[somber music plays]
[rumbling]
There are a lot of wildfires right now.
They've all been lit quite recently by lightning.
There's one that's maybe like three or four miles
from our camp...
which is...
a problem.
[narrator] 30-year-old Parker Schnabel is on a path to a record
$35 million season.
But intense wildfires could shut him down at any moment.
[crew] Holy [bleep]!
[Parker] Oh, wow. Big fire.
Dude, that is a rager, huh?
[ominous chord strikes]
So right now, the film crew safety is telling us
that we have to get out of the truck.
You can feel the heat?
- [Matt speaking] - [Parker] Really?
[Matt speaking]
[Parker] How come?
I just don't think this is a good idea to be
in this situation.
Obviously, you have a job to do, but the fact
that we can see it means it's not moving fast towards us.
If it was moving fast towards us,
this would be all black smoke where we're standing.
[Matt speaking]
I'm just going to Sulphur.
Just gonna go check in with the boys.
Like, when you can't see it and all you can see is smoke is
when it's really sketchy.
[Matt speaking]
Let's go! Come on.
Over the last week, the Yukon has ignited
into an inferno.
Ninety three wildfires are raging...
[fire crackling]
...covering an area of over 250,000 acres.
With a strong wind, they can travel
over 150 miles in a day.
There's one just two miles
from Parker's Dominion Creek operation
and another just one mile from his Sulphur Creek claim.
[Parker] Right now, we have three plants running.
Dominion's going good, and things at Sulphur,
Mitch and Brennan are doing really well.
I really thought they were gonna be done at Sulphur sooner,
but, you know, one of those situations where I'm glad
it's lasted longer because the gold's been good.
You know, they've put away some
pretty good ounces for the size of pit that they've done.
[intriguing music plays]
We're on a mission right now trying to get to this 10,000
ounce target, and it seems like things might heat up
a little bit on us here.
We got some fires burning just down the creek.
They're heading this way, but hopefully we can keep
everything motoring along here.
Mitch has been racing to pull out all of the pay
before the water license runs out in two weeks.
Any delays caused by an evacuation
could mean gold is left behind.
- [Mitch] How's it going? - [Parker] Good, how are you?
[Mitch] Not too bad. A little smoky.
[Parker] Did you see the fire on the road?
It is raging.
And you could see, like, the line of fire.
It's pretty impressive.
I don't think it jumps the creek, though,
so I think you're fine.
Like, the worst thing that can happen is, like,
you know, the road's engulfed in flames.
Yeah...
'Kay.
I mean, as long as we got a way out.
Yeah.
I mean, as long as those fires don't get too close
and cause us any grief, we should be sluiced
and moved out of here by the end of the week.
Let's just talk to Nona real quick.
If that fire, like...
I don't think it'll make it across Sulphur.
I-- It's very close.
Do you think it'll make it across the valley?
Yeah, there's a lot of trees around it.
[Parker] But will this stuff burn?
Oh, yeah, with the heat like that, anything will burn.
[suspenseful music plays]
[Nona] The wind right now is giving it that direction, and it's burned
a lot since this morning. - So we should see if...
we can get a helicopter
if the road's engulfed in flames.
The helicopters are gonna be busy with the fires.
I don't know if you're gonna get like a helicopter
that's going to come in every day and do that.
It'd be nice if there was some rain.
[Mitch] Yeah, we could use that for sure.
This is such a bad time for me to leave.
I'll be gone for, like, five days.
OK.
I mean, you guys have a good handle on these things.
Like...
you'll probably be moved out of here by then.
But we've got all the pay that's at the plant right now,
so it's just a matter of getting that sluiced.
Brennan can head down to Ken's
and start getting things sorted out there.
We'll get this finished and pack it up
and roll it down. - [Parker] OK, sweet.
Mitch and his crew need to finish sluicing
all the stockpiled pay before the fires reach Sulphur
and then move washplant Roxanne
25 miles to Ken and Stuart's at Indian River
and get running before Parker's return in five days.
[Mitch] What we're seeing right now is--
it's not just one fire we got burning.
