody we can at rock trucks.

Trying to get mud moved, but we're still short drivers, so how would you feel

about running a rock truck for a little while?

I've never driven a rock truck, but I can do that, yeah.

Is this what I'll be in?

Yeah.

Parker first wants Tyler to learn rock truck basics as a stepping stone to

loading pay.

Should I come up with you?

Yep.

This is to dump the box.

Okay. When you're dumping, you want to make sure you're on level ground, or

you'll just, like, roll the truck over. You die? Okay, yeah. You won't die.

Okay. Just go for it. Yeah, but where am I going? What am I doing?

You just follow the other truck. Don't be stupid.

Can you please go first? That's stupid.

That's not stupid. I'm the one that's going to get yelled at if I... Where are

you going? You just follow the other trucks around.

Get in the passenger seat. Get in that seat.

What stage should I be doing?

Full throttle.

Full throttle? No, I'm kidding.

Just don't hammer through the rough stuff.

Okay.

Really what we need is mud moving.

So the big trick is to find a set of tracks and follow them.

Okay. So when you're in the mirror, if you just find a nice set of tracks, go

back to the back.

Watch me roll a truck over. Mm -hmm. And then you can just click that down.

Yep. And what I do is just idle forward while it's coming down.

Okay.

Crush course over.

Give her.

Hope nobody's in front of you.

Tyler lines up her truck to get loaded with gold rich pay.

I think the thing I'm most worried about is rolling a rock truck, and that's so

embarrassing.

I've done it.

I don't want to do it.

Me? Go?

Okay.

In the old days, we used to fire truck drivers if they weren't in drive with

their hands put on the brake when the horn went off. What?

Yeah. So I would have just lost my job.

Yep.

How do you feel?

I feel better. Yeah, you're good?

Yeah. Can you go on your own? Yeah. All right.

You want to drop me off at my truck?

Yeah. Is here okay?

I mean, you can pull up, like, at least beside my truck.

Good luck. Thanks for that. No worry.

Have fun. Be safe.

I will.

Close by, in the next cut, foreman Mitch Blaschke strips down to pay.

You know, this season we just have so much to do, and I really wish Brendan

up here with us this year.

You know, trying to find somebody like that, man, I think you'd have an easier

time trying to find Bigfoot.

Okay, this is actually what I'm most not... Oh, my God.

Most not confident about right now is this reversing up to the edge.

I'm actually finding it difficult to gauge the mirrors.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!

Stop, stop, stop.

So when you're backing up like that, you've got to watch the box because even

though the front of the truck's flat, the box is going to start rolling over.

you keep backing up like that, you'll tip it right over.

Sorry, Mitch.

Parker brought Tyler out to give us a hand here and help us out, but almost

created us a little bit more work.

Better figure it out if she wants to stay around here.

We're that much closer to gold. They're just going to keep these guys focused,

keep their motivation up.

Before we know it, we're going to be sleuthed.

Far from the massive mining operations on Indian River, former Green Beret Fred

Lewis is deep in the wilderness at California Creek.

His gold mining dream hangs in the balance as his crew battles to break up

ice field covering his claim.

In just his second season in the Klondike, Fred has set a 500 -ounce

goal. But four weeks in, he has no wash plant, and he's produced exactly zero

ounces.

All right, guys, Buzz and I are going to have to leave to go and get that wash

plant. You guys are going to have to be here. I'm going to leave you in charge.

Yeah, hey, keep it up, man. Rock and roll. Let's go.

With his plant from last season no longer available, Fred struck a deal to

local miner and crew member Buzz's home -built wash plant.

We're talking about winning over our freedom this season and becoming

independent miners, and a wash plant is kind of the first step.

While the crew continues to hack at the icebound claim, Fred heads off to

retrieve the plant from Buzz's home in... He's on this thing, and I put a

trust in Buzz. We're about to see if that's going to pay off.

Buzz!

Hey. Will that thing even run?

