Original subtitles

Deep in death and over two-thirds of the way through their second-binding season.

Let's go!

The Huffman crew is desperate to hit their goal of 100 ounces of gold.

Easy Jack, easy Jack, what's that, Frank?

Despite poor results, I mean these guys are going to make wages.

All seven men have forged a hit.

We may not set any records, but we cannot fail.

Now, against the odds, Todd and his crew must open up a new cut.

Every plate I push and get that much closer to cut number two.

Before their stockpile of paygrabble runs out.

Hey Jeff, last bucket!

But the threat of another failed season forces one member of the crew to quit.

Back off, and you back off.

That was perfect.

Down at Porcupine Creek.

And all the stuff that you've got in your head.

The Huffman's rival, Dakota Fred, continues to butt heads with his son Dustin.

I can't get away from you.

Bad as a woman.

And a visit to one of the Klondike's most successful minds.

Horses high school senior Parker Schnaubt to reconsider his future.

I've never seen that much gold in the pad.

I'm digging in the wrong creek, man.

The Huffman crew is 107 days into 150 day mining season.

On the Quartz Creek gold claim, the Huffman crew is 107 days into 150 day mining season.

Correct.

Get that over here.

There's stockpiling the last of their paygrabble from their first cut on the claim.

I think we're kind of hit the bottom of the barrel.

This is that.

This last few shovels.

Nobody's here to push up dirt.

I don't even think there's any material left to push up.

When the stockpile runs out,

the wash plant will have no gold bearing dirt to process.

This is it.

Gonna go to the pot and we're gonna run what we got.

Now's it.

Since they arrived in the Klondike, the Huffman crew has only found 28 ounces of gold.

Worth around $45,000.

I'd like to see it up five times over again.

They spent the last seven weeks removing over 7,000 tons of dirt.

From their first cut.

All the way down to Bedrock.

So this whole path here's just about played out.

And they've just started clearing the frozen mud on a second cut.

You want to open up a second one in two weeks?

I don't really do I want it.

I think you guys can do it.

Now, the crew is 72 ounces short of the 100 ounces they need to go home with a decent profit.

They must get down to Peter on their second cut before their stockpile runs out.

And the wash plant has to be shut down.

Well, it's not something that we didn't know.

I mean, we've known we had a limited amount of Peter.

And here we are.

We've got a couple days left at best.

And we've got to do something about it.

So second cut here we come.

Greg Remsberg in the 400 excavator and Dave Turen in the DA doser are in charge of opening up a second cut.

They need to remove eight feet of worthless frozen mud before they reach the gold rich pay gravel beneath.

We're going to get it open up, run it, and just hope that it has something in it.

As Dave and Greg race to strip cut, too.

Time feeds the wash plant and other bucket of stockpiled pay gravel.

Guys are already on that cut.

They've got a little bit of a knock-off already.

Got to get down to Peter.

I don't know why he just screwed.

Damn it.

The DA is the only machine the Hoffman's have that can rip through Permafrost without it.

Getting down to pay gravel in the second cut will not be possible.

Each one of these pins stretches a little bit as it grows old and you can take up some more of the tension,

but we can't take all the tension out of it because I'm all the way past the spring.

So you've got to really be careful.

I was making two tight of a turn and just slipped off the back idler.

The DA is stuck in the middle of the Klandike wilderness.

Dave and Greg's only option is to force the track back on with a 400 and hope it hones.

Now go back out towards me, Greg.

And now come on, Greg.

Almost.

Right on that too.

Right on that lake.

There, right there.

Push it.

Got it.

The DA is back up and running.

But the most experienced operator is leaving the claim at the end of this shift.

Dave and his wife Shelley are heading back to Oregon for three days to check in on his family business.

Greg and I opened up cut number two, but we're a long ways away.

We've got some serious work to do.

We've got probably one or two days of loosening left.

And then from there, they should be all hands on deck getting that second cut done.

Well, I'm running the doser.

