Original subtitles

It's what you get when you play outside.

On this episode of "Mine Rescue"...

Looks like more rain's coming.

It's all hands on deck to save a veteran-run dry mine...

Running a dry plant, it's got to be 100% dry.

He's losing gold all over the place.

...overrun by monsoon rains.

If it keeps doing this every day,

we're in deep trouble.

But with crew tensions high...

- Listen! - Let me handle it.

Anything that he's brought up here is none of

the flattened-out stuff that was to dry.

We really need Freddy and Juan's help.

Freddy and Juan must devise new tactics...

Look how hot this is.

We've never built anything like this.

...to even the odds.

Fire her up.

- Oh! - Look at that.

That's a beautiful piece.

They're our final hope.

Well, kind of figures, huh, Juan,

we're about to work on a dry plant,

and now the monsoon's supposed to be comin' in on us.

Dry mining, it's a tough game.

They're saying we can get three to five inches of rain.

Deep in Arizona,

Freddy and Juan respond to a desperate call for help

at a claim run by a group of military veterans

with a great cause.

- How's it going, guys? - Good.

- Good, good. - Kadin?

Yeah, nice to meet you. How are you?

- Juan. - Larry.

Pleasure, Larry. Freddy.

- So here's your mine, huh? - It's the dust bowl.

- There you go. - Yeah.

Dry plant. Yeah.

Not so much today, though. A lot of rain.

Yeah?

So Larry, do you own part of the operation then?

Yeah, I'm full time mining with them.

So how long have you guys been mining here?

- For about a year now. - OK.

How much gold have you been able to collect?

- About 10 ounces. - 10 ounces? That's not bad.

10 ounces. What's your best day?

- 13 grams. - Out of how many yards?

- 130. - That's not real good.

- We know. - Yeah, sure.

- What's your goal this year? - 80 ounces.

And where are you at right now?

Uh, we're not even over an ounce.

Do you have any gold we can look at?

Yeah, I got some right here.

Yeah, that's fine gold.

We know we lose a lot.

- Especially on fine gold, yeah. - Yeah.

And there's definitely an acceptable loss,

but when it comes to dry mining, that loss is huge.

With gold prices the way they are now,

every speck counts.

Every time we pan our tailings, we find gold.

I'm a Navy vet.

I was an operations specialist, did two trips to Vietnam,

but gold, it always fascinated me.

After 10 years in the Navy and four decades running

a successful business, Larry walked away

from retirement for one last mission.

My dream for veterans is that they have a safe place to

integrate back into civilian life,

to learn new skills.

I've learned, as I did in the military,

that teamwork is so important.

To make his dream real,

Larry poured his retirement fund

into this 20-acre claim.

The cost to keep the equipment,

the rentals, it's quite scary.

We really need Freddy and Juan's help now.

We've borrowed to our limits.

Soon it's gonna be more on the break-it end

than the make-it end.

You have a group of guys that you're helping out.

Are those the vets you're talking about?

Yes. We got about five veterans.

The end dream was veterans can come out here and learn

heavy equipment operation, learn mining.

We have to get the gold right first to be able to do that.

How much do you have invested in this operation?

A little over $120,000 personally

and $160,000 worth of equipment and loans.

- OK. - That's substantial.

Rentals alone cost us $16,000 a month,

and our fuel bill is well above $8,000 each month.

The vets need to pull $24,000

worth of gold each month just to break even.

- So you got a lot of people's money on the line. - Yeah.

Not only money, but potentially a lot of

people's future. - Yeah.

What do you think?

Before it rains, let's do a two-hour test, huh?

- Sounds good. - Yeah.

You got people out here that have their life savings

tied up in this.

And they're trying to help

people and help themselves at the same time.

But if you go broke in that process, you're helping nobody.

There we are.

Got a nice little dry wash plant, huh?

Yeah, we got a five-box plant.

We can only run about 10 to 15 yards an hour.

