Original subtitles

Got a lot going on right now, and hopefully we're not biting off too much.

Gold mining genius Parker Schnabel is planning an audacious move, running two

mining operations in two different countries, one in the Yukon and a new

in Alaska.

It's really dangerous having that big of a battle on two different fronts,

getting people hitting hard.

It's going to be a real challenge.

But before resources can be moved to Alaska, Parker needs his Yukon crew to

strip a mammoth 90 acres of ground at the airstrip.

We have so much ground to get through that just stripping is the main issue.

With just how spread out we're going to be, everybody's going to have to step

up.

To ramp up the pressure, Parker's water license at the airstrip expires at the

end of the season.

To maximize his profits, he'll need to extract every ounce of gold.

Either that, or it'll stay in the ground forever.

We're getting really close to being done with the keyhole path.

Crew's working pretty hard to make sure that the next one's ready.

Guys, we're almost there.

After an early start, Parker's wash plant boss Tyson Lee...

has pulled out 975 ounces of gold from the 14 -acre keyhole cut.

We're getting to the bitter end of the first cut of the season here. I'm

out the last bit of pay.

So these are the last few truckloads, getting it up to big red. This cut is

and done with.

You're good, my horn is again.

Hey, you're good, you're loaded.

That's me.

I feel like I'm keeping up at the moment, which is good.

You're doing great.

I think that's it.

The last bucket.

Here we go.

All righty, guys, time to shut Big Red down.

The next step is Easy Street.

Just upstream from the Keyhole Cut, Parker's crew have already stripped down

pay at the 11 -acre Easy Street Cut, ground they hope can deliver over a

million dollars in gold.

We're stripping down here at the airstrip.

Everybody's asking why we call it Easy Street, and I think it's because it's

only going to get tougher from here.

To wash gold at the new cut, Parker needs Big Red moved and running pay dirt

just 10 hours' time.

Hopefully we can nail these transitions. We have so much ground to get through

that smoothly transitioning from one pit to the next is going to be a critical

part of this, and we have a lot of them to do.

lose a couple days per plant move. It's going to throw a wrench in the works for

the whole season.

This is going to be on Tyson getting Big Red moved from the set up it's in to

the next one because he needs to get comfortable doing it on his own because

Mitch is dealing with the stripping crew.

Right now it's just Tyson's over there on his own and we're relying on him to

able to keep that plant going.

So we're all done with Big Red here at this setup. We're ready to get back

looping with the wash plant and the cut. Trying to do this myself, so wish me

luck.

This is the first time I've set Big Red up by myself, so we just want to be

careful not to flip the thing over.

So it's pretty well concreted into the ground.

Stand back!

Yee -haw!

So this is probably the sketchiest part of the whole pole. There's a narrow

culvert crossing in the road and big red clips over. That's game over.

Looking pretty tight.

I don't know if we're gonna make it!

The last step is to drag the plant up a 30 -foot ramp to the top of the pad.

The plant's dug in. When you're building a wash plant pad, you need compaction.

That's what we're fighting against right now.

The plant's not level.

We have to level the plant before everything else is built around it.

Just need to, like, unbury it now.

I mean, the plant will do its thing and it'll probably settle, but it's more the

sluice runs with the river flowing off them I'm concerned about.

Tyson now has just six hours to get the sluices, pump and generator ready for

the night shift.

How's things looking?

When are you firing up tonight?

Hopefully. I was hoping to just get it prepped. I don't know how you do it.

I just don't want to worry about it.

I'm worried about stripping.

That's why I haven't been here.

No, it's all good.

You don't have to worry about it. Thanks, man. Thanks.

We're dealing with an uncompacted pad, so we're going to need good water

distribution, and that involves having a chute.

Two years ago, when Tyson set up a wash plant.

Where's all this water coming from?

Water from the sluices undermined the pad.

Holy crap!

And nearly toppled the wash plant.

Tyson!

This time he plans to divert the water runoff.

with a 35 -foot -long steel chute.

We've got to get this trough, and we've got to get it back up to Big Red,

because there's still hope at Big Red running tonight.

Any day we're not floosing means another day we have to floose into October,

November.

But the chute is a four -mile journey downstream to where it was last used.