Everywhere you look here, when the smoke does clear up,
there's fires all around us.
All it takes is the wind to change direction,
so not ideal by any means.
[Parker] I'm hoping that by the time I'm back,
they'll have the plant down at Ken and Stuart's
and hope the place hasn't burned to the ground...
which not too often do I mean that literally.
[bear growls]
[somber music plays]
[excavator hissing]
[thrilling music plays]
[thrilling music continues]
Despite the fires two miles away, King of the Klondike,
Tony Beets, is working relentlessly to cash in
on red-hot gold prices
and has already banked over $9.5 million in gold,
nearly half his season gold.
[Tony speaking]
[adventurous music plays]
[machines whirring]
[Tony speaking]
Tony's built a massive stockpile of paydirt
beside his only moneymaker at Indian River...
Sluice-A-Lot.
[Tony speaking]
[loud whirring]
Operator Eric Morel
feeds 250 yards of stockpiled pay an hour
through Sluice-A-Lot.
[Eric speaking]
[engine screeching]
[Eric speaking]
[suspenseful music plays]
[engine winds down]
[Eric speaking]
[Jacob and Eric speaking over radio]
If you look in this box,
some of the wiring is burnt right up.
But as soon as you take the cover off, you can smell it,
and it just smelt like it was trying to light on fire.
Well, yeah, it makes sense.
Like, that motor's always vibrating all day.
[Tony speaking]
So, one of the main wires is burnt.
- Like, the motor's out. - [Tony speaking]
[Conor] Yeah.
[Tony speaking]
Sluice-A-Lot shaker decks vibrate
to separate waste dirt from the gold.
A single 40-horsepower drive motor turns
the plant's pulley system that shakes the decks,
but its electrical wiring has worn through and caused a fire.
Conor and Jacob need to remove the old 600-pound motor
and replace it with a new one,
then start the plant up and get back on the gold.
Every hour Sluice-A-Lot is down
is costing Tony $8,000.
[Tony grunts]
[Tony speaking]
[machine whirring]
[rock music plays]
[whirring]
So pulley's on, ready to [bleep] get
this thing up and landed.
[rock music plays]
[whirring]
[clinking]
[Tony speaking]
[Jacob] Good, just getting the guard on there
and fire it up.
[Tony speaking]
After five hours, Sluice-A-Lot is ready to fire up again.
[engine revving]
[rattling]
[Conor and Jacob speaking]
- [machine creaks] - [engine winds down]
[unstable whirring]
[creaking]
[Jacob speaking]
[engine winds down]
[Conor and Jacob speaking]
[Jacob speaking]
[mysterious music plays]
[Tony speaking]
[Jacob] What's that?
Yeah, I know.
[Jacob speaking]
Tony's only Indian River moneymaker, Sluice-A-Lot,
has been fitted with a new shaker deck motor,
but the plant has mysteriously ground to a halt.
[Tony speaking]
Oh, this is starting to go too far
into electrician [bleep] space.
Tony has lost $40,000 and counting
in gold production.
[Tony speaking]
[calm music plays]
[rattling softly]
[whirring]
[gushing]
I put a ton of money into this ground down
at Lightning Creek,
and I've got to get that money back out of it.
In the mountains above Keno City, far from the fires,
Rick Ness has a big decision to make.
For six weeks, he's been working
his new Lightning Creek claim,
but the gold has been hard to find,
banking him only 29 ounces.
Days ago, he got access to his Vegas Valley claim
on Duncan Creek.
[Rick] At the beginning of the season,
we didn't have a water license on Vegas Valley,
but now we've got an extension on that, too.
But I can't just abandon Lightning Creek.
That's a lot of money wrapped up in that, and I know there's
gold there, and I got to figure out how to get it out.
Rick wants to try to make this profitable.
He bought the land, but at the end of the day,
you know, we should all be at Vegas Valley.
There's good gold there, and so far here,
it's not turning out the best.
Rick's crew can't comprehend why he doesn't just leave
Lightning Creek and move back to Vegas Valley, where there's
a pile of paydirt with upwards of 400 ounces in it,
and a cut full of gold-rich pay.
