Original subtitles

Down here in the Quagmire cut on Ken and Stuart's...

The Indian River traditionally is always

a efficient volume game,

and we're breaking that rule by running

a lot of top gravels.

Generally, the top's really bad,

but the gold price is higher.

You got to get all the waste off and keep the plant running.

So I'm just trying to figure out if

we can just sluice everything.

Basically use the wash plant as a bit of a stripping machine.

Nice chunky stuff. Pretty sweet.

Probably one of the better ones I've ever done down here.

Hopefully more of that's in the pit we're doing.

I'm gonna show Brennan.

I just did this pan from the back wall.

- One pan. - Holy.

- Yeah, isn't that crazy? - - That's nice gold.

You need to bump our numbers up.

So you guys need to get Roxanne sluicing.

Absolutely, yeah.

Mitch and I, we better get to it.

All right, thanks dude.

Three weeks into the mining season, Parker Schnabel needs

a big score.

Right now we have three wash plants running.

Top gravel, you know, the stuff left over

from last year is pretty.

None of them are lighting the world on fire.

With gold prices at record highs, Parker's been sluicing

top gravels, dirt he'd normally throw away.

But he's barely breaking even, with Dominion producing just

590 ounces of his 13,000-ounce target.

To get more gold flowing, Parker's firing up his fourth

plant in just four weeks up at Ken and Stuart's.

Mitch and Brennan are just about to have Roxanne running

down at the Indian River and that's an important pit

for this season.

The drilling estimate for it is like 4,000 ounces,

which is a lot of gold for not a big pit and a small crew.

Mitch excels in situations like that.

Hopefully he can bring home that number

or something close to it.

I hope. We need it.

Let's roll.

The first step for Foreman Mitch Blaschke and veteran

operator Brennan Ruault is to haul wash plant Roxanne from.

Dominion's yard 10 miles to the Indian River claim.

It's a big day for us here.

We're at a point right now where we need to be

sluicing a lot, so I think

the sooner we get it running, the better.

You know, Mitch runs this operation for Parker like

it's his very own, and those are the guys that

you want on your crew.

The ultimate dream one day is

to have my own mine site with Mitch.

You know, I love it here with Parker,

and he treats us like gold.

It's just, I don't want to wake up at 65 years old and be like,

man, I should have did something else or just

took the next step.

Yeah, right now I'm really happy.

I really like working for Parker as foreman.

You know, I've worked with Brennan for a lot of years now,

and you know, Brennan's a good operator,

but there's definitely times he's hard on things,

and so tried lots of different approaches.

Get him to be easy on things so you don't break them,

and nothing's worked yet.

That don't look good.

That's all sunk in here.

I don't think he'll get that trailer here.

You got a copy there, Warden Blaschke?

Go ahead.

I don't think you'll make this corner.

I hope you're joking.

Absolutely not.

The whole inside corner is sunk.

We're not bringing that plant in here right now.

All right, I'll be right there, I'm just pulling up.

With that top-heavy load on there, this is not good.

It's all broken all the way down, you know, and he needs

all of that to... swing here and his trailer tires

would be way over there.

Oh, boy.

What was our nice road now has a mountain of mud on top of it.

We built this little section here just to get us into

the edge of the cut.

And now, as it's warming up and things are melting here,

we can see this thing is starting to sink into the pond.

- Yo, Evan, you got a copy? - Yes, sir.

Grab the trucks and start loading some material.

We need to reinforce this whole edge, and I want enough

material there that when we get all that weight pushing on it,

it doesn't slough off into the pond

and we end up flipping this thing.

Yeah, so we're over here, was hauling pay

and now hauling dirt. Help fix the road.

It's not very good.

It's not making us money doing this.

As the road is getting fixed,

we're gonna move the sluice runs.

Don't want to just sit here waiting idle.

Try and make the most out of every minute we got here.

We're almost done.

A few more loads, and then, you know,

we should be good to level this out a little bit.

Come on, baby.

They're extremely hard to move.

You've got about 10 feet here.

Looking good.

Just like that, we're done.

Hey, Mitch, you got a copy, Mitch?

Yeah, buddy, what's up?

We got this road all wrapped up and done if you wanna get

the plant going.