Parker's really counting on me to get Big Red up and going, so I'm going to do

my best to have it running by the end of the day.

What the...

This is the last thing I wanted to see right now. Our road's washed completely

out. I'm going to have to pack material in and get that water going through that

culvert. It must have just been roaring through here.

Move your bum, Jerv.

Go on.

Last year we had this happen, and man, it took six, seven different pieces of

equipment and people and damn near a whole day to rebuild this road. And

time I don't have.

I could be in serious trouble.

I've got fuel bills coming in, and I only have so much money.

So once that money runs out, we don't have gold coming in.

Well, we're screwed.

I mean, our house is up for grabs on this. We're walking a tightrope right

46 miles west of Dawson, in the wilderness of California Creek, combat

Fred Lewis is chasing a record 500 -ounce season goal.

But five weeks in, he's still not mined a single ounce.

We're just trying to get the mine site running so money can start coming in

instead of going out.

We've just got to keep pushing and get to where we need to be to start

soliciting.

The long, harsh winter has dealt Fred a crippling blow.

A quarter of a mile -long ice sheet has prevented any mining, along with access

to any gold -rich pay dirt.

We're trying to uncover as much as we can and get this mine site moving.

Last week, Fred resurrected an ancient 90 -yard -an -hour wash plant.

Hit it!

But it's redundant until Fred can dig down to pay.

Any attempts so far to melt the ice have failed.

so far behind schedule at this moment in time that we don't have any time to

wait. So we have to take action and take control of the creek.

Hey, Fred, man.

What's going on?

Well, this ice has got to go, man. We don't have any other way to do it, I

think, but to go up there and try and make the creek go back where it belongs

somehow, and that should facilitate melting the ice on the right side. If we

can't do that, we really don't have anything else to get it to go.

I feel like you've got the skill to do this.

I think my best bet is for me to walk along the berm as you're going up there

and just spot it for you. All we can do is try, right? We can't sit here and

wait. We've got to try.

Let's pound some of that ice off.

Okay, let's do it.

You got me on the radio?

Yes, I do.

All right, I'll be on the bank.

All right.

Fred's plan is to create a 20 -foot -long ice dam.

across the narrowest point of the creek.

The blockage should divert water onto the top sheet, helping to melt the ice

covering the gold -rich pay dirt left over from last season.

So we got to try it. It's worth the risk.

Hey, Buds, this is probably the fastest running water at this choke point.

Yeah.

It's a little bit risky. If we sink this 220, we're done.

Let's take our time and make sure nothing bad happens to it, right?

All right, your tracks are about... Oh, man, you're almost submerged completely.

It's not pushing you at all, is it?

Take this corner a little bit.

Hey, Buzz, that ice is awful beautiful, but we're going to have to kill it.

Sounds like a good plan, doesn't it?

Oh!

Wow.

That's like 20 ,000 pounds of ice in his throat.

Yeah!

Oh, now it's massive.

The boys hope the ice boulders will choke the river and divert the water.

There we go.

You've got a little bit of ice that's holding.

It looks that way.

Fingers crossed it works.

I'm going to make a nice jam.

There we go.

That's lovely.

Wow.

I've got a pretty good ice jam here.

You know, you're actually getting close to the top of that ice. If you could get

it over the top, that would actually melt it really well.

Under the excavator.

Just be really careful.

So

there

goes the ice dam.

That's not feasible.

We're going to have to think of something else.

This is definitely not going to work.

Dude, we don't have a backup plan.

Like, we got nothing.

Is that what you're telling me?

We're in this point in time.

If the frigid wilderness refuses the coming

of spring, Fred will fail before he even gets started.

It's a crushing blow.

he may not recover from.

Hey, man.

I don't have anything else to throw at this. I know, sorry. Well, but it's one

of those things. We're not going to go home. We're not going to quit.

I'm going to run out of money.

It's a possibility, but it's also a possibility that we're going to hit the

mother load and walk out of here and be able to go back and buy Bentley.

And usually that is all I'm thinking about, but lately it just seems like

puppeteer pulling my strings and making... go wrong, and it's like, how

you take? How much can you take? And I just want to cut string.

Yeah, I'm just at the end of my rope, man.