That's never as good as when Dave's running the doser.

It's now up to Greg to remove the last three feet of frozen mud across an area half the size of a football field.

In an aging doser.

Greg is our operator right now and he's very good at what he does.

So he'll be here.

I'm hoping for the remainder and they'll take care of it.

The success of the season rests squarely on Greg's shoulders.

At the Hoffman's old claim in Porcupine Creek,

the Dakota boys are mining at breakneck speed.

With only 21 ounces so far this season,

Dakota Fred is practically digging pager.

Grab real estate here.

His son Dustin is piling it into the de-rocker at over a hundred yards an hour.

It's a big day for us because we haven't had a single breakdown yet, which is a pretty big deal.

Family friend Darren Zuck is clearing the tailings as quickly as he can.

When things are working right, when they finally all work together, it's a really good feeling.

It's a really good feeling.

Two weeks ago, a mining inspector shut down Porcupine for seven straight days.

You just tell me how anybody would feel other than angry.

I ask you to hold the thing so I can weld it.

I'm sorry to be late there right now.

Father and son took out their frustrations on each other.

I need some help with somebody that'll at least listen to what I ask them to do.

Now, the Dakota boys have just 43 days left to get the 100 ounces they need to cover their costs

and go home with a puff.

We can't close enough to the end of the season.

We need as much run time and daylight as we can get.

Otherwise, friends, blood pressure will go right through the frickin' rubs.

They don't run for anybody.

Fred is 65 feet deep into the pit.

He's been digging all season.

He's just like digging for a payday dollar ground.

Yes, a 400 pound 500 pound potato there.

Big rocks, big gold.

These big boulders are a sign that Fred is finally close to bedrock and lots of gold.

Thousands of years ago, the river at Porcupine Creek ran through the pit Fred is digging.

It wore down rocks to form smooth boulders and deposit it a gold-rich paystreet between the boulders and the bedrock.

Now, the de-rocker is dealing with these bigger boulders.

Putting an under more and more strain.

Damn!

Whoa, whoa, get it down!

Oh, what a nutty easy.

All right.

The de-rocker's only moving about an inch and a half and rocking back and forth.

Something's not right.

What did you do?

Damn.

Now, we're shut down.

We're now washing rocks.

We ain't making them money.

We're going backwards.

This has just gone.

It's out of hand.

It's killing our operation.

At Porcupine Creek in southeast Alaska,

the Dakota boy's de-rocker is once again out of action.

How do we know about this?

Dustin and Darren investigate the switch system.

It's not operating the way it should.

Under the articulating deck of the de-rocker,

a hydraulic piston moves the wheels forwards and backwards.

To create the wave-like motion that shifts the rocks from one end of the machine to the other.

But now, the piston is hardly moving.

A switch on the side of the de-rocker, which controls the movement,

has vibrated loose so the deck can't process the rocks.

Every single piece of equipment has broken down one way or another.

The Dakota boys have lost valuable time this season,

including two weeks due to mechanical breakdowns.

It had to have moved, right?

I'm guessing.

If they can't fix the de-rocker quickly,

they could face financial ruin.

You got an idea?

Make it happen, Scotty.

I'm going to figure out the switch before I can make it work, right?

This is ridiculous that I'm doing this right now.

Dustin tries realigning the switch so that the hammer hits

at the right moment.

But without a manual, it's trial and error.

Let's try to get it.

Despite Dustin's best efforts, the switch is still not working properly

and Fred's patience is running out.

As he hits you, go for it.

You have to start in here and ride up.

This is difficult.

Don't let the fuck away, Fred.

Let's get it done.

That's BS.

Okay, before you...

Go ahead. Go ahead and say it.

If you could just give me a couple minutes.

Oh, what?

Without you doing this thing.

That you're going to grab and give me hints.

I'm pretty sure I can make it work.

We just...

No.

Okay.

What size is that, Dustin?

Do you have any...

You know...

You'll figure it out.

I gotta get away from you.