Desert mining is synonymous with dry washers,

which rely on a process of air and vibration to separate gold

from the material.

A dry plant is up to 15% less efficient than a wash plant,

but allows mining in places with little to no water.

So, you guys gonna start hauling pay?

Larry basically runs the whole pit operation.

Well, let's run it before the rain hits.

The forecast for today is showers and then downpours.

Always rain on the worst possible times.

Every time we try to run the plant, it wants to rain.

Let's get running. Let's go.

- First bucket, Juan. - Yep.

The noisy little guy.

Kadin feeds pay onto a five-and-a-half-foot

vibrating screen,

where material drops into five blow boxes,

which use air and vibration to force tailings out,

leaving the heavier gold behind.

It's a tough situation here. See the little dust storm?

That's paydirt blowing.

He's losing gold all over the place.

If we don't get this working a lot better for us,

everything's at stake.

We're gonna lose the mine, and we're never gonna be able

to help the other veterans out.

I come from a long line of military.

My grandfather was drafted into Vietnam.

My great-grandfather was in World War II,

and my father was Special Forces.

And I was in Fort Gordon, Georgia,

and Fort Hood, Texas.

After leaving the Army, Kadin teamed up with Larry

and formed the Veteran Mining Company,

focused on making a difference.

I've lost military friends due to PTSD,

and what I've seen work is getting a group of guys together

and doing something to

give them a sense of purpose once again.

But if we don't get our plant functioning a lot better,

I don't think we're gonna be around another month.

There's quite a few issues that I'm seeing.

You know, one of them is the feed.

Secondary, you know, the way it's distributed to the sluices,

And then, three, the sluices themselves.

Another day in the neighborhood.

500 yards away in the pit, the crew stockpile pay,

led by Larry in the 440 excavator.

I worked my whole adult life,

saved money for retirement,

and once I got creating something for the veterans,

I decided to go all in on it.

Larry's team in the pit are Army vet Jim Pourchot

on the skid steer, and Navy mechanic,

turned miner, Tim Searcy on the loader.

You know, Larry, any way you look at it,

this is still better than a good day on the flight deck.

- You know what I mean? - Yeah.

The Army's used to dirt, so every day's a good day

in the dirt for them. - Roger that.

I've got about $35,000 invested,

and that's a significant sum of money for my wife and I.

Tim moves the freshly dug pay across the pit.

We can bring veterans on the ground out here,

and, man, I can face my creator and say, yep, I helped do that.

But, you know, an operation like this,

we've got our share of problems.

I wish I'd had a nickel for every load that I ran

through this thing.

Jim screens material through the grizzly.

I've always liked running equipment.

I did not anticipate eating quite as much dirt, though.

Next, he lays out the paydirt in hopes of drying it

before it's screened.

You can pick up and move it over to the plant.

Roger that.

Once screened, Tim picks the pay up again,

taking the material to the plant for Kadin to feed.

Doesn't look good at all.

The material's just damp enough that as it's rolling

in there, then it gets stuck in those doors.

I keep having to get in there with a screwdriver

to break it apart.

Did you not have any other

stuff that we flattened-out yesterday?

Despite best-laid plans...

So none of that material that's been flattened-out is up

here right now? - No.

That's all that was classified.

...wet pay has been mixed in and taken to the plant.

It's all soaked.

He told me to save that for the dry wash.

- Just let me handle it. - Yeah.

Larry, can you come with me on this one?

Anything that he's brought up here is none

of the flattened-out stuff that was to dry.

He's got that still stacked.

All the time you're saying how this guy's incompetent.

This guy can't do this.

This guy always-- you can't work together.

Because I-- because that's what I see.

Today's the day.

None of this stuff is dry.

We don't always see eye to eye.

We butt heads on a lot of things, but I try to take as

much pressure off as I can.

I wonder if the front might be a little drier.

Probably still holding that moisture from that monsoon.