Perfect, be there in a minute.

Feel victorious.

The road shall not be conquering me today.

We've got to be careful here still on this corner.

It's gonna be tight.

I'm gonna try and swing way out, pretty wide,

nice around the corner.

Come on, baby.

Come on, come on, come on, come on, come on.

Come on.

You know, fixing the road there took us a little time,

but we were able to get the plant here safe, so.

That was a really nice job, buddy.

Now it's just time to get her in place.

OK.

This is always the sketchiest part here.

Nice and easy.

Feels really nice to have Roxanne off the trailer.

Little bit more, 'bout right there.

Right now we're just making the final adjustments on

Roxanne here before we fire it up.

We have Roxanne reassembled. We got a pile of pay dirt here.

Let's fire it up.

The shaker deck is shaking.

We got water down the sluice runs here.

Time to add some dirt and make some gold.

Here we go!

With Roxanne fired up,

the crew now hopes it can prove out.

Parker's pan and deliver a big week.

Parker wants to try and get more gold

than Tony this year.

And we are right on the front line.

And just over there in the distance, you can see.

Tony's wash plant.

And it'll be real interesting to see which one

cranks out more gold.

While Parker has four wash plants sluicing,

King of the Klondike, Tony Beets, has just one.

And no gold on the scales.

Tony's slow start is due to a massive stripping project at

the Midas cut, where he's opened 40 acres and counting.

Now that he's got a plant running and a ton of ground

down to pay, Tony is ready to find some more.

Rock truck, back up, please.

I'm Tony's younger brother,

way handsomer than Tony, and my beard is way nicer

and longer, of course.

Tony is away for a couple days.

He told me to watch after everything.

For me, it's a little bit of a pressure.

I worked for Tony before,

five years in a row. Did everything.

I was running all kinds of equipment.

I'm very proud to be a part of this...

mining family business.

In the cut with Nick, Tony's grandson, Eagan,

digs out pay.

The bedrock goes deeper than we thought, so we gotta dig

a bit more than we would have had to.

You go on the bedrock, the bigger the rocks

are gonna get.

So I like it when I get a big one,

when I have to pick it up and I throw it on the ground.

And sometimes they break, and sometimes they don't.

Sometimes I throw the big rocks in the truck

and shake them up real good.

We came up out on top last year, so this year

we're going to try and keep the crown.

Overseeing the wash plant is Andrew Moran,

a two-year veteran of the Beets operation.

Everyone knows there's only one king of the Klondike,

and that is definitely not Parker.

We have to prove to Tony that we're able

to get done when he's not here.

So in order to do that, we need to keep

this wash plant going.

I keep an eye on the fine tailings pile

because it's right under the sluice boxes.

And if it piles up too much, it'll stop them from sluicing.

Andrew! Stop the plant, stop the plant, stop the plant,

'cause the conveyer's built up, stop the plant.

We have a massive rock stuck in the end of our chute,

which is how we're blocking up the whole shaker deck,

so we need to pry the big rock.

Tony Beets' wash plant, Sluice-A-Lot, has a blocked

tailings conveyor, causing rocks to build up,

shutting the plant down.

I'm firing up the conveyor so we can knock the rocks off

that are blocked on the end.

We have rocks everywhere where we're not supposed to

have rocks, which is bad.

And we're down and we're not making money, so we need to

get this done ASAP.

- Hey Nick, do you copy, Nick? - Copy.

You need to sort out the pay that's coming out of the cut.

Some of the massive rocks are out here our screens

and we're down now.

Eagan, do you copy? Eagan, do you copy?

Go ahead.

Can you sort out them, big rocks so they don't go

to the wash plant?

The guy feeding the plants needs to sort through them.

And it's pissing me off.

We have to stop them all the time to get them big rocks

out so we can't have that.

I'm sick of all the big rocks in this pay.

With the bucket the size it is, most of the rocks that are

gonna cause a problem are kind of just insignificant to me.

Now we have the chute all cleared out, we can finally

fire this wash plant back up again.

Give her, Andrew.

We're back up sluicing now, we got the rock out.

So, back to making some money again.

And hopefully nothing like that happens again.

Seems like a lot of rocks in this pay...

