[narrator] Gold mining prodigy...
[Parker] That's $3 million right there on the table.
[narrator] ...Parker Schnabel
is searching for his next big score...
[Parker] This is wild. [bleep], yeah.
[narrator] ...deep in the jungles of Brazil.
There's a huge amount of conflict over mining.
The only way to understand is to come here and see it.
That is [bleep] cool.
And if there's an opportunity for us to invest,
then I want to look at those opportunities.
Look, look, that's [bleep] gold.
[Parker] Look at these bad boys.
I did get fitted for a bulletproof vest, though.
That's a first.
[narrator] Previously on Parker's Trail,
Parker and crew investigate
Brazil's biggest gold rush in recent history.
The biggest gold nugget was discovered
in Serra Pelada in the 80s.
It seems like a good place to go.
Billions of dollars worth of gold got found.
By hand.
That's [bleep] cool.
[Larissa] That's the Serra Pelada pit.
[Danny] Where the lake is?
[narrator] ...and uncover a mystery.
[in other language]
[Parker in English] Colossus, a big mining company,
spent $300 million developing that mine site,
and then went bankrupt.
So it'll be good to investigate that a little more.
And then the big thing is, like,
how much gold is still left here?
It interesting to see what they left behind.
-Oh, hello. -[Larissa] What's going on?
That's quite sketchy.
[Parker] Nice gate.
[Danny] Wow, that's barricaded.
It doesn't look very welcoming, I gotta say.
[Larissa] There is a guy over there.
[Parker in other language]
[Larissa in other language]
[man in other language]
[Parker in English] Are they actually not gonna let us drive in?
[in other language]
[Parker in English] He doesn't mind us being here. That other dude does.
I think that understanding the Colossus story
is really important.
They obviously had a lot of really good data
and were able to raise hundreds of millions of dollars.
But then they lost it all and went bankrupt.
And so, by investigating and studying
what actually happened with that,
I think it kind of has the keys
to whether there's a huge amount of opportunity,
with the gold that's still here.
[Larissa] He's coming, he's coming.
[in other language]
[speaks other language]
[in other language]
[Danny in English] Just wondering if it's safe.
I guess we will see.
Doesn't it look like an ex-Soviet place?
[Danny] It really does.
-[Parker] Yeah. -Yeah.
[narrator] 29-year-old Parker Schnabel
is on the hunt for gold
at the old Colossus headquarters
near Serra Pelada, Brazil.
Starting in 2007, Canadian company, Colossus,
tried to tunnel under the famous flooded pit,
which is now a lake,
to access what they believed
was a multi-billion dollar gold vein.
But they abandoned the project abruptly,
claiming not to have found any gold.
Now, many locals believe that Colossus did find gold,
but didn't make good on their agreement
to share it with the 40,000 members
of the local mining cooperative,
who owned the rights to the pit.
[Parker] Colossus, they spent something like
$250 or $300 million on that project
and went bankrupt.
It really doesn't make sense to me.
I need to figure out an answer to that question.
The locals that are around, mining,
really think they found the main vein.
And it looks like this whole area's
been hit pretty hard.
Definitely not like good vibes in here. [chuckles]
[Danny] No.
Wow, this looks very sketchy.
It's super sketchy.
It looks like a zombie apocalypse.
[Parker] I want to check out some of these buildings.
There's a tunnel somewhere.
[narrator] Now, in a bid to crack the mystery for himself,
Parker wants to explore the abandoned mine site
and investigate the tunnel they dug beneath the pit.
[Parker] Cool.
Well, let's split up and explore.
Okay. You guys have a look around here.
-Yeah. -[Danny] Me and Diego will go there.
I wonder what was this.
Like, the testing, like...
-Like, do they process... -[Danny] Yeah.
[Diego] How many money they put in this?
-$300 million. -[bleep]
-Let's go in there. -Yeah.
[Danny] You go first.
[narrator] Danny and Diego explore an old processing plant
to look for signs of gold production.
You know, there's bats in there.