I don't know what Dustin's problem is today.

Bad as a woman.

Shit.

It's a weird competition thing between Fred and I.

If it's my idea, it's a bad idea.

Fred thinks he's found the correct angle of alignment for the switch to work.

We had to add a little shim in there.

Made out of wood.

And we did a little adjustment to this strike plate.

Right?

I got it.

Oh, of course.

A little sun, or an engineer.

And what if it was for the wood?

The only thing missing is the duct tape and a wire.

The de-rocker switch is firing.

The de-rocker switch is firing.

The decotables are back in business.

E-ho!

Here they run, okay.

So far so good.

Back at Quartz Creek.

The Hoffman crew is rushing to open up a second cut.

Before the stockpile paidered from cut one runs out.

With Dave Turin gone, the pressure is on Greg to keep their old tire de-a-dose

were going.

He has one week to clear an area that should take two.

So I had to talk with Greg this morning and I said, you know what?

I know I'm in a hurry, but you can't do it without the doser.

Keep the doser going.

Keep it alive.

Jack is back in his beloved 400.

Trying to move as much mud as he can.

We're hammering it out.

We're trying really hard.

Come on, baby.

The doser might be out of fuel.

Running out of diesel sucks air and dirt from the tank through the fuel system.

It can seriously damage the engine.

That's going to be a heck of a project to get fuel back through all the lines on that thing.

You do not run diesel engines out of fuel.

It's going to take a lot of work to get that thing up and run it.

Without a working DA.

The Hoffman crew can't get down to the pay gravel.

They need to save their season.

Now come the doser ain't running or Greg go.

Greg run out of fuel.

If he's done serious damage to the doser,

then he's going to just screw this.

So let's go find out what's going on.

Reminds not here.

Reminds isn't sandy Oregon.

With my family.

Last few days I've been just wrestling with my two choices.

One, stick it out, hope for the goal.

Two is to go back home and try to make something happen.

I don't feel good about my chances at home.

But I'm starting to feel less hopeful about my chances here.

And providing for my family.

What'd you do?

Well, it's very least around the doser low and fuel.

Maybe out.

I'm up on a slant.

Dude, you run that sediment through the system man.

You could have just straight screwed us.

At Quartz Creek in the Klondike,

Todd's oldest friend, Greg Remsburg,

has run the D8 doser out of diesel.

He's put the whole Hoffman operation in jeopardy.

Here's the deal.

And just do the tellies back off and you back off this quarter.

Where's the way I see it?

I got two options.

Either I stick it out here and hope for that second cut

is going to put a bunch of gold in their pockets.

Or I go home and try to scratch something together.

But you know, I don't even have a truck here.

I can't have you to afford to go down to the airport

and buy a plane ticket out of here.

And, well, I don't know.

I'm just, I'm just perplexed.

My head is just very to explode.

I don't, I don't know.

I know what's right, but I don't feel like I can do it.

If you've got to go, dude, we'll get the money together.

No.

I'll talk to the guys and put some money together

and if you've got to go, you've got to go.

No?

Really?

Yeah, I will.

There, man.

Appreciate it.

We'll see it happens.

I'm down, but that doesn't matter to me.

I fight really good with my back against the wall.

So, just freaking poured on me.

I don't care.

I'm going to get it done.

With Greg Quitting and Dave still in Oregon,

Todd is down to two crew members

and his most important piece of equipment is not running.

I feel it's a big loss to the team and personally

because Greg's one of my closest friends.

We're at the point where we're running out of,

hey, dirt and he's not here so bad.

I mean, not much we can do about it.

I gotta go, I gotta get over here.

Opening Cut 2 looks more and more unlikely.

Hey, Jeff, last bucket.

Adding insult to injured.

The Huffman crew is on their last load of paid dirt from Cut 1.

If I can't figure this, Greg is game out.

I don't know what I'm going to do.

After the last yard of dirt runs through the wash plant,

the firmer shuts down the pump.

Cut 1 is dead.