You know, it doesn't look like a whole lot right now, but me and you, the work

that we're going to do to this thing, man.

It's going to be the cat's meow.

Well, what are we talking about for work? Because it looks like it needs

everything. We're going to build a new skid because this thing here is just too

light for the ground that we're on.

So we're going to fabricate a new skid, the new hopper underneath.

Okay.

Buzz has planned to bring his wash plant back to life.

Step one, build a 12 -foot high, 19 -foot long steel frame.

from scratch step two place it on top of a set of skids and weld it together

step three drive in a seven ton shaker deck position it on top and attach

it then finally step four maneuver in and place a hopper into position

once complete this wash plant at full throttle should be capable of cleaning

90 yards of pay dirt an hour

Can you and I do this by ourselves?

I don't have any experience welding, cutting.

I'll teach you, man.

To start, Fred and Buzz locate a set of skids they can repurpose for the base of

the frame.

I see it.

Solid.

Okay, the key to our mining strategy is to move the plant as we move, so this is

the heartbeat of the whole wash plant.

We want everything to be as quick and easy as possible, so we can just hook

this thing, pull it up, steam to our next pay pile, wash it, move on to the

one. I don't have a whole lot of welding experience, so... You'll learn as we

go.

You know, the good thing is, you know, I've got Buzz on the team for this

purpose. He's an amazing fabricator and operator.

The floor.

That's not that bad looking, though.

Fred and Buzz work into the night, creating the new frame and skids for the

plant.

Now, it's the moment of truth.

I want to stand over here and just watch.

Time to place the seven -ton shaker deck on top of the frame.

Slow and steady, slow and steady.

Whoa.

It fits.

Are you sure this is going to hold?

This one is nice, though.

Yep.

Yeah. And it's holding it.

That's a good sign.

Nothing fell apart.

I'll tell you what, Buzz.

Instead of Freddie and Juan, it's Fred and Buzz. We just did this all by

ourselves.

But the job's not done yet.

They still need to paint the rusty frame and fix up the hopper.

So this hopper really is the most important part of the wash plate. It's

to feed all of our feed directly onto our screen.

We had to get this done by the end of the week. We've got to get it across the

river and up to the claim.

Time is of the essence, and we can't have any setbacks.

Spring is finally all right.

It's getting nice.

One thing is for sure. If we're going to reach our 5 ,000 -ounce goal, we've got

to keep the trauma rolling.

Chasing a record -setting season goal, Tony Beats is going all out on his

Paradise Hill claim.

To hit

his target,

Tony's opened two of the biggest and deepest cuts of his mining career.

The blue cut.

And the cold cut.

We have two cuts ready to go.

Out of those two cuts this year, we'd like to get at least 5 ,000 ounces.

You got to move double the dirt, but you should get double the gold.

In the cold cut, Ruby Mahoney sends gold -rich pay dirt to the plant.

You know, because we're moving so much dirt so quickly, it's kind of just all

hands on deck right now. And we're all just trying to work together in this

chaos.

While Ruby loads pay, 1 ,000 feet northwest in the Blue Cut, the rising

temperatures are creating a mess for the king of the Klondike.

The Blue Cut, we started the Blue Cut, everything is a mess.

No matter what you do, there's mud.

But all the extra snow that we had this year, I mean, we had six, seven feet of

that. Now that that is melting, everything is turning into mud holes.

Looks like one of the new guys got stuck.

As the cut turns into a swamp, Megan struggles to keep the rock truck fleet

running.

It's just too wet from when the snow melted last night.

This has been a problem for us all morning.

With the fourth truck of the morning down, the problem escalates.

Tony calls in his son, Mike, who is charged with running the cuts.

Well, what do you think?

Mike, this is not a good weekend to have this.

A waterfall over there of water.

We've got to make a plan because we can't keep having these trucks stuck all

time.

We've got all that.

Last season, the beach were plagued by the constant flooding on the hill.

Now, Tony wants to go on the offensive.

We'll drain the water out of the cut that way. What do you think?