[Jason] We need to get down there to Vegas Valley,
get that better gold,
because this is not having it at the moment.
[Ryan] You know, this is...
record-setting gold prices right now.
At this point, we're gonna be setting record gold lows
on the Ness crew.
[Rick] The fact of the matter is that...
I still owe Troy 100 ounces of gold
to buy Lightning Creek.
To get the gold he needs,
Rick's decided to split his crew.
[Rick] We've got, you know, several things that need
to happen before we can even get going here.
You know, we've got to get a pump into Vegas Valley,
get that dewatering first hand, not to mention we've got
a bunch of fixes to do on Monster Red yet.
There's a fair amount to be done, but we just gotta buckle
down and get it done. We need the 700 to work.
It's the only way we're gonna be able to keep
both things going.
The 700 excavator is Rick's only free piece of equipment,
and getting it ready is critical to his plan.
Rick wants me to do a little look over on this,
make sure it's greased up.
We can see that the tracks never got shoveled at the end
of last year, so that's fun.
But yeah, we'll jump up, check fluids, get it fired up.
You know, I've got a lack of people, a lack of machines
to do it, but I'm gonna have to figure something out
because I think this year is the year
to go for broke, you know.
[Ryan speaking]
[Rick speaking]
Hey, any chance you can come over to 700?
Got a... [chuckles] Got a pretty big issue.
[Rick speaking]
[dramatic music plays]
[Rick] What are we dealing with?
[Ryan] So we've got a problem. This should be coolant.
This should be all you see.
And right now, I've got
a mixture of oil and coolant, and that's a big problem.
Basically, if there's a crack in that head gasket,
the 700's dead.
[ominous chord rises]
The 700's 460-horsepower engine won't fire up.
Ryan suspects the head gasket that provides an airtight seal
between the cylinder head
and the engine block has broken,
allowing oil and coolant to mix together,
causing the engine to stop working.
With potential damage to the cylinders,
the whole engine needs a total rebuild.
Yeah, that mess right there tells me everything.
I mean, I've been worried about getting fuel
and food up here because of these wildfires.
I mean, how are we gonna get an engine or anything?
[Ryan] Yeah.
[Rick groans]
Ah, yeah.
I might as well take this out of the picture.
- [Ryan] I think so. - Completely, right?
Rick's plans to slowly prep Vegas Valley
are already in ruins.
If he takes any more equipment from Lightning Creek,
he won't be able to continue mining.
So it kind of puts you in a predicament.
- [Rick] Yeah. - I know you're bringing gold in,
but that's not going to hit 1,800 ounces.
Dude, we've seen just the tip of what's in Vegas Valley.
We know what's there.
1,800 ounces isn't going to come from Lightning Creek.
It's going to come from Vegas.
And I think we got to get over there
and get the [bleep] going.
[pensive music plays]
[Ryan] I mean, there's a lot of [bleep] that needs to be done.
And if we got all hands on deck down here,
that's not going to get done.
Well, I mean, yeah, I get it.
I get where you're coming from. I see it.
But I'm not willing to just
abandon Lightning Creek or getting gold.
[Ryan] I don't like being that guy that's like, "Hey, you need
to do your business like this," because you're obviously,
you know what the [bleep] you're doing.
You've made it this long. You've done it this far.
But it's like... At some point,
I've got to think about [bleep] at home, too,
where it's like-- you know, we come up here and it's...
If we don't do good here, I fail at home.
Yeah.
So everything rides on kind of your shoulders, honestly.
Dude, we got to make the move.
I...
I'm not just going to shut down Lightning Creek.
I want to sluice there a bit longer, just a couple more days,
and I just want to see what's going on there. - Yeah.
I want to see if it's going to pay out.
Then we can move to Vegas Valley.
[Ryan] OK.
By sluicing, for a couple more days at Lightning Creek,
Rick will discover how good the gold is and maybe score
enough to pay for the ground outright.