It would be nice if the operator in the cut

didn't send me a bunch of big boulders.

I see all the rocks that come out washed, and I've never seen

so many big rocks coming from the Midas cut.

Oh, Andrew, it's building up again.

Shut the plant off, shut the plant off.

Not again.

Second time this plant's been shut down today.

Yeah, I just want someone in that cut to not put so many

rocks in the trucks.

He's digging too far into the bedrock.

I better get over there.

Eagan, do you copy? Come over here.

It was a little bit hectic over there.

The big rocks and the wash plant.

How is something going wrong with the plant in any way,

shape, or form related to me?

I might send them, but I'm not putting them in the hopper.

Andrew had to deal a couple times with big rocks in

the plant that shouldn't be there.

He can't sort through them, not on me.

Whatever, Eagan, you might as well get out of here.

Where should I go?

Well, back to camp, OK?

Whatever.

Eagan is pissed off, so I'll clean this up, try to make

this happening.

But some bedrock is very chunky.

You have to take 'em out than leave 'em in the cut, right?

He's a nice enough kid, but it's not a play garden.

We're here to make some money.

He's still young, he still has to learn a lot.

Once we're sluicing, we want to keep on going

and no stopping anymore.

We're finally done. Time to fire it up again.

Downtime isn't good time.

And the boss isn't happy when we're not making money.

You know, I'm looking forward to start placer mining.

It's something that I've wanted to do for a long time.

There's a new high roller in the Yukon.

Gambling on hitting it big,

former hard-rock miner Greg Gibson.

He's invested millions of dollars in setting up

his new operation.

I got the three hills,

Trail, Cripple and Ophir.

There's an awful lot of material there, there's a lot

of virgin ground.

We don't want to come up here and not give it every chance

that we can, so we've got a significant investment.

We've got a fair bit of equipment,

a brand-new wash plant.

We're pretty excited to get this thing fired up and see

what it does and what we can accomplish.

Gold prices right now, hitting a jackpot.

If you're going to win, now's the time to try.

Ground zero of Greg's plan to build a placer mining empire

is Trail Hill.

It lies on Bonanza Creek, one of the richest creeks

in the Klondike.

But it has been mined consistently for 130 years.

Greg's gambling there's still untouched ground

rich with gold.

If there's gold there the way that we think

there's gold there, this could be the beginning

of a pretty big operation.

This week's goal, get the plant fired up, get going,

because I want to see some gold.

There's Buzzard right there.

Buzzard, how are you?

OK, let's go.

Show me what you're doing, Buzzard.

Greg's foreman, local placer miner Buzz Legault,

has assembled the new wash plant, Hotbox.

Now they must finalize their mining plan.

There may be a bit of gold at the top, but everything's

going to be better coming down.

So would we look at just ripping that off, getting down

into the coarser material?

I don't think it's going to

make us a whole bunch of money.

OK. What's your idea of a decent sample?

If we get an ounce, a hundred out of that,

we're laughing.

At Trail Hill, there's a mountain

of white channel pay.

Historically famous for high gold deposits, Greg wants to

dig down to the lower layers of gravels quickly,

disregarding the top trim of pay that holds less gold.

But Buzz thinks there could be enough gold in the top gravels

to make big bucks and wants to do a bulk test to prove it.

To be viable, Greg wants at least three ounces of gold

from the 300-yard run.

I want to be sluicing by the end of the week.

You seem to be a bit overwhelmed looking at that.

Are you trying to scare me?

OK.

Buzz is about as organized as a box of old shoes.

But he knows the workings of placer operations.

If he's good at what he does, he's got no pressure.

I let the players play. I don't micromanage.

All they have to do is find me some gold.

If there's no gold, you know what?

I don't know if he works out.

OK, I'll watch it.

Veteran hard rock miner Neil Gauthier

has worked for Greg for 35 years.

Dump, dump, dump!

And is one of his most trusted lieutenants.

You know, to see the gold in there, that's the payoff.

That's what gets everybody excited, right?

There's only one thing left to do.

Let's go, man.

I don't like the way the bank's eroding.

Shut it off, shut it off.

Our tarp washed away. We lost our bank.

If it keeps eroding, it'll take the plant.

Another 10 buckets, the whole... it's gone.