Yeah. I would go through one stream and set all over the place. That would make

a mess, right?

Yeah.

So who do you want to... Well, we have James over there with 750, so might as

well get his ass over here to do it. Okay, we'll call him in. Get him in

James, do you copy? James, do you copy?

Could you come over here with that 750? We've got an easy dig a ditch.

Millions of gallons of melt water are pouring into the blue cut.

Tony's plan...

is to dig a 900 -foot trench around the edge of the cut to catch the water.

Then install a 20 -foot culvert, which will funnel the water caught by the

system out and away from the cut.

Right now we've got the water coming down the hillside down there. We want

water to go all the way around so that it's out of our way for the rest of the

summer.

Excavator operator James Rhino has been working for the beach since 2017.

Right now I am digging out the mud in this ditch so we can lay a culvert in on

solid ground so the water can keep flowing out of the cut.

Behind on gold and stretched in the cuts, Tony can't help but oversee the

despite handing the reins over to Mike.

Keep coming, keep coming, keep coming.

Push it a bit more.

Take it easy.

Hold it right there.

Don't even touch it.

Keep going.

That's not coming. That's going.

Okay, James, take that hose and go play somewhere else with that thing.

Like usual, you got to do it yourself.

I had to remove the operator. He seemed a little bit lost.

So what we're going to do is we're going to dig this corner out so we can divert

the water.

In just 20 minutes, Tony has the culvert in place, funneling the water away from

the cut.

All he needs now is to cover the culvert in a layer of gravel to protect it from

the rock trucks.

Right there where I dumped that bucket of gravel right now.

Right against it, but not over top of it, against it.

The rock truck has covered the end of the culvert with 20 tons of tailings.

Tony must uncover the pipe without damaging it.

I managed to keep that open.

See how the water is running out of the corner there?

With the pipe cleared, now all the Beats can do is wait and see if their plan

works.

Hopefully in a couple of days, we can square this all up and straighten this

up.

will do fine. The biggest thing is just having some comfort with the people that

are here to work and give everything they've got and we've got that in the

and Tyler's that way so she'll fit in.

Tyler just threw me straight in the deep end. I cannot believe I survived that

week.

Tyler Mahoney has flown from Australia to help the Schnabel crew and over the

past week she's had a crash course in rock truck operating.

I'm feeling so much more confident.

I did not think I was going to make it at the start of the week, but I feel

I'm finally getting it.

With his crew stretched, attempting to mine out 90 acres before his water

licence expires at the end of the season,

Parker needs crew who can multitask.

I'm just getting a little too sore for this right now.

Even veteran Gold Room expert Chris Dumit.

It's back in a loader.

Hey, you know, we got Tyler here now.

It looks like she's got a really good handle on the truck.

So I may just see if she's ready to step up to a loader.

Hey there, young lady. How are you?

Good. How are you?

Good. You got the rock truck figured out, eh?

Got my head wrapped around it. Yeah? It took me a couple of days, but I'm

feeling confident in it now. Good, good. Yep.

Well, you ready to take the next step then, huh? Yes, I am. Do you mind giving

me a quick run down? Yeah.

All righty. Yep.

Drop the arm. This is a hydraulics.

Yep, okay. Left, right.

Here's your forward and reverse.

Oh, okay.

Just take a buzz around.

Don't overthink it. Okay, I'll try and keep calm. I'm a bit nervous.

You know, you let them make mistakes. That's how they learn. You just hope

nobody gets hurt.

Never driven a load like this before, but it's not too different.

Over here. We're over here.

I keep going to grab the wheel with my right hand, and then I remember I'm

these bloody hydraulics.

Okay, Tyler, why don't you go grab a load of paint, and we'll walk you up

ramp. Make sure that you can do that comfortably. That's going to be the

part.

I think I need to make sure our nail is getting a full bucket, because that's

very embarrassing if I don't do that.

Go wide and line up straight.

Hell.

That is a steep ramp.