We're done.

Todd will ran the last of what material we had.

So we'll take a look which is a boiler box and the ripples

and kind of try to put together a plan to see what we do next.

We can hear the geese flying.

We're getting the heck out of here.

Is there a turn in?

It's like a light switch here.

Bam, it will be in winter, before we know it.

They can easily, for August is over, have snow here.

100 miles south.

17-year-old Parker Shnovel is closing in on the clondike.

Before he goes back to school,

he needs to smelt all the gold he's mine.

This season has been the worst season as far as production goes

at the mine in a long time.

Parker minned every available area of Big Nugget.

But he only found 35 ounces of gold worth around $55,000.

Last week, he turned the mine back over to his grandpa.

I'd want you to be.

Well, I'll take your own charge and control.

I understand that.

I gotta get back to work.

Parker arrives on the outskirts of Dawson City to smelt his gold.

The go-to guy here is Don Kenzie.

Before Parker's gold can be smelt,

Don adds flux to the gold ore.

This is soda ash.

And the other material I'll add is Borax, which is a soap.

So once again, you're cleaning the gold.

Don transfers the gold and flux mixture into a heat-resistant crucible.

He places it into a furnace that is over 2,500 degrees Fahrenheit.

Never watched gold being melted or poured or any of that kind of stuff before.

When the gold ore reaches 1,948 degrees, it begins to melt.

What's that, Borax?

This is a carbon rod.

What I can do with that rod is give it a feel and see if it's going to liquid nicely.

Then therefore, telling us, give it a little more time.

Gold is virtually inert, so it doesn't react with the flux.

Unlike the impurities, which combine with the flux,

and rise to form a slag on the surface.

Don pours the red hot gold mixture into a mold.

Line with vegetable oil so it doesn't stick.

Stay calm, nobody panic.

As the gold cools, a dark crust forms on the surface.

This slag contains iron and a small amount of silver.

Okay, here we go.

Don breaks the slag from the gold.

After three months of back-breaking mining,

Parker's hard work is boiled down into one solid bar of gold.

Thirty four points, three four ounces.

All season we work to get that, and you know,

might not be happy with what we got, but it's pretty cool.

At Quartz Creek, only 39 days of the mining season remain.

But the mine is at a standstill.

Dave Turin returns from his business trip in Oregon.

I was hoping we'd be working our butts off, getting a second cut ready to go,

so we can get some more gold.

But I don't see much happening.

Dave, welcome back, buddy.

I got some hard stuff to talk to you about.

Greg's gone. Greg left.

Remsburg is now at home.

Why? He's worried about his family.

Is he worried about money?

Yeah.

Well, sure.

We're going to have snow coming down, and you're going to be basically

our horse to get us to that next cut.

The Hoffman crew desperately needs to find another 72 ounces of gold

to go home with money to support their families.

I think we're running out of time.

They're under pressure to strip the mud off cut too,

and get down to pay ground.

Hey, everyone's gripping.

They can't do anything until mechanic James Harness

fixes the DA doser.

He purges the air out of the diesel fuel lines.

Not all of them are cooperating,

and I don't want to have a problem with the lines again.

Again.

Ready? Yep.

Almost.

Okay.

They've turned get straight to work.

Ribbing cut too.

Every blade I push to get to me.

That much closer to losing out of cut number two.

People take around a week to clear two feet of frozen mud.

Let's go alive and work.

We're kicking and we're fighting and we're going to keep doing it.

You know, we've got a lot of people dependent on us.

With no pay dirt to run through the wash plan,

Thurber takes random test pans from around the clean.

I have seven colors in my pan right here.

Hand full of dirt.

What Thurber has stumbled on and cut one.

Just may transform their whole season.

Hey, Tom. Hey.

I went up to this first cut.

And I paned and I found gold on the deck.

Right there.

We're on the deck.

Right. I'm that bedrock.

God.

Thurber's random discovery.

That there is gold actually in the bedrock of cut one.