Another problem to solve.

I've been having problems.

Before I can start doing any work, I need WCB permission.

I get a lot of to get squared away.

The number-one issue here is getting this mining plan

drafted up and getting it approved

so that we can actually get going.

In the Keno Mountains, Rick Ness's mine remains

silent, buried under a mountain of issues that's put his entire

business in jeopardy.

It's just weird being up here without equipment

moving and mining.

It doesn't make sense. It's very weird.

It's just work that needs to be done.

Who's that?

What the hell is he doing here?

Hey! Chill out!

Last season...

Tony Beets made an offer to buy Rick out.

Let me put...?

Me put a price on the table?

At this point, taking the money

and running, is it really smart?

A number with seven zeros on it

gets thrown in your face, like it's hard to...

It's hard to say no to that.

See you later!

I mean, not a whole lot I can really talk about.

I mean...

Tony just wanted to catch up and talk to me about what's

going on over here.

He actually said he was up here looking at some other ground.

He didn't come here to spout numbers or nothing like that.

That's about all I'm really gonna say because he didn't

really want you guys in here anyway, so...

Kind of a private conversation.

Might be willing to share something in the future.

I don't know, I hate to be cryptic,

but I don't want to talk about it.

Last year was a little different.

It was a tough season. We barely pulled it off.

You know, we can't even get started this year.

What does the future hold for me?

This season? Is it my last?

I know I have problems and trying to fix it,

but I should start thinking about an exit plan.

This is year 15 in mining for me.

I know that it's not the last chapter.

I know that I'll be moving on to something else.

But I can't walk out of the Yukon with a big loss.

You know, leave on a high. I don't want to leave on a low.

It's such an awesome feeling here to see rock going

through Roxanne.

We're sluicing, excited to see some gold.

At the Quagmire cut, Parker Schnabel's crew planned

to first run the less rich top gravels before moving on to

the richer, deeper layers.

- It looks really good. - Thank you.

That pit scares me.

It's just so much money got poured into that

thing stripping. Like, so much time.

A lot of money got spent.

A lot of dozers, a lot of trucking,

- a lot of. - Yeah.

It's going to need to have some banging cleanups.

It's just so weird in there.

And there's so much sand and mud on bedrock, and I just

- panned it from the back wall. - Yeah.

So, there's gold in it.

We ended up sending all the top gravels to

the pay pile.

I think we're going to have a lot of material that's

questionable, but I think when we do get

to the good stuff, it'll you know,

- be all right. - Congratulations.

- Thank you. - Yeah, thank you.

Have a good one.

Fourth wash plant up and running.

Parker seems really happy with what he sees going on.

You know, that's what we want here.

Happy boss makes the day a lot easier.

Now Mitch's skeleton crew must run non-stop and deliver strong

numbers to make up for weak results coming from Parker's

three plants at Dominion.

Now the big pressure for us is just gonna be making sure

we keep that plant fed on the Indian River.

The top gravels don't hold very much gold in it anyways,

but with these prices, Parker wants to sluice it all.

So we're going to have to take the good with the bad.

We can't afford to run into any hiccups down here.

I'm loading trucks.

I got Brody and Josh in rock trucks,

and Sean's running the plant.

Right now we need pay to come to the plant.

We just fired this thing up because we don't have enough

trucks to keep up with it.

So hopefully these boys can just keep pushing on and keep

the pay coming to the plant.

Everyone's hustling to get that pay over

because the plant's hungry and that pile

ain't gonna last for long.

So we're over here hauling pay to Roxanne.

We got a small crew,

skeleton crew, very undermanned.

We're so close to Tony and his claim.

And you can see all his guys over there.

There's a little rivalry there.

We're all in the same business.

Business of gold, but we're a little bit better.

Yeah, it just hit my window.

It scared the ever-living out of me.

Holy.

- Hey, Mitch, you copy? - Go ahead.

You want to come down here?

He blew one of his tires.

At Mitch's Quagmire cut, one of his two rock trucks

has blown a tire.

All righty, well, that's not good.

And that had to be a pretty good explosion when that let go.

It's like shooting a rifle with no earplugs.

- Oh, yeah. - Ears are still ringing.