You're going to start out looking over the top of the bucket, and then you're

going to start looking under the bucket. You have to raise it as you go.

I'm just going to take this so slow.

Oh, my God.

Oh,

my God.

A little bit closer. A little bit closer.

It's all done now, lady.

All right, so I'll keep going and you're going to head back to the goal room?

Yeah, we'll run down there and if you get in a pickle, don't try to push

it, okay?

Okay, I will. Thank you so much, Chris.

Thanks, kiddo.

I'm nervous. I don't feel super comfortable at the moment.

Parker's flown me out from Australia to help, and this is what they need help

with right now. So even if I'm nervous, I've just got to get over it and get on

with it.

And hopefully I don't... Oh!

Hang on.

That doesn't look right.

There's a build -up in the pre -wash.

Python, do you have a copy? Python?

Hey, there's a huge build -up in the pre -wash. I don't know what to do.

I'll get it.

What happens is big rocks like these slip through our grizzly bars and they

up the pre -wash.

The jam brings Big Red's shaker deck to a standstill.

Big Red's pre -wash is so small, it takes a couple of those for a jam up to

happen like that.

So, something the guy has to keep an eye on.

Luckily, the pileup is small, and Tyson can simply leave the pre -wash jets

running to flush out the blockage.

With the dirt cleared, Tyson fires up the shaker deck.

Here we go!

Crisis averted.

Big Red is back running 200 yards of gold -rich pay an hour.

Yo, Tyson, what'd you guys have going on over there?

man. It was a close call. The wash plant started piling up and Tyler caught it

just in time. I was able to get us back up and running without too much of a

fight. She definitely saved the day.

Well, man, that's the kind of people we need around here. Somebody that's

watching out for everything that's going on. There's a lot happening with these

wash plants.

After how the week started, man, I got to say I was a little skeptical, but

awesome that she was able to catch that.

Saved us a bunch of time and most importantly, a bunch of gold.

Good deal. Nice to have her around.

Time and money on this hopper fix, getting this thing fixed, getting the

plant put together and getting it moved out to Cali Creek.

At McQuiston.

Damn it.

Fred Lewis's only hope of sluicing gold is to resurrect an old shaker deck

that's been in crew member Buzza's yard for years.

Past seasons, we've kind of relied on a lot of people for help, but we're gold

miners now. So this is the season where we step up and take charge of our own

destiny.

After building a frame for the plant, over the last three days,

They've painted the rusty shaker deck and built the hopper that will funnel

into the plant.

Oh, a little mustard gas.

The hopper's done, and it looks fantastic.

It's going to be a lot wider than we had last season and a lot longer. What that

does is it's going to give our operators a hell of a lot more ease in feeding

the plant, and we're going to get a lot more gold.

Hang on.

Oh, my God.

Where were you?

I just got the best news and the worst news possible.

What's that?

My daughter just gave birth to her son.

Uh -huh. And I wasn't there.

So kind of mixed emotions right now. I don't know. Yeah.

I mean, I'm excited, obviously, I'm a grandfather, but a lot of sacrifices go

into making this happen, and it's just hard.

It's hard for all of us, so... Fred's daughter, from a former relationship,

lives thousands of miles away back in the USA.

And this should be a high day for me, and it is, but it sure doesn't feel like

it.

Congratulations, buddy.

I'm sorry.

I just got to get my head space right. It's all good, buddy.

Ah, the boys are here.

The cavalry's here.

I can't wait.

So we got this trailer loaded up.

We still got to do the...

Everything.

Like we're setting up a farm.

Buzz needs to load the trailers without damaging the precious wash plant.

Careful, JB.

All right, now, look at that. That's perfect.

So right now we're loading up the sluice runs.

Once we get the sluice runs done, she's getting ready to go home.

Fred leads the convoy with the shaker deck to make the 100 -mile return trip

back to California Creek.

What's wrong?

I started driving and something didn't feel right.

Says he's having trouble with his trailer.

Can you explain it?

Felt like it was, like, dragging a little bit.