[storm rumbling]
[wind howling]
[rain clapping]
[ominous music plays]
[rattling]
[Mitch] You know, you look at the weather today and the rain
coming down, it's really helped us out.
After a night and day of rainfall,
the wildfires are out.
[Mitch] It looks like we've got about two more scoops of material here
at Sulphur to go through Roxanne.
We're gonna get this washplant shut down, cleaned up,
packed up, and on the road down to Ken's, and hopefully
we've got her fired back up here before Parker shows up.
Now, Mitch is racing to finish sluicing Sulphur,
reclaim the land, then move washplant Roxanne
to Ken and Stuart's at Indian River.
[Jack] All right, Mitch, that's it. Last scoop here at Roxanne.
[Mitch speaking over radio]
Yeah, sounds good, boss.
[thrilling music plays]
Mitch's crew work quickly to clean out the sluices.
[Tatiana] So here at Sulphur, the last cleanup, we've had
a lot of gold coming out of this ground, so it's been
a huge success.
Next,
they pack down Roxanne and get her ready to travel 25 miles
down to Ken and Stuart's.
- [Mitch] You ready for this, buddy? - [Brennan] Yeah, man.
[Mitch] It's been a while since
you moved to washplant. - [bleep] yeah.
Well, this one's pretty good as far as moving the shaker deck,
but the biggest problem here is the sluice runs.
They're so wide.
So right now, I'm going to send
Jack with the shaker deck first.
We'll grab the sluice runs, and get them down there.
- OK. - Then we can put everything together.
Roxanne is transported in two loads.
The shaker deck goes first on the back of a lowboy.
Mitch hauls the oversized sluice runs in a second truck,
and Brennan goes ahead in the pilot car.
[Mitch] All right, here we go!
They're going to see us rolling with this one, that's for sure.
[suspenseful music plays]
[creaking, rattling]
You can see just how narrow this is.
We're already rubbing the trees here with the sluice runs.
[intriguing music plays]
So, this is the million dollar question here is if those
sluice runs are gonna clear that bridge
without having to jack them way up.
I was wondering about that.
So, the bridge is going to be one of our big pinch points.
I think it's going to be tight now.
We measured it up.
Looks like we should have a half inch of clearance,
but we won't know until we get there, but we're going
to find out here real soon.
The 27 foot wide sluice boxes
need to pass across a bridge
with a width restriction of just 21 feet.
To get the load across,
the outside edges of the sluice runs
need to be above the bridge structure.
[Mitch] I'm going to keep creeping it ahead, but you're going to need
to be down here eyeballing it and tell me when to stop
if it's going to get [bleep], right? - [Brennan] Yeah.
I mean, the worst case scenario here, dude,
is we give this thing a try and we get out here
in the middle and we get stuck.
There's no working on it from here.
[Brennan] Yeah, exactly.
[Mitch] OK, I'm gonna do this.
OK, you guys are gonna have to get way back.
The sluice runs have a clearance of just
half an inch above the bridge railings.
[suspenseful music plays]
[truck whirring softly]
[Brennan] Keep coming, buddy!
[rattling]
Oh man, it's almost dragging.
[truck hisses]
[creaking]
[truck revving]
[Mitch] Oh-ho!
Come on, come on, come on, come on, don't snag!
[revving]
Whoa!
[chuckles]
Dude, that couldn't have been any closer.
You couldn't have put your fingers between where we had,
you know, the top of that bridge and the bottom
of these sluice runs here.
There it is!
[victorious music plays]
[truck revving]
We've made it into the cut!
[Brennan] Whoo!
[truck hisses]
There it is!
Over the past eight years, Parker's leased ground
at Ken and Stuart's
has delivered nearly 7,000 ounces of gold.
This season, he wants at least another 2,000 ounces
from the claims.
Ken and Stuart's ground, you know, it's, like,
not the greatest grade, and we're paying royalties,
but it's a massive block of ground that I don't want
to lose, and, you know, it's very hard to lease ground,
particularly not when the price of gold's really good.
So I'm just heading to see Mitch and Brennan
and see what they've got going on.
[adventurous music plays]
Oh, they have a washplant running.