The rock truck's tires' sudden release of compressed air is

equivalent to the explosive force of a stick of dynamite.

Let's go ahead and dump it nice and easy right here to get

the material out of it.

And then we're going to limp it out of the way here so we can

get another tire on it. That one smoked.

I'm just sending a message to Jacob to let him know that

we got a rock truck down.

We're going to need to get a new tire here.

Get this thing back up and running

as soon as possible.

You know, this truck being down, that leaves me with one

truck, and we're certainly not going to keep up with

Roxanne with only one truck running.

Yeah, buddy, that'll work right there.

That'll be a good spot for working on it.

We'll just leave it on the side of the road there.

That's the last thing we need right now, that truck down.

We only got one truck left.

It's going to be a challenge here to keep up with Roxanne.

She seems like she's pretty hungry.

So we're just pulling up to this truck here.

I have a new tire in tow.

These 45 trucks carry around 55 tons of material.

And the roads that they're driving on, sometimes the tires

just can't handle it, and they just blow.

This is a giant hole, holy.

Jacob, how's it going, buddy?

Good, man, how are you?

I was a lot better until this tire blew.

You know, we don't have a lot of trucks down here.

A lot of work to do, and it's tough when you don't

have these trucks to get it done.

These tires can be a little bit of a pain in the butt,

but just busting off some wheel nuts here and then fling it off

and fling a new one on.

Yeah, a little rock truck pit stop, I like it.

Yeah, that's how we roll.

Give me a holler if you need to handle anything.

- OK, sounds good... yeah. - All right, thanks.

Pretty simple.

No pay dirt, no sluicing, no gold.

We got to fix that in a hurry.

A brand-new rock truck tire costs $8,000, and Parker goes

through 70 a year.

Out here by myself trying to get this tire changed

out here for Mitch.

So I'm just going to move this tire over here out of the way,

and then I got to rig up the new tire.

Do the exact opposite, put it back on.

So now it's just a matter of brute force.

I got all the nuts there tightened up.

I just got to drop the machine back down on the ground,

and then we'll get this thing back to work.

Yeah, buddy, going back together.

- Nice and smooth, no issues. - Yeah, buddy, I love it.

We're back in action. Thanks, bud.

- Have a good one. - Yeah... see ya.

Back to making some money hauling pay.

Whoo-hoo.

Foreman Buzz Legault is trying to prove to new mine boss.

Greg Gibson he can bring in big gold.

But wash plant Hotbox's pad has eroded, putting a stop to

his plan to run a 300-yard bulk test of white channel pay.

Buzz tries a bush fix to reinforce the bank.

I hope Buzz did a good job, fire this thing up.

OK!

Buzz, hold on a minute.

This is gonna go the next time it goes.

Hey, you want to go shut the pump off?

Just minutes into the test, Buzz's tire fix

is washing away.

Thinking we got to do something different.

Water washed around the tires and it caved in again.

Bit of a cluster, the bank washing away.

You trying to flip the plant upside down or what the?

Did you try something already?

- We tried a couple things. - Tires.

The one thing I learned, if we don't get our equipment

right, we're, OK?

OK, a wood chute.

Have her done by noon, clean out by two.

Let's go.

To stop waste water pouring out of a million-dollar

wash plant from eroding its pad, Buzz plans to build two

50-foot-long wooden chutes from the end of Hotbox's sluice runs

down its pad into its tailings pond

in the hope that, when fired up again, all the waste water is

funneled safely away from the pad.

You get her done, Buzz?

That's good. It didn't take you long.

Good job, Buzzard. You ready to go?

Let's fire her up and see what happens.

It looks good. Working well.

We stopped the erosion.

Running good.

We'll run this and then we'll do a clean out and see what it

looks like, but I'm happy.

Buzzard! What do you got?

Buzz believes the top layer of the white channel,

on Greg's claim, might have a high concentration of gold.

Now, it's the moment of truth.

So you're going to show me three ounces?

It's not three ounces.

Do we run this whole, this top at what that's paying

right now? Or do we just plow it out?

Just plow her through, take the top with the bottom

and just plow her through.

Shut the plant down in November.

OK.

Well, go!

Start digging!

Well, there we go. First gold pour Trail.