Where is that?

Like that.

Hey. Oh, you.

What?

JB,

tell me you can fix this.

The whole leaf spring broke.

Oh, my god. Yeah, just going to set it back a little bit.

I know Buzz in his junkyard, man. He's got a lot of stuff.

He could have a set of springs.

All right.

Right now, we're trying to source leaf springs, which Buzz may have, actually.

For that trailer, for some reason, those leaf springs decided to bust. I think

it's all the weight that we've got putting on.

They look like they're the same size.

If not, we'll make them fit.

That's right. All right. Do what you got to do.

This is going to kill me if it falls.

That close, bro.

Lucky I'm small.

Fred, that close.

We had put chalk blocks underneath this just in case something happened. Had we

not done that, I probably would have smashed in head right now. But I'm done

with it. I just want it to be over. I want to be on the road.

There we go.

Look at that.

After a three -hour delay.

Let me just get the tire on.

Are we sure this is going to hold? Oh, yeah.

Fred and his crew can finally get back on their way to California Creek.

Let's get them on a dodge.

After a grueling eight -hour journey across the Yukon... Probably the most

exhausting day we've had all season.

The crew arrive with their wash plant.

Behind this truck is everything we need to install our wash plant on the claim.

I want to be running. I want to be sweeping.

I want to be weighing gold.

I'm excited.

We've still got the snow melting. We're going to go and have a look over in the

cut and then see as to what we're up against.

At Paradise Hill, Tony Beats is fighting a battle with snow melt.

After ditching and draining the blue cut, he's making a dawn inspection of

cold cut.

Oh, well, there you go.

That's a mess.

We will not be working here today by the looks of it.

So that's what we're going to end up doing.

Move everybody into the blue cut and still continue on. Like we're not

down because of it. This way we can keep on going.

You always, always in the mining business have plan B.

This year we got the two cuts and we go just in case something like this would

happen.

Hey, James, do you copy? James, do you copy?

Yeah, copy, Tony.

Take everybody over to the blue cut this morning. Take everybody over to the

blue cut. The other cut, there's no way we get in there.

With the blue cut now drained and dry, Tony quickly switches location to stay

the gold and keeps loosing.

Anyway, we'll go send everybody to the blue cut and stick 10, 12 trucks in

and give them.

You have these two cuts open. They're nice, big, large cuts. You can always

between several cuts so we don't have to shut down the plane.

So this is the first scoop of hay from the blue cuts. Pretty exciting.

Finally getting to put some dirt in.

And hopefully we'll get a good turnout from it.

Back at the flooded cold cut, Tony calls a meeting with Mike and Kevin to come

up with a plan to save the nine -acre site.

All the snow back here.

There is a lot of water coming from behind us.

If you dig this, we can keep them cut dry. That's a big plot, right? Yeah.

Yeah, 100%. I'll send them one more row to give you a hand to dig the trench.

Okay, good luck.

James, do you copy? James, do you copy?

Yeah, I copy, Tony.

We're going to dig this, right, from the cold cut all the way to the blue cut,

right straight across.

No.

I'm on my way.

To save the cold cut and strengthen the blue cut's flood defences, Tony is going

to higher ground.

His plan?

Use the D -11 dozer to cut a 2 ,000 -foot path across the back of both the

cut and the blue cut.

Then, in the 750 excavator, James will dig a 20 -foot deep trench.

removing 10 000 tons of dirt this will catch up to one and a half million

gallons of snow melt and divert the water away from both cuts also allowing

cold cut to dry out

yeah

i was putting the culvert in over the blue cut and Tony didn't quite like what

he saw, so he took over that project.

Now I'm up top of the cold cut digging this ditch up here, and so I'm going to

do my best job to make him happy with this one.

Well, there's an error code I've never seen before.

Kevin, do you copy Kevin?

Copy, Kevin.

Yeah, I got an error code on the 750.

It's a def pump error.

Okay, I will be right on my way.

The machine had a failure code.