They literally just fired up.
Nice.
Thanks for getting this thing going.
- I appreciate it. - [Mitch] She's sluicing!
[Parker] You guys make this look easy.
At least from my standpoint, it looked easy.
I left and you were sluicing in one spot, and I came back
and you're sluicing in another. - [all laughing]
[Parker] And yeah, Mitch, you're getting a big gold star.
I actually should have Chris pour a big gold star.
I might just do that.
[laughing]
[rock music plays]
[Mitch] Well, it's really nice we had Roxanne fired up
before Parker got back.
So our next step here is just to try and get this sluiced
as fast as we can.
And we're gonna try and turn all that dirt
into a big pile of gold.
[bird cawing]
[somber music plays]
[Tony speaking]
On Indian River, Tony's main moneymaker, Sluice-A-Lot,
has been down for four days
after the shaker deck motor burnt out
and its replacement failed.
Yeah, Tony can call me once every two years or 12 times
in the same month.
It just depends on what they're wrecking that day.
Electrician James MacKrell has worked with mining machinery
for over 30 years.
[Conor] So we fired the new motor on,
just like spin slowly and then it's like, "No."
Then it goes into overload fault?
[Conor] Yeah, 22 overload fault.
Yeah, which is, I think the problem is the soft start.
What we're gonna do is, we're gonna hard start it.
We're gonna bypass it.
- [Conor] OK, cool. - We're gonna hard start it.
Sluice-A-Lot's generator has a soft start system that
gradually increases power to the shaker deck's drive motor
to prevent it from being damaged by an electrical
overload when it starts.
James believes the generator's soft start safeguard is faulty
and is not supplying enough electricity, so wants to bypass
it to deliver the power needed for the motor to fire up.
[James] This option is, shall we say, the bush fix,
and I'll get them up and running again,
and then Tony can decide if he wants to replace
that soft start or keep running this way.
Now let's give her the full deal and see what happens.
[Conor] All right.
[motor revving]
[rattling heavily]
[motor winds down]
[Conor] I bet you that just went into overload.
The hard start fix fails.
So far, downtime has cost Tony an estimated three quarters
of a million dollars in lost production.
Quite a few days without it making money, so it's not good.
[James] All right, let's look for better ways to do this.
[Conor] Yeah.
[intriguing music plays]
The generator's just undersized to hard start this unit
without the soft start in. You know what?
Probably the simplest solution, bring over a bigger generator.
It's four days since Tony Beets's main moneymaker,
Sluice-A-Lot, shut down.
Electrician James has bypassed its soft startup,
but still failed to fire up the shaker deck's drive motor.
Oh, if that engine was just slightly bigger,
you'd get away with this.
[Conor] With hard starting it, yeah.
[Tony speaking]
Does that thing have a soft start?
- I don't think it does. - [Tony speaking]
[cousin Mike] We'll find out.
[Tony speaking]
Sluice-A-Lot's current generator
has a maximum power of 100 kilowatts.
[rock music plays]
[Tony speaking]
Tony's CAT 3406 replacement
kicks out four times more power.
[Tony speaking]
To prep the five-ton generator,
Tony plans to weld it
to the front of his 50-year-old pipe layer
and drive the hybrid monster one mile to Sluice-A-Lot.
[crackling]
[drums playing]
[machine whirring]
[Tony speaking]
[revving heavily]
[banging]
[cousin Mike] We've been down for four days,
so that's a lot of ounces we're missing,
and with the gold prize these days,
that's a lot of money.
[thrilling music plays]
[rumbling heavily]
[James] Everything's all connected, waiting on a generator.
And then we'll make power.
All we have to do when it gets here is just connect that cable
into the generator.
[Conor] Is he driving that thing down?
I don't know, if he's the one driving it, it probably won't
take too long, so...
[both laughing]
After just 30 minutes,
Tony's mobilized monster generator
arrives at Sluice-A-Lot.
[whirring stops]
[Tony speaking]
All hooked up and ready to roll.
[adventurous music plays]
[motor starts revving]
[whirring]
[Tony speaking]
Ready?