We should have masks.
I see bad poop everywhere.
The problem with bat is, they can transmit
some diseases that you breathe in.
So it's not something I want to risk.
[Danny] Okay.
-[Diego] Okay. We're ready. -[Danny] Coming in.
[hissing]
-What the [bleep] was that? -[Diego] What was that?
[knife clicks open]
[Parker] This is just my theory.
They dumped the material into a crusher circuit.
That's what all these foundational pillars are,
is for, like, the structure
for the crushers and conveyors and ball mills and sag mills
and all that kind of stuff, right?
We've seen photos of crushers set up,
and it was 90% complete when they went bankrupt.
[narrator] Archive images show that Colossus
had invested heavily in the infrastructure,
including a huge rock crushing mill,
a massive cyanide leaching plant,
and a gold room.
They got, like, the main part of the mill itself set up.
They had some ball mills,
but I don't think they ever got
the, like, leach system in.
Like, it's just like a defunct,
broken-down place
that's been scavenged for parts.
Investors don't put that kind of money
into a project to not want a return.
[Larissa] But it's like there's nothing, nothing left.
Oh, this is pretty sketchy.
PCC, CV.
So, like, the biggest organized crime groups in Brazil.
[Parker] Oh, really? Like, what...
What are they?
They're like big international "corporations,"
but they're gonna...
That, like, run drugs and stuff?
Drugs, arms, and they're involved
in pretty much every type of businesses
because they need to launder money.
[Parker] What are the numbers?
[Larissa] There are some phone numbers.
Here it says... [speaks in other language]
[in English] All dead.
And then you see, like, here.
Maybe these guys were like...
[narrator] Gangs like PCC and CV
fund illegal gold extraction
and use legal minds to launder money.
[Danny] That was 100% an animal.
[Diego imitates animal growling]
[Danny] So it's really that, isn't it?
[Diego in other language] [bleep]
[Danny in English] Oh, my [bleep] place.
What the-- [bleep] off.
[Diego] Oh!
There's a lot of bats in there, man.
[Danny] This is one of the spookiest places I've ever been.
There's no proper evidence of mining.
[narrator] With no equipment remaining on site,
it's impossible to tell
if any gold was ever processed here.
[Danny] This is so weird.
If we turn around the corner and there's a small child
standing in the corner of the room,
staring at the wall, I'm [bleep] out of here.
If you'd have told Colossus
when they started their project,
that $300 million was gonna buy them this.
It's an absolute disaster.
Is it not mineable,
or did they just find loads of gold and just leave?
You know, because if it's the latter,
then there's a real reason to still be here.
There's the tunnel.
[Diego] Oh, [bleep]. [chuckles]
I'm blind, man.
How can I see that?
It's huge.
[Diego] Hey.
[Parker] What's up?
[Diego] How was it?
There's a bunch of organized crime drawings in there.
I wonder if that had something to do with them leaving.
-What did you guys find? -A spooky place.
Do you have an idea what I was there.
It's empty, literally.
-[Danny] Completely empty. -There's nothing inside.
Weird place.
[Diego] Danny spotted the tunnel.
[Danny] It's just around the corner.
-[Parker] Let's do it. -Let's go.
[Danny] There it is.
-Nice. -[Danny] Yeah, look at that.
Okay, let's go.
Oh, wow, this looks amazing.
Guys, this is like a proper adventure.
[Larissa chuckles] Yeah, it is.
[Diego] Let's not make much noise.
We don't want to wake up vampires.
[Danny] So why did they build it?
[Parker] Probably to get to the gold.
See, this was all to just try and get to the vein,
but we don't know if they got to the vein or not.
[Parker] Yeah.
[narrator] The infamous Serra Pelada gold vein
was mined by hand,
until the pit was flooded out in 1992,
leaving an estimated $3 billion of gold
hidden beneath the water.
Colossus attempted to reach the deposit
by digging a mile-long tunnel underneath the lake.
[Parker] I don't know if they got to it or not.