Yeah, it's dry here.

OK, I'll start pulling from here.

You know, you would think out here in the desert

we wouldn't have a problem with moisture.

But with a pile like this,

that moisture gets locked inside.

So yeah, it's a massive problem right now.

Why the heck is that thing not shaking?

At the dry plant, there's another snag.

Vibrator's overheated.

The vibrator that clears tailings from the screen

keeps cutting out.

We're at an hour and 45 right now.

Well, let's call it, I guess.

We got rain coming in, we got to get the plant cleaned out,

and we got to get this pay covered

before it starts pouring down.

You know, looking at the equipment that he has

around here, it's easily $20,000 a month.

Well, here, don't let me spill that.

Let's keep the gold.

They haven't made enough money

to be able to really cover even one month of rental.

In my opinion, this operation is just days away

from going broke.

- How's it going, guys? - Good morning.

Good morning.

After a stormy night at

the Veteran Mining Company's claim in Arizona...

Well, it was nice earlier, then a rainstorm.

Now it looks like more rain's coming.

Yeah, that unpredictability causes us a lot of problems.

The crew weighs the gold

from the abandoned two-hour test.

Well, let's see your gold.

Well, that's what we got.

Well, that won't pay the bills, that's for sure.

0.02, guys.

That's not good.

You can call it $60 in gold.

He probably burned $200 in fuel in that

two hours yesterday. - Mm-hmm.

After expenses, this weigh leaves a monthly loss

of $16,000.

If we don't have better results,

we're not gonna be around much longer.

I wouldn't be discouraged, though-- you guys want to do

this to be able to help vets. We love the idea.

I think there could be a possibility here to do that,

but I think it's gonna be a whole change of process.

We'll go put our heads together and try to figure

some stuff out here. - Better days ahead.

- Let's do it. - All right, thank you.

We'll see you guys back in a bit, OK?

Thank you.

We're not gonna survive if we keep getting cleanouts

like this. We can't even pay for our fuel.

Yeah.

There's a whole lot riding on this, but we're not a group

that takes failure lightly.

The reality is they're our final hope to keep

this thing alive.

Well, they got a lot of bad things going on here.

The whole operation needs revamped.

Doesn't have near the eccentric in it

to get that material going down, right?

Well, that dry wash box, that screen on a lot of those

is actually worn out. - Holes in them.

There's a good chance we're losing a lot of that fine gold.

Exactly.

That material is too wet, you know.

- Especially right now. - Yeah.

If it's gonna be a dry plant you're gonna run,

pay has to be dry. - 100% dry.

Not damp, not moist, dry.

So what I'm thinking is gonna require planning,

but we build a heating pad.

In order to be able to dry that material, we're gonna have

to heat it from the inside out. It's gonna be on a pile.

- And heat rises. - Yeah.

I think the biggest thing is damp material.

- Well, let's go talk to 'em. - Let's do it.

We just got an inch of rain last night.

If it keeps doing this every day,

we're in deep trouble.

From Mid-June to September in Arizona,

intense summer heat creates low pressure

that pulls in moist tropical air

over the Gulf of California, creating heavy

monsoonal thunderstorms.

This year, late-season heat has brought even heavier rains

onto bone-dry ground,

creating disastrous conditions for dry washing.

- How's it going, guys? - It's going.

Genuinely, there's a lot to do.

A lot.

Every step of your process needs help.

OK.

The damp materials really got us worried, you know,

because, you know, you're running a dry plant.

- It's got to be 100% dry. - Yeah.

- Pay-- - What do you suggest?

We want to build a heating grid to be able

to store your material.

It's going to be pretty intricate.

And basically all the material that's stacked on top of it is

gonna get heated from the bottom up.

It's gonna be a learning experience.

We've never done it before.

We want to work on your plant itself on that screen.

That eccentric isn't really doing anything underneath there.

Yeah.

Your dry boxes, they're actually torn,

so we got to work on those as well.