We have to keep the trauma going in order to reach our 5 ,000 -pound goal.

It's not optional. We have to stick to it.

Klondike King, Tony Beetz, is digging deeper than ever before, opening up two

monster cuts in the hunt for Paradise Hill's gold -rich White Channel pastry.

The cold cuts and the blue cuts are going to be key out this season.

It's been a while since we did them that big. I think they should easily produce

2 ,500 apiece. They're going to have to deliver.

After five weeks fighting deep frozen ground in both his cuts, Tony's banked

less than 500 ounces, way short of the 200 ounces a week he needs.

I'm going to be ripping in here for a good chunk of the day, probably a good

chunk of tomorrow, because frozen pay is just a pain in the ass.

Tony's entrusted youngest son Mike with managing the cuts.

and bringing in the gold.

Mike, he has a big responsibility this year. He has to have enough material

there in order to keep the sluice bars going.

But the ground being that frozen, he's got to rip it with two cuts. He really

has his job cut out.

A mechanical balancing act.

Mike must juggle the nine -acre cold cut with its foreboding 60 -foot -deep

frozen pay layer.

alongside the newly opened six -acre blue cut, where D11 dozers use ripper

shanks to expose stubborn permafrost to sunlight.

If it doesn't defrost in time, the stockpile of thawed pay dirt will run

forcing them to shut down.

And it's all ripped up, so it all thaws out, and we have a lot of pay ready to

lose now.

The only other machine in Tony's arsenal powerful enough to dig through frozen

pay is the $1 .1 million 950 excavator.

Mike has tasked James Rhino, a beach crew veteran, with digging out the pay,

ready to thaw at the pay pile.

It's pretty frosty in here this morning.

A lot of frozen ground in here.

Hey, Tony, you copy?

James, go ahead. James, go ahead.

Yeah, this ground is really hard.

Can we come up with another plan?

Throw the thing out of there, bring it to the staging yard, and we'll figure

something out. Okay.

We're going to take the boom off the excavator.

We're going to put a shorter boom on, and then we have more power, and it's

easier to get a bucket full. It should be a lot more productive.

Tony's plan is to remove the 950's 28 -foot boom and replace it with a 24

boom.

The shorter arm will generate more force and concentrate digging power.

We already took the bucket off.

Now we're going to pull the main boom pin out.

Taking charge of the swap is mechanic Sam Aftonis.

The pin's stuck in here. It's just being up.

What do you got then?

So, I proceed.

Pulling that pin out is going to be a pain in the ass.

Says who?

Me.

James. Yeah.

Double wrap that half inch chain around one of those uprights.

Around them?

Double wrap it.

Good. Hook it up, wrap it up. It's not going to work with the slip hook, is it?

Oh, really?

What if you double it up and it doesn't?

54 and a half, and that is five.

I'm hoping that pin doesn't jump out of there, Craig.

No, that's why he's pulling with the bucket, not the loader.

Okay.

Pull your bucket a bit.

Pull it, pull it, pull it, pull it. Oh.

Oh, no, I hooked it up, remember?

Yeah, I do.

Get ready for the boom?

Yeah. Good. Go for it.

Just put it on the ground. Who cares?

We got the boom off. Now put this one on, and then we'll see how far we're

to get today.

Okay, lift. Bring it up.

Let's go. Hook it up.

Whoa. Put some good pressure on it.

Let's... Wait, wait, wait.

Dave, watch my calf.

Watch the beam.

Hang it up for a second, Sam.

Okay. Have a good one.

Dave, push it over a bit.

Good. Yeah.

Okay. Somebody on there? Bingo.

Safe's over when it's easy.

Oh, we're in the other side.

Okay. Take it off. Good enough.

That went really well.

Yeah. That was super fun.

Woo!

With the 950 back in the blue cut.

My old girl, I got to get her back in the dirt.

It should tear through the concrete hard frozen ground and keep the trommel fed

with thawed paydirt.

It does dig a lot better than that long boom.

Just tears through that frost.

Nice full scoops.

It actually picks the bucket up, so that's a nice change.

It's going to be a little bit different getting used to having trucks closer to

you because you're going to have to keep them nice and tight to be able to reach

them, but I like the way it digs.