Like, you'll only know
when you're at the end of the tunnel,
and even then you'd have to get, like, a sample of rock.
[Diego] That's water over there.
[Danny] Oh, what?
It's completely flooded.
What are we gonna do now?
[Parker] We need to do more research about this tunnel
and how far it got,
and what actually happened with Colossus.
It still doesn't add up.
They actually spent, like, over a $25 billion.
Normally, you don't spend 90% of the money
to get somewhere, and then not do the other 10%.
Oh, that's better.
[Diego] What's that?
[Danny] It looks like some sort of sacrificial monument
where they chucked off people who weren't working very hard.
[Parker] I've got one of those at my mine site.
[Danny laughs]
[Danny] Come on, let's go. I gotta get on the top level.
It's a nuts story, isn't it?
But you know what would be [bleep] cool?
[Parker] What would be cool?
[Danny] To try and get someone to scuba down?
You're gonna scuba in there?
[Danny] Someone can scuba in there.
Scuba dive down and get a sample out of the wall.
I don't think I'm gonna scuba into that tunnel.
If they make ROVs.
Like, remote operated submarines, basically.
[Danny] Perfect.
-[Diego] Like an underwater drone or something? -Yeah.
Do you think we can find one here?
Well, not here.
You'd have to bring someone in.
[Diego] Can you take samples?
They have little arms.
-Really? -Yeah.
Like a crab, they have a little pincher.
-Will you commission it? -You mean like pay for it?
Well, I'm not [bleep] paying for it.
[all laughing]
Um, yeah, sure.
-Awesome. -Within reason.
Okay, I will not spend over £2 million, I promise.
[Larissa chuckles]
[narrator] To uncover the truth
about Serra Pelada's missing mother lode,
Parker must first prove
if Colossus reached the gold vein.
[Parker] Nobody spends that kind of money just to walk away,
and then a project go dormant for that long.
Like, there's just something wrong
still with this whole thing.
We're missing a piece of the puzzle.
[both speaking other language]
[Danny speaking other language]
[in English] Look at these. Red bananas. These are rare.
Get your chops around that.
Try one.
Not enough ingredients.
[narrator] In the Brazilian gold rush town
of Serra Pelada,
Parker is on a mission to discover
if there's a $3 billion mother lode
still hidden beneath the infamous pit.
His plan is to retrace the steps
of Canadian mining company, Colossus,
who attempted to tunnel underneath the pit
to reach the massive deposit.
It sounds like that Colossus went bankrupt.
And I'm guessing that it was like
a combination of them running out of cash
and, like, knowing that they were in a corner
because of how they dealt with the politics.
[narrator] Many believe Colossus found the gold vein,
but didn't share the riches
with the local mining cooperative.
But with no definitive proof,
others believe the company simply ran out of money,
and the gold is still under the lake.
There's one big question that I've got,
and that is,
did they find any real gold there?
[narrator] To try and crack the mystery,
first, Parker will send an underwater drone
into the flooded tunnel
to see if Colossus reached the gold vein.
Next, he'll send the machine into the lake
to attempt to find any remaining evidence
of the vein in the pit.
Oh, hello.
He doesn't look like he's from around here.
I think that's our men.
[Parker] Oh, yeah, for sure.
-Good morning, folks. -Hey, guys.
-Morning. -[narrator] Buck Storm...
How you doing?
[narrator] ...and Chris Covey...
-Hey, guys. -[Danny] Hey, mate.
How you doing, Parker?
[narrator] ...are underwater drone specialists.
[Parker] So we're kind of trying to figure out
what's been going on.
People say the gold got smuggled out by Colossus.
I don't really know what happened.
[Buck] So you guys are paying in gold nuggets, right?
[Danny] Only if you find them.
Yes. That's one benefit about ROVs, man.
[all laughing]
[Danny] Cool. All right. Well, then, so, to the tunnel.
-Should we do it? -That sounds fun.
-[Chris] Sounds great. -See you in a bit.