[revving]
[epic music plays]
After four days shut down...
Tony is back on the gold.
If Tony's washing rocks, and he's happy, yeah.
He puts gold in the box,
and then he can give it to me, so.
[scoffs]
[Tony speaking]
[suspenseful music plays]
- [Rick] Rick for Bailey? - [Bailey] Yeah, go ahead, man.
[Rick] Shut down Lightning Creek.
We'll move it back to Vegas Valley.
[Bailey] Sounds good to me, man.
Yeah, we're just about to send the last load of pay
over to Rocky.
Rick made a call saying that we're all going to be done here
and we're going to head down to Vegas Valley,
and start hitting it hard down there.
[Jason] Well, here it is.
We've got the final bucket of dirt from Lightning Creek.
And we are...
officially finished here.
Off to Vegas Valley we go.
Rick Ness is changing gears.
After running a final couple of days pay,
he's shutting down his Lightning Creek claim
and going all in on Vegas Valley.
All right, we've got the 460 down here now.
Game plan is we'll be getting the water pump in Vegas Valley.
We'll go through it, make sure it's good to go.
Then we'll get our discharge line ran.
So we've got quite a bit of work to do.
Rick's plan?
Set up a pump to drain the 30 feet of water from the cut
while the rest of the team moves equipment and preps
washplant Monster Red to run a stockpile of paydirt.
[Rick] Well, we've got a long ways to go, but we should be spending
the rest of the summer here.
[Ryan] So pump's just about ready.
I think the first step is just getting it in where it fits in.
Get that water getting the [bleep] out of there.
[Ryan] We'll get on it.
- I like it, thanks. - [Ryan] All right, m an.
[suspenseful music plays]
[Rick] What's he doing? We ready?
[rattling, creaking]
We got our 12-inch pump ready to go.
She's a monster.
Just got to get down here around the corner.
I'll get the lines hooked up, and we can start dewatering
Vegas Valley. It's a big step.
It gives us one step closer to the gold
that's in Vegas Valley,
and we know that gold's good, so...
We're going to get this done and get it done
in a [bleep] hurry.
[Ryan] That's all shallow.
You're going to have to try to get it in that corner.
Where? Like all the way out?
[Ryan] I think we just try to go all the way
and see how tough it is.
[creaking]
We've got sections here, in here that are way deeper
than what you think.
Right here, it's probably going to be 30 foot higher than what
we have in that corner right there from ending last season,
if not more. So we've got to be careful.
The $100,000 pump can move 5,000 gallons a minute and will
drain Vegas Valley down to gold-rich pay in three days.
[Kyle] Yeah, we can come forward a little bit.
[Ryan] We're good right there.
So, we got the pump into place.
Now we're just bringing the intake line down there.
We're going to attach that to the pump.
Throw the suction end into the water.
Then we'll come back and get the discharge line.
Set that in there.
And after that, we just turn it on and let the water get
the [bleep] out of our hole.
[Ryan] It's at a [bleep] up angle.
And we're in a spot
where we're easily going to [bleep] bend this thing.
And it's like-- I can't throw that end out there first.
I don't know where the [bleep] it's going to end.
[Ryan] Yeah.
Here, I think if you bring it in and lower it,
the two of us can be lifting up.
Kyle can be sticking the bolt in.
[Rick] You got a pinch bar or anything to get it?
[Ryan] No, but I've got some long bolts.
- We'll make it work. - [Rick] OK.
To attach the suction hose to the pump, Rick needs to move
his 460 excavator dangerously close to the water's edge.
[creaking]
[Rick] I don't know what's underneath me.
[Kai] Is that thing a little heavy for that?
[intriguing music plays]
[Ryan] OK, all right, right there.
[hose bangs]
Now, if he goes down...
[creaking, rumbling]
Hey, hold on.
[suspenseful music plays]
[clicking, bangs]
[Ryan] Got it.
[excavator whirring]
[drilling]
- [Ryan] All right. - [Rick] All right.
Pump connected,
Rick is one step closer
to getting gold from Vegas Valley.