We're going to have a lot better time keeping up with trucks and moving a lot

more dirt with this thing.

I'm getting a bit stressed out because we're so spread out and there's so much

to do.

At Parker Schnabel's Astrid Cut, they're racing to mine out 90 acres of ground

in just a single season.

With this water license expiring and so much ground to get through, we're having

to really just plow hard into getting everything as opened up as we can.

We don't have another season after this, but the water license, everything has

to be sluiced.

Nearly all of Parker's crew are focused on stripping, leaving plant boss Tyson

Lee running solo as he bids to get Big Red running before night shift takes

in just three hours' time.

You know, we're just so strung out on guys this year that no one's had time to

come down here and see how the roads are.

Tyson needs to collect a metal chute to help disperse water from Big Red's

sluice run.

But a washed -out road?

has hampered his progress.

If these roads weren't washed out, Big Red would be running right now.

This is the last stoop here.

It's a quick bush pick, good enough to get our chute, and hopefully I'll come

back in time that the road's still here.

So here we are, finally at our chute. This thing looks like something you'd

in a scrapyard, but it definitely makes everything go that much smoother.

Found our chute.

Now we just got to get it upstream.

Let's go.

With the chute on site, the finishing touches can commence.

We just got to get this bank armored up.

There is two metric tons of water going to be flowing over these loose runs.

Hey, you know, Big Red's all set to go.

First scoop of Easy Street going in.

All right, boys, showtime. Let's go.

Let's do it.

You know,

I'm really happy I could find the diverter trough and get it up here.

You guys, you can help really saving our ass right now.

I'll just stand down here and take a look at Big Red and see how she's

I see Mitch is up here doing his rounds, so I want to see what he thinks of my

setup.

What's happening?

How's it going?

It's looking really good.

How's our bank doing?

The bank's holding up nice. Looks good. Good job, man. Thanks, Mitch.

Big Red is alive and back on the gold.

Tyson has proved himself and the race is on to mine out the airstrip.

before season's end.

If you're going to reach that 5 ,000 -ounce goal, you've got a lot of work to

do. Having the 950 in there, that makes a hell of a difference.

At Paradise Hill, Tony's trommel is running 300 yards an hour of white

pay dirt.

Keeping it fed requires a constant flow of thawed pay dirt from the two monster

cuts.

We're running out of good thought hay right now.

Damn hoes are loading trucks like crazy, man. They're tearing up that dirt.

In the cold cut, Ruby Mahoney is taking her first turn in the 950 excavator.

A lot shorter, eh? It's so weird!

With its new, shorter boom.

We have a new boom from the 950.

It's about five feet shorter than it.

the one we had before, and it'll be a little bit more faster and a little bit

more powerful than what it should be.

I don't mind driving a rock truck. Everyone's in well.

Tony's nephew, known as Cousin Mike, is in a relationship with Ruby.

He's loading his rock truck.

When I do it for too long, it gets boring, but...

I get to work with Ruby, which is nice.

Sometimes you just want to hang out with your girlfriend.

It definitely helps that I have somebody to go home to at the end of the day

that understands everything that we go through throughout the day.

So I came to the Yukon to mine for gold, and I ended up finding a diamond.

What are we trying to accomplish here, babe?

Sorry, what was that?

Oh, what was that?

Working to dig up frozen pay, Ruby has crashed the Beats 950 excavator into

cousin Mike's rock truck.

Kevin, do you copy Kevin?

The end of my excavator clips the corner of the rock sack.

And unfortunately, I bent out of the door. And I feel absolutely horrible

it.

Now.

So yes, you can.

Back at the wash plant.

The stockpile requires constant replenishing.

If the 950 remains out of action, the trommel will be forced to shut down,

costing the Beats $3 ,000 an hour. There we go.

That should be attached.

Also, that should also be attached.

It hid here.

You can see where the paint has come off, causing this piece here to, boom,

snapping all four bolts off cleanly.

The impact sheared off the bolts holding the hydraulic valve body that controls

all the hydraulic systems on the $1 .1 million machine.

Hydraulics is what drives the entire machine. Without the hydraulic system

sealed, you can't fire it up in any capacity to move it or anything.

It is one of our biggest excavators. It is always important to have it fixed.