[narrator] Parker has secured permission
from the locals to explore the tunnel.
[Parker] Do you think we're gonna see anything in here?
[Danny] I think it's just cool that we've got
an underwater drone.
[Parker] You wouldn't think that's cool.
[Danny] Of course I would. It is, that's why.
[Larissa] It is cool. Yeah, yeah.
[Danny] thank you, Larissa.
Thank you very much.
[Chris] Well, there it is.
Oh, that's big.
[Diego] Oh, wow.
What [bleep].
Hell, look at that. Yes.
[Diego] That's really cool.
[Larissa] It's super cool.
[Parker] So is it remote controlled, or is it...
We've got a 1000-foot cable.
-[Buck] Yeah, it's tethered. -Oh, I see.
So we've got a tether reel, controller.
-[Danny] Wow. -A few other tools.
[Danny] Ready, guys?
Let's find out what's in the hole.
[narrator] This specialized, remote-operated submersible
can dive up to 1,000 feet,
is equipped with a camera
that sends a live feed to the operator,
and manipulator arms
that can collect rock samples.
[Danny] Let's do it.
[Parker] It's been 10 years since Colossus left.
It's a big project with a huge amount of investment
made in the property,
and I think that there's a real opportunity here.
I have no doubt that there's still tons of gold to find.
[Diego] Is this the water?
[narrator] From the point the tunnel is flooded,
the crew estimate it's around 900 feet to the vein.
If the ROV can reach the end of the tunnel
and take a sample of material,
Parker can confirm whether Colossus struck gold.
Here we go.
[Buck] Wowee.
[Danny] Let's crack on.
That's so cool.
It's very soupy.
Yeah, below water level.
Yeah, right.
Let's dive.
[Danny] Wow.
It's not that deep here.
Oh, there's no visibility that you can see
until you get to the very bottom.
What's on the sides?
Sides are anchors.
Those are going to continue all the way down the tunnel.
[narrator] The old mining tunnel is full of debris,
including cables and metal from the old ventilation system.
This might be the trickiest site I've seen to fly an ROV.
Tether could catch on something.
But look at all the cables hanging...
into the water. There, see?
Oh, no... [bleep]
Yeah, I'm close to the cables in the middle,
but I can't... I don't have eyes.
Yeah, we might be stuck.
[Danny] What?
Are you [bleep] serious?
[narrator] Just 40 feet in, the $50,000 ROV...
is snagged.
We don't want to lose the machine.
Hang on. I'm gonna try to maneuver to the left.
Where is it?
I can't see anything.
But the visibility is just horrible, huh?
All right, let's see in the screen.
I'm going to try to just bump it over laterally.
[bleep]
[bleep] horrific.
-Man, it is really... -[exclaiming]
...really delicate, I got to tell you.
Oh, you better be to the left of that cable, buddy.
I'm going to take the speed up and pull up, and see if I can get...
back out.
-It's free. -Oh, thank [bleep].
Hey, guys, I think we might call this a bust.
[bleep]
It's so annoying.
It's too much of a risk to the machine.
I hate to say we're a fail here,
-but it's just not worth it, man. -That's all right, mate.
Well, that sucks.
[narrator] The crew walk away with the ROV,
but are no closer to cracking the Colossus mystery.
Let's get the [bleep] out of here, guys.
[Danny] I had a lot of high hopes for this...
The whole thing's a [bleep] mystery, to be quite honest.
[Parker] You know, it's not a safe bet from that standpoint
because, you know, underground development is extremely expensive,
even if somebody else has already put the tunnel in,
like, dewatering that, putting ventilation in...
just those two things alone are massive projects.
It's a bit big for me and the time investment's not worth it.
Surely, one of the most interesting lakes in the world
to send an ROV into.
Name a more interesting one.
[Diego] Than this?
-Loch Ness. -[Larissa laughs] Yeah.
[Danny] No. Boring.
[Diego] What if you find Nessie under it?
[Danny] No, it's simply not true, though, you know what I mean?
Whereas here, there's a chance.