All right, you want to fire this thing up?
[Ryan] OK.
[engine starts]
[revving]
[Rick] Oh, there she goes.
Whoa!
[Rick speaking]
We are pumping water, boys!
[victorious music plays]
All this water's coming out of Vegas Valley.
Gets us that much closer to the gold down there.
[bleep] ready to see some.
[Rick] I'm nervous about Lightning Creek.
Hopefully it's got gold in it for Troy.
I'm relieved that we're moving back here.
We've got one last chance here at Vegas Valley.
We've got to treat it like the last chance again.
You know, we've got till November on our extension,
and we're going to [bleep] scrape it clean,
get everything we can out of it.
All the gold.
[mellow music plays]
[Rick] What's going on?
All eyes are on Heather Folster to see
if Lightning Creek's last gold weigh
will hit the 100 ounces Rick needs
to pay Troy Taylor.
You want to give that a swirl?
- That's the first to the first. - [Rick] That's a lot of gold.
That's a lot better than it was.
It's another drop in the bucket towards 1,800 ounces.
It might get us to where I can pay Troy.
Eh oh!
[mysterious music plays]
[Rick] Well, Heather got done cleaning up the gold
from the last run at Lightning Creek.
[beeping]
We said, "It actually looks pretty good."
I can definitely tell...
It was enough to justify staying there for another run,
so that's I'm happy about that.
Rick Ness has hit pause on his Lightning Creek claim
to pursue Vegas Valley, but he still needs to see it
deliver good gold to prove it's a viable spot.
Based on the runtime,
he's hoping for at least 50 ounces this week.
[Ryan] Did the ground looked any better?
Lightning Creek on this last run?
Yeah, it definitely seemed like a little bit better
than like the normal stuff,
like less bedrock, more [bleep] pay, so.
The boulders are getting a little bigger.
- Yeah, yeah.
[Bailey] So I take it the 700's dead?
The 700, we thought we pinpointed the problem.
We saw it failed, so I think we're in deeper.
We're going to be into a head or worse, so...
that leaves basically just the 750.
[Bailey] Hey, Rick!
- [Rick] Hello. - [Bailey] What's going on?
Ah, you know, all the best stuff.
Got a bottle of gold, though.
- [Bailey] Let's see what we got, man. - [Rick] Yep.
Last week, the Boulder Cut only delivered 22 ounces.
[Rick] Here we go.
[pouring softly]
[Ryan] One...
5...
12... 20...
30...
50...
50.4.
[bleep] yeah. That's not bad.
[bleep] yeah, that's way better than the last two combined.
- [bleep] right. - You're moving the right way.
[Rick] Yeah.
It's Rick's best gold weigh of the season
and pushes his total to 80 ounces,
but leaves him 20 ounces short
of what he owes Troy Taylor.
I mean, at the end of the day, that's damn near 150 grand.
So, happy we stayed there,
but we're going to be leaving Lightning Creek.
You know, we're leaving it behind for the season.
It's just going to have to happen, right?
Like, for the foreseeable future.
I mean, at least the gold's there, though.
Yeah, you're leaving it on a high note.
Exactly.
We're leaving it with a positive, and you know,
we put some gold towards our total, and we still have
a long ways to go, but...
You only need a little bit more to pay off Troy.
Yeah.
But it's in the pile at Vegas Valley.
- We know that. - [bleep] yeah, man.
- Let's [bleep] do it. - Awesome.
[Rick] Well, you know, we got 50 ounces of gold this week.
It's a small dent in the total we're trying to get,
1,800 ounces, but that's why
we're doing what we're going to do, right?
We're putting all of our--
all of our resources into Vegas Valley,
because that's where we know the gold is, you know.
It sucks to leave Lightning Creek.
We're just getting to learn it, and we got 50 ounces of gold
out of it.
But that's the name of the game.
You know where the gold is,
and the gold's in Vegas Valley this year.
- Hi, guys. - [Tony speaking]
- [Mike] Hola. - [Monica] Hello.
Well, she's still sluicing.
[Monica] How's it going with the trommel?