OK.

We actually drove by your cut just a minute ago,

and it's underwater right now.

Is there any way we could pump that water out of there?

Yeah, we have a pump for it.

- Before it keeps soaking in. - Yeah.

But as far as material, roughly $8,000.

And then labor, we both decided that we don't want to charge

anything for labor. - Yeah.

- Appreciate the military. - Absolutely.

You know, they keep this country where we can go out

gold mining. - Well, we appreciate that.

Thank you for your service.

So, if you guys are good with it, we're good with it.

My opinion is we're out of options.

- We're all in. - Well, deal then.

- Deal, absolutely. - Deal.

Thank you, sir.

To give this veteran-run mine a fighting chance,

Juan will build a unique heating pad to dry wet pay.

Hot air from a diesel burner will blow

into a central manifold, then through a network of pipes,

while retaining walls hold the material as it dries.

To increase recovery on the plant, custom adjustable

eccentrics will allow more pay to feed through the screen.

The blow boxes will be upgraded with new mesh

and aluminum backplates to prevent fine gold

from being lost.

Finally, Freddy will examine their cut

to locate the best gold-bearing pay.

So this is the beginning of the heating grid.

Juan kicks off the fixes with his one-of-a-kind pay dryer.

We've never built anything like this, so we had to kind of

design it on the fly. We're building a manifold.

Heat's gonna radiate from tubes up,

and into the pile of material on top.

The idea that we have here, it should work,

but ultimately we don't know until the test run when we get

pay on there to dry it out. We'll see how it does.

Freddy asked us to get the pump set up to get

the water out of the pit.

Usually monsoon season is way earlier in the year,

so we don't have to really worry about the water issue

of filling the pit as much.

It's just getting worse and worse this season.

Down in the cut...

OK, let's do it.

All right, Imma start it.

Kadin and Larry pump out the flood water.

All our material in the cut is just gonna be wet,

and we can't run that through the plant.

The sudden monsoons that come up are just a nightmare.

It's what you get when you play outside.

So your cut management is your most important as far as

what to dig and what not to dig.

OK.

At the Veteran Mining Company claim in Arizona...

It'll make you or break you.

The cut is now dry enough for Freddy to examine.

I want to get in there and look

at what they've been pulling out.

It may take 10 pans to find a color,

but if you find a color, it should be decent pay.

This stuff right here, you can actually see the layers in it.

Yeah.

So that's lakebed silt.

Gold doesn't travel in silt beds.

That stuff won't even grow potatoes, let alone catch gold.

You're digging it all in one shot, right?

Yeah.

I'm sure you might think there's gold,

because that top layer is gonna have some gold in it. - YEah.

And then you're mixing it all together.

- All you're doing is watering down your pay. - Yeah.

And it costs just as much to run that

as it does stuff with gold in it.

Yeah.

Let's go have a look at that hole over there.

OK.

What's your average day then?

With the plant continuously breaking, we're sitting at

about two, three grams a day.

- Hm, not enough. - Mm-hmm.

The material's definitely shingled in here,

so an old river channel.

Probably, you know, during the ice ages

when this would have been a lot wetter area.

Mm-hmm.

The rocks tell you a story.

See how these rocks are laid flat?

When it's in flowing and moving material,

it's not gonna stand up, right? - Mnh-mnh.

Millions of years ago, powerful rivers cut through

the Bradshaw Mountains, washing gold from hard rock

veins into the basin below.

As the water slows and dries up, the heavy gold settles

into the gravel left behind.

This is the best-looking stuff to me.

- OK. - By far.

You know, you can tell all this was put down by a stream bed.

- Mm-hmm. - So nature's sluice box, right?

- Yep. - You got that clay layer on the bottom that wouldn't allow

gold to pass through it. - Mm-hmm.

Clay layers act as false bedrock,

stopping heavy gold from sinking any deeper.