We've had a similar code pop up before.

It has to do with an airline for a little DEF pump unit here.

The airline I brought, of course.

Different size.

The hose is on the machine.

Its inner diameter is about the outer diameter of this one.

So there's no way to make it fit. Luckily, like, it's not a real break. It

popped out of the fitting. So at least to get the machine going for now and

me making the strip twice more, I'm just going to jam it in there.

That quick fix worked.

The 750 can get back to digging, keep the water out of the cut, and, yeah,

everything on the move.

24

hours

later, James has finally finished the trench above the cuts.

Hey, Tony, any copy, Tony?

Here, go ahead.

Yeah, I just finished this trench on top of the cold cut here, so it should be

done.

Pretty

good

looking ditch there, James.

Worked out pretty well, I'd say.

Awesome. Yeah, I think so. Should work.

The 2 ,000 -foot trench will allow the cold cut to dry out.

and save both the cold cut and the blue cut from further flooding.

There you go, Missy. Oh, that's perfect.

Cheers. Welcome to the Yukon. Thank you so much. And thank you so much for all

your help and advice.

Oh, no worries. Thank you for your help.

Hey, young man.

What are you doing?

Hello. Having a beer.

Do you want one?

How was your afternoon?

I was like so worried I was going to tip the load off the edge or hit the plant.

But you were a very good teacher. You helped a lot. The hardest people to

are the people who keep saying, I know, I know, I know.

Oh, they're the worst. Yeah, definitely.

Yeah, I know.

Should we go see what we got, Dumit? Sure.

All right, Chris.

How do we do?

I'm going to pour it. You call it out, okay?

Okay, cool.

The keyhole cut has averaged 175 ounces a week.

70.

170.

185. 200.

Oh, my God. 200 exactly.

Well, that's because that's only part of it.

Here is part B.

That looks heavy, doesn't it? It's heavy.

100, 200, 210,

240, 248 .95.

448 .95.

A season's best, worth over $800 ,000.

He gives us a season of 974 .6, almost 1 ,000 ounces.

Not bad, almost doubling our season total in a week.

Yeah. I can't wait to see what will happen once we get two plants going, if

is what we're pulling in with one.

We obviously hit some good ground.

Indian River is hot and cold.

Right. We may have hit a hot spot.

Let's hope it holds out.

All right. Catch you later. Keep it going, you guys. Thanks, guys.

Thanks, guys. See you.

Yeah, we smashed it, and the gold proves that. So very good all round.

Yeah, it's really nice to have Tyler here. You know, she's like a good

and she takes her jobs very seriously.

And I trust her a lot.

Over at Paradise Hill, for the first time this season, the Beats will see

from both cuts.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

I'm the only one working around here? No. You told us to meet you here five

minutes ago.

Hot.

Well, guess what? We're here for it.

Go away. That's always good.

It's kind of nice to have the two cuts.

You just lose three days in the one, three days in the other.

You can see what you're getting. Yeah. It's kind of nice to see what we're

to get out of them. So then are we ready to pour some gold?

Kevin, what do you want to wait for, man?

Let's do the blue cut, yeah?

Okay, good. Let's do it.

Let's go.

10, 15, 20.

Tony has already banked 298 ounces this season.

But to hit his goal, he needs to average 200 a week for the rest of the season.

80, 90, 96 .74.

Worth $174 ,000.

Next up, the cold cut.

10, 15, 20.

Tony needs a further 103 ounces of gold to hit his 200 -ounce goal.

70, 80... 94 .34.

So about 190 ounces.

Tony hasn't hit his target.

But thanks to his two cuts, the Beats have still hauled in $344

,000 worth of gold.

I mean, with all the work we did and everything, we did okay.

I don't know what you guys are up to. You probably should go back to work, eh?

It's been nice seeing you. It'll be a pleasure. Come back with some more. Come

back with some more.

Yep.

More is better, right?

Always is. Good.

Now they're down to pay on both cuts.

It looks like the Beats will be on to big gold.