Wasn't the three. I wanted the three.

Buzz has taught us a lot,

so it's been a great benefit to have him.

I think my bet's gonna pay off.

I'm excited.

It's kind of nice to have your brother here, I guess?

I think you enjoy it, though.

And it's nice to have some adults around.

That's the big thing. And he knows how to do it.

That's good.

Escuze.

Hi, guys.

After being away looking for new ground,

Tony has returned and is expecting big gold from

his first weigh of the season.

Hey, Dad, it's four weeks in already

and your first gold weigh a little bit late, aren't we?

Making good progress.

Constantly running into pumping problems.

Probably two weeks.

Well, we have quite some big rocks here.

We got new people running out there.

So we have a little up here and there, I guess.

- Growing pains. - Yeah, there you go.

I would like to see how much you're gulping it up.

Sweet.

This is your first gold weigh, Nick?

Yeah, it is.

30, 40, 50.

Sluice-A-Lot has been running Midas cut pay, day and night,

for a week.

250, 310, 400.

440.98.

Worth $2.1 million.

In just one week, Tony's one wash plant has slashed.

Parker's lead to just 150 ounces.

Well that's not bad, my first gold weigh-in, I guess.

- Yeah. - It's OK.

So you guys better head out and go back to work.

Find some more of that stuff, you mean?

I can do that.

Not bad for your first gold weigh.

Yeah.

Can't complain about that.

Yeah.

- Hi, Chris. - Hey.

Hey, old bat.

What's shaking there, young man?

- Good to see you. - Don't hardly ever see anymore.

No.

Parker's crew gather for their first quadruple gold weigh

of the season.

So you got Roxanne going?

We are sluicing with Roxanne,

and it feels good. It...

- How's it with your neighbor? - Straight chaos over there.

I bet he's learning lessons from us.

When you think you're having a bad day, you can just look

over there and be like,

"We're doing pretty good over here."

All the plants are running.

It's nice to have four plants going, that's for sure.

Because we've been slipping.

Every week we're falling behind.

You look like you want to weigh some gold there, old man.

First up, Big Red, running old top gravels

from the Golden Mile.

- OK, you ready? - Yep.

Previously, Big Red banked 43.3 ounces.

10, 30, 43.8.

That's terrible.

Mr. Bob.

Bob has been running top gravels from the Bridge cut

and last week banked 45.5 ounces.

A little better. 67.

Painful, isn't it?

All right, Brennan, this is Goose.

This is like our best plant.

Last week, the Golden Goose sluiced 144 ounces

from the Airstrip.

40, 60, 80, 92.8.

Relatively, it's OK, but it's still.

Parker needs a big number from Roxanne to make up

for their shortfall.

All right, first cleanup on Roxanne.

We got five...

15, 20, 26.80.

I didn't think it was gonna be that bad.

Yeah, that's pretty bad.

Four wash plants for, like, what, 200 ounces?

- 230.4. - Holy.

That's terrible.

Now, those are the kind of numbers that one plant

should be putting out.

So we got to start running some decent ground.

Our season total, 820.1.

Just over half the amount Parker brought in

this time last year.

I get it with Bob because we're running a bunch of stuff

that needs to get out of the pit, and same with Goose,

and same with you guys, but how long can this

hold on for?

You don't really want to throw that away, but at the same time

it's not really paying the bills.

These numbers are not gonna get us

the 13,000-plus we need.

The problem is we start taking all this to the waste site

and then wash plants won't have any feed and we'll be shutting

wash plants down and it just like turns into chaos, right?

I think we have a plan and for now

we just have to stick to it.

I got high hopes for Roxanne once you start getting your pay.

Hopefully we get through all the top gravels, we'll get down

to some good stuff.

- Well, let's go find 36 this week, buddy. - All right.

Put an extra zero on that.

Yeah.

- Pretty sad, youngster. - Yeah, that sucks.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow will be another day.

Yeah, all the wash plants are doing pretty poor right now.

It's a bit concerning just because the season's so short

and you have, you know,

you have to get so many ounces every week

and in the weeks that you don't...

hit the mark then it just puts more and more pressure on

the back end of the season.

But we put those pits where they are for good reasons,

I think. I hope, I hope.