Let's get some of these gravels here and have a look.

OK.

How many people help out here?

Five. Most of the guys in the Navy.

My dad was in the Navy in World War II.

He got to

fight kamikazes in the Pacific. - Mm-hmm.

His ship never got hit, though.

He was on a destroyer.

- Yeah, awesome. - There you go.

You like it out here in the desert?

I like being in the middle of nowhere.

- I do too. - Don't have to deal with people.

Oh, there's three colors. Fine gold.

There's one there, one there, one there.

A lot of what we've been finding, though,

is that fine stuff. - Yeah.

There's gold in it.

I'd say get in there and get that material.

OK.

We can get a bunch of that out, get it up here.

Sounds good to me.

So it's one of those situations where if you don't

high grade your material and take the best of the best,

you go broke.

So we got all the pieces cut out for the manifold.

At the cut trailer,

Juan welds together the manifolds

for the heating grid.

There's gonna be one of these sections on each side,

so it's gonna be a total of 16 feet long by 4 feet deep,

and we're gonna have three sides of this.

That will be the center section where the heat's gonna

get forced in, and then from there, it'll distribute

across the tubes. So it's just one to go.

All good.

Swing that way!

At the plant, Freddy rallies the troops to begin work

on the dry plant's screen and shaker.

Boom up.

Track back.

It'll work.

Yep.

So I'm gonna design and build a whole new setup.

It's a design that I did years ago on some of my own stuff.

Freddy's first mission?

Upgrade the eccentric system for a more violent shake.

This is gonna be the new shaft.

So, their old one was only half-length.

If everything works out like it should on this eccentric,

it'll, uh...

make that machine work a heck of a lot better.

That's not good.

So, uh, we gotta get the rust out so it'll go

through the bearings. We'll start at that end.

I'm gonna do a bush lathe here.

- Yep. - OK.

- Polish back to ya? - And then, uh... Needs more tape.

- Ah, you need more tape. - Easy.

I'm sorry.

Sanding off the rust will help ease the shaft through

the new bearings.

Push her on through.

Look at that. She's going now.

That's almost too pretty for our plant.

Were you out of the military, too, then?

Yes, sir. In the Navy, 80 to 90.

OK.

Aircraft carrier, jet engine mechanic.

- OK. - Worked the flight deck.

I come from Georgia. Went into the military at 17.

Saw the world, but I've always enjoyed prospecting.

Always wanted to prospect out West.

After retiring in 2003, Tim was a hobby prospector.

When he found the Veteran Mining Company.

As far as being a vet myself,

coming out here has been awesome.

It's renewed my sense of what we fought for.

I can't imagine what this could mean to some of our hardest-hit

combat vet,

the severe PTSD sufferers... It makes your heart swell.

It's a good deal if this mine works out.

Just got to be enough gold here, you know?

We're looking forward to getting gold in the pan.

Yep.

Well, thank you for your help, guys.

I can get her from here.

Hoo! Whoo-pew!

We've only got so much time here, and, you know, look at

the puffy clouds starting to fire back up in the sky now.

The dry plant cannot run material with

any moisture in it, so I am extremely worried.

Juan, well, he's still working on that heater.

Hopefully we can get material on there

and knock the moisture out of it.

Ready? One last push.

It's the final day of fixes

at the Veteran Mining Company's claim.

We needed a little more work area,

so we moved the manifold onto the trailer.

And with more monsoon rains on the horizon,

Juan tests out the heating grid.

The heat's gonna be introduced right in the center,

and then from there it's gonna distribute six to the left,

six to the right, and then

it'll go to the next one.

See it blow through there?

It's not really warm.

The burner generates 5,000 BTUs of heat,

but it's not transferring properly through the grid.

We're not having really good combustion in there.

We need more draw-through.

That's what I wanted to check before we got too carried away.

We're gonna have to put another tube in here.

We'll do it right here in the center.