[narrator] After striking out at the Colossus tunnel,
Parker's next attempt is to find the gold vein
by diving deep in the original pit.
[Parker] I think the intriguing part
of this whole Serra Pelada story is,
you know, what's still there.
Like, it got shut down by the government.
But does that mean that it wasn't profitable anymore?
Is there still a ton of gold down at the bottom of this lake?
Like, nobody knows.
Everybody has an opinion.
But... nobody actually knows.
[narrator] While the ROV team prepare the drone for the second dive,
the crew meet former miner Leonidas de Oliveira,
part of the local mining cooperative,
that own rights to the area.
[Leonidas and Danny speaking other language]
[Parker speaking other language]
[Parker in English] Does that mean good night?
-Yes. -[Larissa] Yes. You can say...
[in other language]
[narrator] Leonidas was one of thousands of men
in the original Serra Pelada gold rush.
And while some made it rich,
daily laborers like Leonidas, excavated the huge pit by hand
in often deadly conditions for as little as two dollars a day.
[in other language]
[in English] Ah, he's saying at that cliff over there,
-it collapsed in the '80s... -Hm.
...so he believes there's more than 60 or even more bodies there.
All the people died at the same time because it collapsed.
[Danny] Wow.
[Leonidas in other language]
[narrator] When the government shut down the pit in 1992,
Leonidas and thousands like him
had nothing to show for it.
He spent over 30 years fighting for the right to mine again.
[Leonidas in other language]
-[Larissa in other language] -[crying]
[Danny] He is like what would have been the beating heart of that pit.
This is the place that he sort of broke his back on.
So he needs to stay now to try and get back what it owes him.
It's like another level of pain and suffering that I just...
[scoffs] I, literally, cannot fathom.
[in other language]
[in English] The plan, we get the boats,
and then we can explore the area a little bit.
-Hey, guys. -I think we got them.
A-ha!
-Buck. Hello. -Hey, guys.
-Hola. -[Danny] Awesome.
I'm super excited about this, man.
Yeah. Yeah, So are we.
[Parker] Well, should we load the boats?
-Okay. -Let's do it.
-Yeah. -Just bring the...
[Danny] Load her up.
[in other language]
[in English] In she goes.
I'm going to drop straight down.
I'm going to go slow because I don't know what we're getting into here.
It's going to smash into the bottom.
Well, we get a lot of polyps, a lot of biofilm in the water.
More as you get deeper.
Is that the bottom?
-But we're at 13 feet down. -Oh.
Yeah. Now we've got a long way to go.
[Buck] See, you get down there, you get some weeds.
Oh, yeah.
[Buck] Let's see what's on the other side of those guys.
[Parker] A tree.
[Buck] Yeah, you got a lot of trees.
You got some metal.
I don't know if that's organic or metal.
[Leonidas speaks Portuguese]
[narrator] When the mine was shut down in 1992,
bags full of gold-rich material and mining equipment
were left in the bottom of the pit.
[Danny gasps] Oh, my [bleep]. Amazing.
[Parker] Oh, this is gonna be painful.
-The wait? -No, Dan.
Dan's enthusiasm pains me.
I like it. You're my kind of guy, Dan.
-Don't listen to that guy. -[laughs]
-[Parker] What if it's stuck? -[Buck] No, it wouldn't get stuck.
So, what you're looking at there is the very bottom.
So you hit bottom at how many feet?
[Buck] We're at 67.5.
The depth should drop off,
I would think, as you go out into the lake
because you had to hit bottom at that depth.
-So you're moving towards the center? -Yeah.
-Okay. -Let's book it.
[narrator] The original pit was 600 feet deep.
-All right, dropping it. -Let's roll.
[narrator] In an attempt to get closer to discovering the vein...
What do you guys want, to just dive right here? You want to go on?
[narrator] ...Parker aims for the deepest point at the center of the lake.
[Parker] I wonder if we could just, like, go north a little bit.
Should we try there?