Contradicts everything Todd has learned about gold mining.

We have not gone deep enough in the first cut.

Thurber's pan and really coarse gold.

You know, I thought we were dead down there.

Oh gosh.

I don't know what to do.

Gold tends to sink through the gravel until it hits solid bedrock.

This means the richest paystreaks are usually at the bottom of the pay gravel.

This is where the Hoffman stopped digging.

What they didn't know is that water can seep into the bedrock's hairline cracks.

Over time, this water freezes and expands.

Creating fractures large enough for the gold to fall into.

If the bedrock on cut one is fractured and full of gold,

the Hoffman's season could go from bust to boom over nice.

Forty miles north of Quartz Creek in Dawson City.

Parker Schnabel is on the road again.

This time he's touring the impressive clandike mining operations.

The judges that have done this must be huge.

Parker failed this season.

He did not hit the paystreak he needed to secure the future of the big nugget mine.

It's time for some soul search.

I've never seen him operation outside a parking pine.

He's visiting one of the biggest gold operations in the region.

Tamarack mine owned by Tony Beats.

Parker.

Tony Beats, how you doing?

Get the meat yet.

Tony runs dirt through his wash plan.

23 hours a day.

Every day.

And that adds up to a lot of gold.

How many hours is that?

Oh, I have no idea.

600?

No.

We're lucky to have it as two.

That's more than 200 ounces.

Well, not a bit of time you're cleaning.

If so, good day of not well.

It is one of this.

Right?

We heard you could make a thousand bucks a week in the Ukraine.

So that's what I went after.

I've happened to get a little more.

I've never seen that much gold in the pad.

Man, you got to get out more.

Things don't work out of porcupine.

I'm like, crawl up here.

Big Tony for a job.

So you got to always don't chase my daughter.

If he comes up in the spring and if he serious,

if he pans out, good for him, not too bad for him.

If you wanted that, you could learn or whatever.

Hang around and see things, learn something.

Good experience in all different kinds of equipment.

He says he gets two to four ounces an hour.

I'm digging in the wrong creek, man.

If I wanted to play with the big boys,

I'm not going to get up here where the big boys play.

At Quartz Creek, the Hoffman crews

suspect they've missed thousands of dollars worth of gold

in the bedrock of cut one.

They call in their neighbor,

expert minor, Guy Fabron, to get his opinion.

Hey Dave, we got a real minor here.

We got a real minor?

Yeah.

Good.

Find that.

They're doing.

They do it.

So we got this stuff.

That's a bedrock.

That's all.

It all looks like bedrock to me.

You're right over to that.

I don't think this material was holding gold all the way down, even.

Well, that's where we're looking at.

There and do.

We're actually hammering the bedrock pretty hard now.

It just keeps spanning up.

How deep are you going into it?

I will probably be a good forefeet enter.

Are you really?

Oh.

So keep going into it.

Keep going down.

Well, there's gold.

Keep going.

There's no gold.

Just get that out.

Oh, that's good.

The crew stops work.

Uncut to immediately.

Dave takes the DA back to cut one.

So this is just kind of training down into the bedrock.

It's real critical that we get the water out of here, so I'm not pushing.

This stuff up because the water will wash the gold down.

Todd starts feeding the bedrock peder into the wash plant right away.

So far this season.

Cut one has been a disappointment.

But they will soon find out if Thurber's accidental discovery deep in cut one will make them all rich.

Everybody's in a good mood.

That first cut just keeps giving, baby.

Everyone's working.

No one can be in any kind of bad mood.

We're doing what we're here to do.

The prospect of a season-saving cleanup has the crew more determined than ever.

I think if there might be more gold left in the cut than what we got out.

Down at Parkipine Creek.

The Dakota boys are feeding their final bucket of peder to the day into the wash plant.

Wash them rock, baby.

After three ten-hour shifts, the D-rocker has crunched through over 4,000 cubic yards of their best peder yet.

Now, it's time for dusting in the crew to clean out their sluice boxes.