[Mike] Slowly, because every time I seem to take one step forward,
I find three other things I have to fix,
so that's three steps back.
- [Mike] Yeah. - [Minnie] So how are things here?
[cousin Mike] We sluiced a bit, but not as much as we like to.
We had some electrical issues,
so we had to get an electrician.
We had to wait for that.
We can fix things, but electricity is not
our thing, so...
[Minnie] How many days did you really sluice?
So we sluiced two days and two nights.
- [Tony speaking] - [Minnie] Still not too bad, though.
- Nope. - [Minnie] Can we weigh it up?
So far, Tony has averaged 330 ounces of gold per week
from the Indian River.
[Tony speaking]
OK, it's 10, 20, 30, 40...
50, 60, 70, 80, 90...
- 100, 110, 120... - [tapping]
[cousin Mike] 121.10.
Worth $420,000,
but much less than he could have gotten
if they'd run all week.
[Monica] Ready to count, Mike?
Mike's been sluicing old-timer tailings at the hills,
and it should deliver 50 ounces a week.
[Mike] Ten...
20...
36.88.
[Tony speaking]
[Mike] Probably ran about five days.
[Mike] No.
Even though Mike's gold is worth over $100,000, Tony wants
a record-breaking season, and that means Paradise Hill
needs to deliver much bigger hauls.
[Tony speaking]
[Mike] That's-- Yeah, I agree.
[Monica] Then maybe you can start bringing in some real gold.
[Minnie] Ouch.
[Tony speaking]
No, it does, yeah. Like, not rerun tailings.
[Tony speaking]
[Minnie] Sounds like a plan, dude.
[Tony speaking]
- [Monica] Goodbye. - [cousin Mike] OK.
[Minnie] Bye.
[intriguing music plays]
[Parker] Those fires were impressive.
[Mitch] Yeah, that was crazy. It came out of nowhere.
And all of a sudden, it's like, "man,
"it's really cloudy this morning.
Uh, that's not clouds, that's smoke."
[Chris] It's smoky enough around here, I'd skip
my breakfast cigar.
[all laughing]
[Mitch] But yeah, and then we had, even with all the fires giving
us grief, we did manage to get the last of it sluiced.
You wanna see how you guys finished up?
[Parker] Let's do it.
Despite battling wildfires, Mitch still managed to wash
the last of the gold-rich Sulphur pay, which last week
delivered 302 ounces.
That's the last of Sulphur?
- [Chris] Yes. - [Mitch] Let's do it.
All right, we got 50...
100...
150...
200...
[tapping softly]
[Mitch] 221.2.
Nice. That's a solid, solid end.
[Chris] Yeah.
Sulphur produced over 1,300 ounces.
- Nice. - [Chris] Quite impressive.
Yeah.
Next up, Parker's Dominion Creek Gold.
First, the Golden Mile Cut,
which has averaged 200 ounces a week.
[Brennan] 20, 40...
120, 140, 160...
200, 230, 250...
273.15.
- Wow! - [Chris] Amazing, wow!
- [Parker] Sick. - That was a good week.
And then Bob has just been chugging away.
- [Chris] Yeah. - [Tyson] Old faithful.
Bob in the Bridge Cut
has averaged 160 ounces a week.
[pouring softly]
20, 40, 80...
100, 120...
140, 160, 200, 212...
216.15.
- That's a good week. - Super good.
This week we have 710.5.
We broke 700 ounces in one week.
Worth $2.5 million.
The total for the season is 4,251.7 ounces.
We're definitely on track for our 10,000.
We're in good shape, you guys.
- Keep it that way. - Yeah.
[Brennan] Hopefully we'll make some more.
- Let's do it. - [Parker] Thank you, guys.
[Brennan] You bet.
- [Parker] You're good, Chris? - [Chris] Yep, I'm good.
[Parker] See you, dude.
Well, it was so cool to get Sulphur done.
Great project there. Produced a lot of gold.
It was definitely a tricky move there, but Roxanne is down
on a whole bunch of ground at Ken's.
Excited to see what it has to produce.