-It's kind of the middle, you know? -[Parker] Yeah.
-Yeah. -[Parker] Yeah. Let's try that.
How is the bottom? Just, like, muddy?
[Parker] Yeah.
[Buck] You've got a layer of iron and then old stuff underneath.
[Parker] Oh, yeah. You can see the different layers.
[Buck] They're peeling off. Yeah.
Show Danny and Diego that.
Can you see it?
Look, look, look...
[Leonidas in other language]
That's [bleep] gold.
[Danny] Look at it.
Tell me that isn't gold.
[narrator] At the bottom of the Serra Pelada Lake...
Is it gold?
[narrator] ...the ROV has struck what looks like a layer of gold.
-[laughs] No, it's not. -It is!
Everything that's yellow isn't gold.
You think there's just a layer of gold that's settled in the lake?
The gold is going to sink, isn't it, to the bottom of the lake, isn't it?
That's not the bottom of the lake.
That's sediment.
[in other language]
[in English] So, it's like, the original bottom of the pit
-was 200 meters deep. -Right.
It's, like, full of mud now. That's what he's saying.
[narrator] Leonidas believes material washed down from the surrounding hills
has buried the lake bed in silt.
I just love that you think that there's a layer of gold in the bottom.
All I'm saying is what I'm seeing.
I'm looking at the monitor, and I'm just saying what I'm seeing.
It's more fun for him to be right and you to be wrong,
to be honest with you.
[all laughing]
Should we try to maybe take a little scoop?
-[Buck] A scoop of the sediment? -[Danny] Yeah.
[Parker] He's really going to test out your operating skills.
Yeah. No kidding.
The cup in.
You pull that thing up full of gold right now.
Well, let's try this, man.
What we're gonna do is just gonna take it up to a pretty high speed
and ram the heck out of the bottom.
See what happens.
Boom.
[laughs]
That's awesome.
Look, you've got... You've got something. [laughs]
-Yeah. I'm not gonna mess with you. -Look what you got.
[Danny] Are you coming out now?
[Buck] Yeah, I'm going to go.
-Let's take this-- -[Danny] Bring it home, Buck.
You're not sure, are you, anymore?
-[laughter] -I'm not saying it's gold.
I'm just surprised that it's still in the cup.
[Buck] See the surface coming up?
-Mm-hm. -[Danny] Here we go. Look.
Yeah. I'll let you hold the ROV, and you can grab the cup.
-Yeah, that's a full cup. -Got it?
[chuckles]
[Parker] There you go, Dan. Ugh.
[laughs]
Probably gonna find a new disease in there.
[narrator] To find out if there's gold in the sample...
[Danny] Brilliant. Well done, guys.
[Parker chuckles] Yeah. Good job.
[narrator] ...Parker runs a test pan.
[Danny] I feel like you're doing it all, like, super rough.
I'm being way more careful than I normally am.
-[Danny] Okay, great. -[Parker] But, look, it's all gone.
There's nothing here.
Well, if you're just gonna pour it all into the lake like that...
That's how you pan.
Yeah, I know. But now you just poured it all in the lake. That means--
No. If there's any gold, it's still in the pan.
Mm. It could have been really fine, though, couldn't it?
Really, really, really fine.
I feel like you're just being facetious.
-Yeah, just pouring it out. [bleep] -I am [bleep] not, Dan.
[Danny mutters angrily]
[laughs] Dan, there's nothing in this.
There's no dirt.
[Danny] I'm not naive enough to have expected
to swum that drone down to the bottom
and seen, like, you know, sparkles of gold the second it hits the bottom.
Although, it did look on camera.
[Danny] You were being rough with it.
[Parker] I was being super careful.
-[Danny] No, you weren't. -[Parker] I [bleep] was!
And it's not unthinkable that gold would
slowly work its way down the hill over 40 years.
So, you know, we had a moment of excitement
thinking that there might be something down there.
We actually just brought up a cup of silt.
[narrator] With the lake bed covered in over three decades of silt,
it's impossible for the crew to reach the bottom.