Oh, we got gold.

It's getting bigger.

It's getting bigger.

Anytime you get larger flakes, of course it makes up for a lot of small ones.

Fred, his mind 21 ounces of gold this season.

Worth about 34,000 dollars.

Gold soup.

Coming up.

But he spent $60,000 to find it.

All we're doing is drying it out.

Without more gold, Dakota Fred will go bankrupt.

To hit their target of 100 ounces, he needs two ounces a day.

That means at least six ounces of gold from this three-day cleanup.

All right, here we go.

Well, that's nine point one.

Plus.

133.

13 ounces.

Worth nearly $21,000 is twice what Fred was hoping for.

Their seasoned tally is now on course.

213.

213.

133.

34.

34.

34.

34.

34.

34.

And a half.

34.

34.

And a half ounces.

We got right now.

13 ounces every three days for the rest of the season.

Would give the Dakota boys over a quarter of a million dollars.

Their luck may finally be changing.

We find a little gold ever between breakouts.

The world's largest gold coin is Australian.

It weighs in at over 2,200 pounds.

Its nominal value is $1 million.

But the gold it's made from is actually worth over $50 million.

At Quartz Creek, the Hoffman crew is doing the first clean out of the gold they nearly left in the bedrock of cut one.

I think it'll be a fair clean up.

We'll find out here shortly.

That's a good sign.

I always want to be able to hear it.

That's nice.

Jack and Thurber rinse the minors moss from the sluice boxes.

They're the gold there.

Yeah.

Right here.

Yeah.

I think this just clean out looks better in the last time.

You know, it looks pretty cool.

They run the gold concentrate through their duplex jig.

The pulsating cylinder full of ball bearings separates the heavier gold and black sand from the lighter dirt.

Shut it down.

Any larger nuggets are picked out of a miniature sluice box.

Jack, yes sir.

If the size of the pieces mean anything, it's getting better.

Ready?

As a line forms on the gold table, expectations saw.

They looked pretty good.

This is a first two scoops that I put in and it seems to be nice and even.

To get the 72 ounces they need to make a profit in the remaining 38 days of the season.

This three-day cleaner has to deliver at least six ounces of gold.

This is looking good.

Isn't that cool?

Looking good.

Things are looking real good.

I love it.

Yeah, I saw the last one and this looks better than that.

And we had what eight ounces last time.

I think we're going to beat that.

There's some big chunks in there.

Looks like double digits to me.

One, two, three, four, five, six.

Seven, eight, nine, one.

Nine points.

Nine and a quarter.

Nine and a quarter.

Nine and a quarter.

Nine and a quarter.

I don't know.

There could be three quarters of an ounce here.

Pull it off the paper into this pan.

Half ounce.

Half ounce.

How are we getting somewhere?

The nine and three quarter ounces of bedrock gold

that the Hoffman crew almost left behind has everyone encouraged.

I'd like to have a bunch of these.

They now have almost 38 ounces worth around $60,000.

If they continue to have clean outs like this,

the crew will split a profit of about $110,000.

And probably three days of running.

We beat.

We got half of what we got last year.

Now we're getting close.

I can see a real possibility that we're going to be over a hundred ounces.

And that's exciting.

Right now it's the time to really push and try to hit for the end.

Because we've got their little time left.

I know that we could accomplish our hundred ounce goal

but taking that next cup.

How do we know what we can do unless you actually get up to the play

and swing and swing for the fences?

It's a big gamble, but you know what?

I don't want to lift out of here.

I want to go out of here like a pro.

I want to go out of here like a king.

Come on, let's go.

I'm Christo Doyle, executive producer of Gold Rush.

This time on the Gold Rush after show.

So tell me about Tony Beats.

I've met Tony Beats. He's in a sane character.

I think I've met a crush on Tony Beats.

Yeah, I think Todd is as scared as Tony Beats.

Watch the Gold Rush after show at discovery.com slash Gold Rush after show.