We don't have time for any of this downtime.

Is everyone good?

This unit that I pulled off here, bolts are sheared off entirely.

We got the right bolts, but longer.

And we're going to see if I'm able to modify these ones enough to make them

until we get the proper ones.

Well, can all of it be worse?

I know we have bolts on order, but...

We need the 950 back in production ASAP, so I'll make some that'll work.

Kevin will fashion a fix by cutting half an inch off the bolts in the hope they

still secure the valve body in place.

Essentially, it needs to be about half an inch shorter.

That turned out pretty well.

Yeah, perfect.

We're laughing.

Okay, this is the last bolt.

And she's hooking up the hoses, and then she's done.

Time to fire it up.

It doesn't look like anything's leaking.

You ready to go back to work?

The 950, back up and running.

Ruby can return to digging pay before the stockpile runs out of the trommel.

Well, Ruby probably feel like, well, that girl always gives it 110%. If you

an idiot on there, he's okay.

You should have paid attention, right? But with Ruby being there so long, she's

always so cautious.

What the f*** are you going to do about it? I mean, life goes on.

I've worked for Tony for six years, and this is my first big mistake.

You know, I try to do the best of my ability and try to pay as good attention

everything as I can.

I'm probably going to be overly cautious with that for a while.

So right now I'm trying to break up some ice to get the creek diverted back to

where it needs to be going.

To frozen California Creek, Fred Lewis' crew are battling the glacial -like ice

sheet that's locked them out from mining gold.

We're trying to get down to dirt to pull gold from, but the ice isn't stopping

us from getting what we need to get done.

Front of center in the 220 excavator is Fred's stepson, Chris Parker.

Whoa, holy.

Like, what is that?

Is that what I think it is?

Yo, Freddie, come check this out real quick, man.

What's up?

Look where my bucket is.

What am I looking at?

Let me go look.

Oh, wow.

Sports, sports, sports, sports, sports.

Look, look.

It's a vein.

Wow. Give me your headset. We've got to get buzzed over here, like, right now.

Buzz, buzz. This is Fred. I need you to come to the 220 ASAP. Looks like we may

have found a quartz vein.

A quartz vein indicates gold deposits could be close by.

This is a big -ass quartz vein. I don't know how big it is, but it goes all the

way at least to here.

Well, it looks good, right?

But look, it's also got a lot of iron in it.

Yeah. All that brown, all that iron, so that means there was a lot of heat that

forced this up.

Millions of years ago, magma containing gold forced its way up through faults in

the Earth's crust.

It cooled and crystallized into veins of quartz and gold.

If Fred's small quartz vein is rich in gold, it could indicate a season -saving

find.

And possibly...

even lead to him finding the mother lode at California Creek.

Doesn't look like it continues much more here. It might go underneath, but it's

going that way.

Yeah. Right with this bedrock.

What do you think, Buzz?

We'll try to pulverize some of the steel there and put some signs, right? Check

it out.

You and Chris want to gather up some rock, put it in his bucket?

Good find. Hey, really good find.

Hey, Buzz, where do you want me to take all this?

That's a pretty good sample there. Let's take that on up. We'll bring it to the

gold room.

Drag that.

You're going to accurately pull out gold. We don't just mine the entire

We use these signs to get us to it.

To tease out any potential gold.

All right, safety first.

Fred plans to pulverize the hard rock.

with five -pound solid steel ball bearings.

They're going to break up just about anything.

All right, you guys ready?

Sure. See how loud this is going to be.

We get out of here.

Feel the cold pressure.

Do your work.

If we crush that up and there's not a worthless pile of rock and there's even

speck of gold.

The paint could have a hell of a lot of gold in it.

After an hour being crushed and bullied by the steel balls, it's time to check

the material.

Let's go do it.

That's fine. We got a catch?

Yeah.

Oh!

Yeah.

I did a better job with my hammer.

I was kind of hoping we'd pull this thing open. There'd be a bunch of powder

there. I know there are certain ways that we can do it.

I really like what they did in Papua New Guinea. It just took a long time.

All they did, they had a solid pipe inside of a pipe with a base in it, so

nothing got out. They threw the rock in there, and then they just smashed it by

hand. Bam, bam, bam.