Meaning, Serra Pelada's missing mother lode remains a mystery.
I think if we want to make something work here,
we're going to have to work pretty hard for it.
We'd have to spend a lot of money
and go down some dead end roads
that are expensive and have big setbacks.
But going cheap way to fail is to not try.
[Danny] Look at that thing!
Yeah, maybe we should open, like, open the window then.
Get the...
No, no, that's a fly.
There's a fly.
-There's two flies. There's a mosquito. -[Danny] Stop causing chaos.
-Yeah, one-- -It's a fly.
[Larissa] Yeah. Yesterday, I spoke to Chico.
Oh, yeah.
[Larissa] And he knows a geologist who has some new real results
-he wants to show Parker. -Good.
-[Danny] What's the dude's name? -[Larissa] Jucelino.
We're about to go meet this geologist at Chico's.
I don't really know what to expect.
I don't have high hopes, but we'll hear him out.
-[Danny] Is it right? Is it just here? -[Diego] Yeah.
[Parker] Go right.
[Danny] Oh, here he is.
[narrator] Local legendary miner Chico Ozario
is convinced that he has proof that the mother lode
is still accessible around the lake.
[in other language]
[in English] He says Parker will get impressed now.
[narrator] He's brought in geologist Jucelino Alvez to prove it.
[in other language]
[Parker in other language] Parker.
[Parker in English] Is there gold in it, or is there not gold in it...
that's all that really matters.
This is the geologist.
[in other language]
-[in English] He's a technician in geology. -Right.
[Jucelino in other language]
[Parker in English] Oh, yeah.
[Larissa] They did a lot of drilling here.
They have all the reports.
[Jucelino in other language]
[narrator] Jucelino has compiled all the research from the Colossus Report.
And a set of drill tests taken around
the Serra Pelada Lake.
This is the lake?
At 204g a ton.
[narrator] On average,
a hard rock mine would be profitable
operating at 0.2 oz per ton.
Jucelino's results
show that the area around the lake
is worth 33 times that.
[Parker] Some of these really high grade intervals
are 7 oz a ton, which is crazy, right?
Like, $14,000 a ton,
and I think that's the best drill hole
ever drilled in the world.
I'm having intrusive thoughts at the moment
right this... Right now.
Do you wanna push me off?
[Dan] Yeah.
You can do it if you want.
-[Dan] I'm not going to. -You can if you want.
No, it's an intrusive thought.
It's fine. Sometimes you have to act on them.
[Dan mumbling] I really want to push you off.
I really wanna push you.
-Sometimes you just have to act on the... -No, I'm fine.
I'm not going to do it, but I want to push you off.
I get it. I understand.
I want to push all three of you off.
All right, so you've got a better intrusive thought than me.
Show off.
[Chico in other language]
It might be the best drill hole ever.
[narrator] On the hunt for Serra Pelada's missing mother lode,
Parker has been shown drill results,
which suggests there could be up to 7 oz of gold per ton
in the ground surrounding the lake.
[Parker] You know, I would be very surprised
if there's still, like, economical resource
that can be mined there.
You need, like, a good deposit of gold that's minable.
You know, the lake that's there now
makes underground mining or open-pit mining very difficult.
Colossus, one of the major issues they had
was water, underground.
Can it be mined
both from a, like,
groundwater geology standpoint,
but then also from the local standpoint,
like, that's quite a challenge.
[narrator] With Parker not interested
in following up on the drill results...
[in other language]
[narrator in English] ...Jucelino has one other option
for him to find gold in Serra Pelada.
He's invited us to walk, uh, to the lake
so we can see it from above.
-If you're interested. -Yeah, that would be cool. Yeah, for sure.
[Diego in other language]
[in other language]
[Diego speaking]
[in English] I think I know where you're going with this.
You twisted my knee.
He's trying to cut you out, Dan.
Cutting me loose.
No, I'm trying to keep you safe, mate, that's all.
I'm not going to argue with you
over this one, Diego.