Originally, the burner that I had anticipated had

a little bit less CFM. This one has more.

So, we need to add more ventilation.

There isn't enough airflow to fully heat the grid.

We're gonna have to mark the center, put the tube in,

get it in, weld it.

But at least we know now.

You know, running a dry plant, you have to have completely

dry material.

And right now, during the raining season,

it's almost impossible.

This is gonna be essential for him to keep on running.

I still have a lot to do here.

What they had before was just some welded pieces on there

that you couldn't adjust anything on.

At the wash plant, Freddy installs the new

eccentric weights to the shaker screen.

Now I can make it exactly balanced

where there's no vibration.

So the farther I move this around,

the more out of balance it becomes, so it'll shake harder.

The weights can be adjusted to a shake that best suits

the material being run.

It's gonna make the plant more efficient.

It's gonna clean the material better,

it'll help out a bunch.

Eccentrics in place,

the screen is lifted back into position.

- You good? - I'm good.

- OK. - That's a fit.

There you go.

- Real good fix. - Looks good.

Freddy has one final finishing touch.

So, I just built this dampener, guys.

A toolbox liner turned dampener to slow down material.

There you go.

So, when that material comes down - Yeah.

it's gonna help push that material through that screen,

but it's gonna help keep dust down

and help more gold get into your boxes.

Something that costs, you know, 20 bucks to make,

but it'll help save gold every time you run.

You got a crescent wrench and a hammer?

I got all kinds of stuff. I don't have a hammer.

Screen fix complete, Tim and Jim set to work

upgrading the blow boxes with 200 mesh fabric

and aluminum frames.

Not looking good for the home team.

Looks like they were all glued in here.

The new mesh will help prevent fine gold from being lost.

Don't want to get any on where it doesn't belong.

Oh, no, I siliconed my eyelids shut.

I wouldn't doubt that.

- Last one in. - Got that one done.

Good job. All right.

A number of years ago,

I enlisted in the Army Security Agency.

I had top-secret clearance, so was able to work for NASA

for a little while.

All of that sort of led me to be out here to do this.

A lifelong interest in prospecting led Jim to

the Veteran Mining Company.

My investment is one of labor.

I start the day 3:30 in the morning,

and usually before daylight,

I try to have the machines greased.

Sustaining this operation is a challenge.

Different fun, different day.

Equipment breaks, Weather disagrees with us,

what I'm getting out of it is the satisfaction of doing

something for the veterans

long-term by enabling this mine to be a success.

- This is number two. - Number two.

We've relined them, put new backing plates on them.

I can't wait to see them

full of shiny. - Yep.

That's a wrap. These are in.

You know, if we don't have dry pay for this final run,

we won't be able to run, so we have to use this.

By adding this 4-inch tube in the center,

we should be able to get that extra heat.

Back at the cut trailer, Juan adds an extra tube

the full length of the grid to improve the airflow and fix

the heating issue.

Let me run it.

Look how hot this is.

The heat's traveling.

We wanted to make sure we had enough airflow so it would burn

properly and be able to heat up the grid.

It's actually working really good now.

OK, perfect.

Yeah, right now, genuinely, we're out of time.

We'll get the sides on.

We've got to get this down to the plant so we can get it

set up, get it fired off, so we can start drying some pay.

Yeah, it's well-built. Ready to see it go to work.

Heating grid complete, it's put into position,

ready to dry pay.

- That's a beautiful piece. - Yeah.

Let's get some tailings, bury it.

Keeps it from moving,

but also it'll kind of insulate it.

We could probably cook eggs on that.

Freddy was right on the mark with this.

In preparation for the second test,

Larry and the vets stockpile high grade pay for the dryer.

This pay looks really, really good.

He's a gold guru.

If we get this material up to the heat pad,

do our second run on this,

we'll get to see how much we've improved and how much

more gold we have.

We've got a lot of high hopes for this pay.

Show us what our future's gonna hold up here.