Fred's new plan is to construct a low -tech rock crusher.

he first encountered whilst on a gold prospecting mission with Parker in the

jungles of Papua New Guinea.

We're basically going to find, like this right here, we're going to find a pipe.

We're going to make it so it has a floor and another pipe that's going to go

inside of it and crush it just like a post pounder.

All right, so I've only done this once. Yeah? Start, yeah.

With brute force succeeding where mechanical power failed, it's time to

the quartz vein running through his claim is gold heavy.

If it is, Fred could have hit the motherlode, and the surrounding ground

be the richest on California Creek.

I'm seeing gold, buddy.

Yeah, no, there's gold in there. There's gold.

Wow.

And a piece there? Yeah.

And a piece there.

A piece up top right there.

And a piece there.

Yeah. I mean, that was a handful.

I know. We got three colors and a lot of little fine stuff.

This is the first gold we found this season. That tells us there's a vein

carrying gold running up the middle of our claim.

Yeah.

I needed this.

I'm hurting. I know, man.

That's just the way that this profession is, I've noticed.

The highs are high and the lows are really, really low.

You ain't lying.

This is about the best I've felt this season. We have a source producing the

gold.

The potential that there could be a quartz vein that has gold -bearing

through it kind of fires us up a little bit, and it's just given us a little bit

more fuel to keep exploring this creek and find out where it is because the

source is somewhere, and it's coming from somewhere, and we're going to find

After a week battling frozen ground, the Beats family gather to find out if

their hard work has paid off.

Hard to.

Well,

if you didn't buy that last year, we'd be in big trouble this year.

So, anything else exciting happen?

Where we were trying to squeeze by Cousin Mike in a rock truck.

There wasn't quite enough room.

Well, I bet you thought it was awful. Oh, she did.

At least he can.

Well, it's almost good. Oh, yeah.

So, with that being said, we should probably pour some gold. Yeah. Yeah.

let's do this thing, folks.

Tony has less than 500 ounces in the bank and needs over 200 a week to hit

,000 -ounce goal.

Three, two, one, let's go.

15.

65.

75. 85.

120.

130.

140.

150. 160.

162 .42.

Worth nearly $300 ,000.

That's a little less than normal, but I guess with the material that we had.

Yeah. Let's have to make up for it next time, I guess.

But you know what?

It's better than nothing. Better than nothing at all.

Sluicing every day.

Anyway, that ripping goes good.

But you're going to have to stay ahead with that in order to keep sluicing,

don't we?

Okay, good enough. Okay, good. Well done.

We'll talk to you guys later.

Hey, T -Bird. How's it going, Dumit? Good. How are you doing, buddy? Pretty

good, thanks.

Well, we finished one. We started another.

Thank you guys for getting that pit done.

That's one of many.

Yeah.

And, Tyson, you got your first big experience there of moving Big Red.

Yeah.

What do you think about Big Red?

Different. It's a lot easier getting it where you want it. It's kind of fun,

like, every move having to be spot on.

You even had it pointing in the right direction the first time, huh?

Yeah.

Good for you, T.

You want to see how the keyhole finished up?

Let's do it. Why we're here, dude, we want to see some gold.

Keyhole, right here.

I'll take this one.

All right, so this is the last flue some Big Red did before he moved it.

All right.

20, 40, 60, 80, 100,

120, 140,

150. Keep going.

174 .05.

Worth over $310 ,000.

That's not bad.

I mean, when you look at the amount of runtime it had. Exactly.

So the big question, Chris, so that's two days of running at the keyhole cut,

finishing that off, 174. How did we do at Easy Street with two days of running?

Well, there's not a lot of hours on this thing, right? Yeah.

Here we go. Oh, no.

One. Tipped a long ways before anything came out.

30, 35, 38, 40, 55 .8.

Worth a clean $100 ,000.

So for the week, it's 229 .85.

And for the season, we just broke 1 ,200. 1 ,204 .45.

That wasn't a bad week, though, when we moved the wash plant. Yeah, yeah. And

what? Total of four days running.

All this going on. I think we did okay. I think we did good.

We got a long way to go.

All right, Chris.

Thank you for that.

Yep. See you next week.

Thanks, man. Thanks, Chris.