-Thank you. -I'm going.
[all laughing]
That's fine.
I'll stick around down here.
Shall we then?
[Parker in other language]
-[in English] Bye, Dan. -Bye.
[Larissa] It's crazy when we see the pictures
of thousands of men working,
and then you see a lake like this in the hills,
you know, it's beautiful and peaceful,
just the opposite of what it was.
[Jucelino in other language]
[in English] He said, "There, over there
is some of the tailings in over there."
Yeah, that's pretty high.
[narrator] On all sides of the lake,
that used to be the Serra Pelada pit,
are millions of tons of waste piles
hauled out by workers.
[Parker] He's saying that this all got brought here by hand?
[Jucelino in other language]
[Parker in English] That's a mountain of material.
[in other language]
[Larissa in English] Ah, they did some analysis with the tailings
and got good results.
[in other language]
[narrator in English] Rocks from the pit
contained both large and fine gold.
Old timers broke apart rocks by hand
to extract the larger nuggets.
But Jucelino's small scale reports
suggest there could be finer gold left behind
around 2g of gold per ton of material.
[Parker] 2g a ton.
That's very good.
Where did they take that sample from?
Like, did he take that sample?
[Larissa in other language]
[in English] 2 or 3 million ounces
came out of this hole in the '80s.
I'm sure that there's at least half that in the tailings.
I don't think they would have had a 50% recovery rate.
The materials just sat there.
[Larissa in other language]
[Jucelino speaking]
[in English] Ah, he's saying that
although there are some samples
and testing with the tailings,
nobody really already came here
to work with the tailings
because the problem surrounds around,
like, the permits and the access to the area,
things like that.
[Parker] I'm fairly certain that
there is a huge amount of gold in the tailings.
If this test result's right,
at 2g a ton,
there's hundreds of thousands of ounces,
if not over a million.
And it definitely kind of shifts my focus
because the tailings are all stacked
nice and neatly in a pile.
And if there's 2g of gold per ton, um...
that'll be extremely profitable.
[narrator] If Jucelino's tests
from just a small section of the ground are accurate,
scaled up,
there could be a billion dollars' worth of gold
sitting in the tailings.
A fortune that can be accessed
without having to dig below ground level at all.
[Parker] But that's a way better prospect
than the underground.
Something that doesn't require
so much, like, upfront capital.
Something's going to happen here.
I think we should try to drive that side of it.
It seems like such a no-brainer place to start.
Like, why would Colossus not start there?
[narrator] With the potential
of a billion dollars laying beneath his feet...
[line ringing]
What's up?
[man speaking over phone] What's up with you?
[narrator] ...Parker calls longtime friend,
an Alaskan gold prospecting expert, Liam Ferguson.
-[Parker] We're in a place called Serra Pelada. -[Liam] Yeah.
It's actually the craziest place I've ever been.
It's the first place I've ever been that
there's been a hard rock project
that I'm, like, actually interested in
because you have all these tailings sat there
with, you know...
The lowest end of the estimate in my mind is, like,
probably 600,000 oz.
[Liam] It sounds like a pretty wild deposit.
So I'm gonna see what it would take
to get a deal done,
because for 5, 10 million bucks,
we could probably put a resource together.
It's not a...
Can... Can I put you on hold for one second?
I was gonna... I'm waiting for a call
I'm just gonna see if it's the one I'm waiting for.
Yeah, no worries.
Does he know who I am?
I think that in all the years that we've done these trips,
this is probably...
the opportunity that interests me the most.
[narrator] Next time on Parker's Trail...
The revenue that would come out of it
would probably be $1.5 billion.
With the cooperative,
we just need to go talk to them.
[in other language]
[in English] It feels like I'm getting put on the spot.
[in other language]
[Parker in English] It's such a [bleep] long ways down there.
Oh, [bleep]!
Oh!
[bleep]
[Dan] Here we go.
You're really excited, aren't ya?
[Parker] Oh, yeah. [bleep] nuts, isn't it?