All in all, it's been a pretty good day.

Hopefully this mine's sustainable.

But you can't run the material wet.

It's got to be dry, or it will not recover the gold

in the plant. Time will tell.

Well, this is the last piece of the puzzle.

This vibrates to be able to clear out the tailings chute.

In western Arizona...

It's a little tiny fix, but it's a big deal.

...Juan installs one last fix

on the Veteran Mining Company's operation.

We should be able to run a little longer and, more

importantly, get more gold. Well, there it is.

We should be able to fire this thing up now.

Let's run!

The fixes, we're hoping, is gonna make a huge difference.

We were right on the edge of make-or-break.

Newly-upgraded dry plant and bespoke pay dryer

at the ready,

Freddy and Juan kick off the second test.

Fire her up.

Oh!

- She's going. - Awesome.

It's been a long road, but I can't wait to see

how much gold we get.

Well, two-hour test. Let's do it.

Get some of this dry material.

All right, let's get this first bucket in.

Screen's working good, Juan.

You guys can see that it's moving now.

Good work, Fred. Nice.

The eccentric's working perfect. The dampener's doing its job

of keeping that stuff from bouncing up.

- Pretty warmed up, Juano. - Yeah, it's good.

, that's hot.

right, that 4-inch is hot, too.

The plant's running a lot better.

We got the material classifying through it really well.

The boxes are doing really good.

We put a new vibrator on the discharge chute,

so it seems to be working good now.

Dry pay and a dialed-in eccentric,

material flows cleanly through the plant

and into the upgraded blow boxes.

I'm hoping this second test run delivers more gold.

In the cut, Larry and the rest of the crew focus

on high-graded pay.

The material that we're getting up to the heater pad,

looks like this is gonna be some good pay.

Look how dry this material is now.

Yeah, it's a lot drier than we had before.

Well, that's two hours, Juan. Last bucket!

Hey Larry, can you head up here to the plant?

Roger that.

Everything was smoothed down in the pit.

How did it go up here with the plant, Kadin?

That dryer works fantastic. And the top screen

runs a heck of a lot better.

Hopefully we'll have a better clean up.

- Hey guys. - Hey.

How's it going?

Let's put it on a scale.

Some super fine gold and some little bit bigger gold, yeah.

Looks better than the first run.

There we go.

0.08.

Going from 0.02 to 0.08, that's huge.

- 300% increase. - Yeah.

Running a full day would recover just under $1,600

in gold, enough to cover costs and keep

the veteran mining dream alive.

At gold, the price it is right now, it's viable.

You can actually run the mine on that.

And get your buddies out here.

With those numbers, it's sustainable.

You know, I know this is really important to you guys,

so please keep us posted.

We're gonna give it our best shot.

Well, gentlemen, we better get on the road.

Thank you, guys.

Pleasure coming out here and working with you guys.

- Great meeting you guys. Appreciate everything - Pleasure.

- Thank you, Juan. - Pleasure.

Likewise. Thank you, gentlemen.

Thank you, Freddy and Juan.

The improvements you made help us move forward.

We're not gonna give up.

We're gonna be here this time next year.

Going from.02 to.08, it goes from not being viable to now

they have a chance to run this mine with the vets.

The dryer's working. They're being able to

recover a lot more of the gold.

So honestly, I couldn't be happier.

I'm more than pleased with that.

Not only, you know, is it a gold mine,

it's a good cause, right?

To help these vets be able to come out here and to work

and maybe make a dime,

you know, means more than the gold itself.

Having Freddy and Juan out here, you know,

they're incredible at what they do.

The plant's running, absolutely wonderful.

The boxes with new frames and mats and the vibrators,

and they fixed the shaker deck. Its efficiency was tremendous.

Where to find the gold, what to look for,

was immensely valuable to us.

Freddy, Juan, thank you for your efforts out here,

the knowledge you bestowed on us,

and I hope to see you again down the road.