Gold Rush

So, right now, we're pretty slammed.

And that's the thing with this season.

We started the year really short on ground.

And that problem got massively over-solved.

29-year-old Parker schnabel's mining empire

is spread across two giant claims.

Dominion...

And Australia creek.

The big issues right now are

keeping dominion going.

It's paying a lot of the bills so we gotta keep that rolling.

Three-quarters of the way through the season,

Parker has mined 4,000 ounces.

Now, he needs to keep his foot on the gas

to fly past his 5,000-ounce goal.

Well, as we get closer

to the end of the season here,

each day seems to get a little bit more hectic.

Lots to do, time's running out.

And you gotta stay productive.

So, it's gonna be busy.

Mitch is busy at dominion.

Tyson's up at Australia creek.

He's got the first, kind of, small section almost done.

He needs to move the plant.

Because of the way we operate, getting from one cut to the other,

it's always tricky.

It's definitely a big... A big week at Australia creek.

First set of geese flying over today,

which means we have a couple weeks left

till it's gonna start to get really cold.

You know, this morning I was up at dominion

talking to Mitch and Parker

and we came to the conclusion that

having slucifer done,

mining out the first section of the cut at Australia creek

we can move to the next.

We're pretty close to being done

but we just gotta manage to keep the wash plant going.

Hopefully get some time to work on our wash plant pad.

The sooner we get this done, the better chance we have

at hitting our 5,000-ounce target.

Jarvis! Hey!

Wash plant boss, Tyson Lee,

needs to mine out the first section

of Australia creek's boomerang cut,

use the waste tailings to build a new plant pad in the second section,

then move slucifer

and have it up and running in its new location by the end of the week.

It's pretty tough with the amount of people we're working with here.

But it's when we really have to give her 110%.

Look at me, I'm running around with my snack bag here.

Forget about it, we're too busy today.

To help move the tailings to the new plant pad,

Tyson's called in mechanic Alec Kelly.

I showed up to Australia creek to,

figure out a generator that was shutting down randomly.

I seem to have squared that away so I got

put in a rock truck/excavator combo here,

self-loading tailings in slucifer.

Self-loading is the Yukon cross fit.

You know, it's nice that Alec's here now.

'Cause now I can get on with work on our wash plant pad.

There's a lot of work to be done in the next couple of days

in order for slucifer's plant move to be seamless.

Now I'm thinking about how to self-load tailings off of the wash plant.

I've only really ever played with a loader.

That's a bit of a different game.

And I can definitely say that I'm not very good at this.

I'm certainly not an excavation artist

like the rest of these guys out here.

The is that?

Shut her down!

I don't know what that sound is. Shut her down!

Sakes.

This is the last thing we need.

Our shaker spring is still intact.

These Springs look all right as well.

Yeah, that's a broken spring.

I think we'll change the spring.

It's that left one there in the spring pack.

Tyson's hopping in the excavator

and lifting the shaker deck up off its perch.

Now we're gonna throw the spring in and hopefully it's about as easy as that.

Downtime equals, no recovery of gold.

Slucifer separates gold from larger waste material

with a shaker deck that vibrates on eight Springs.

One has broken,

triggering an imbalance and putting

slucifer at risk of causing terminal damage.

To fix it, Tyson will lift the shaker deck with a 480 excavator,

replace the broken spring,

then lower it back into place, and fire up.

Is it the top, Alec?

Yeah, we'll try to pick it on this side.

Give her some down there.

Keep curling, keep curling and stop.

So, it probably got a little hurt right there

where it was clapping against the other part of the spring there.

It hammers extra hard and then just broke it the rest of the way.

Hopefully it just slides right in, Tyson?

Hopefully. If not I have more jam.

I want peanut butter.

Well, hey!

That's actually like butter.

Let her down just till it sits on the spring.

That works really well.

New spring's in.

Let's try and get her fired back up.

Hopefully it runs flawlessly for the rest of this cut.

Let's see how far we get.

After just one hour of downtime...

Yeah, we're back sluicing.

Slucifer is back up and running...

- Nice job, Alec. - Yeah.

On the gold trail.

And Tyson is on track to finish the first section of the boomerang cut

and get the plant moved to its new pad.

You know, when stuff goes wrong,

it only delays moving slucifer.

I'm hoping to be able to move the plant in 12 hours.

We're working with a very short timeline here.

This transition really has to be seamless.

It's gonna take a lot of work and a lot of

diligence to get done what needs to get done.

Well, finally, after a long wait,

we are back in rally valley.

Um, I've been monitoring it all season hoping to get in there.

We've got the pump in there and the water's coming out.

So, I'm excited for it.

100 miles east, in the mountains above keno,

the end of the season is approaching

and Rick ness has mined just 385 ounces

of his 1,000-ounce season goal.

What I wanna do is,

I'm gonna have to get a huge stockpile out of rally valley,

pile up on the pad,

at the same time while we're running rocky, keep the gold coming in there.

And then we're just gonna switch right over.

We're gonna pull the pumps, the generators, get everything over here.

But I wanna wait till the last second to do that.

I wanna wait till we're ready because I don't wanna

have any days where we're not getting gold.

To hit his goal and secure his future at Duncan creek,

Rick is piling up the pay he hit last week

and draining the water to reach the bottom of the pit where the best gold lies.

Then, he plans to move the pump from rocky and fire up monster red.

It's been a long season waiting to get into rally valley,

um, lot of ounces of gold we need to get this year, you know, going for 1,000.

That's what I need to be able to get a good crew in here

and pay the final bill off to be able to own this ground at the end of the season.

If I can't afford to pay Troy Taylor off, I default,

and, you know, everything I've been working for on this county goes away.

There's a whole lot riding on the end of the season here.

Um, you know, my future for sure.

I can't afford to not have gold coming in

so our only choice here is to try and keep rocky going for as long as we can.

A mile upstream,

in the bench cut,

foreman buzz legault is in charge of keeping the gold coming in.

The bench cut is averaging 60 ounces a week,

the best gold of Rick's season so far.

But the last time he mined rally valley,

its weekly average was over 200.

I'm excited for it.

You know, Ryan and I did a couple pans and we got into some, you know,

some pretty good gravel.

Bunch of gold in it.

All right, now, I'm working on this spot here that's kind of like the worst...

The worst spot of the high wall.

Yeah, I'm a little concerned with some of these banks.

I'm not trying to slope it down as we go.

Just to keep us, you know, keep us safe and keeping out the catastrophe from...

From knocking us out of rally valley before we're...

Before we're ready.

The gold-rich rally valley pay layer

is at the foot of a 100-foot cliff of overburden.

Rick must position his 700 excavator

on a narrow pad at the base of the cliff,

dig out the pay, then load the rock trucks to haul it out on a steep, uneven road.

If Rick is not careful,

he could trigger a landslide that would Bury him and his crew

under hundreds of tons of dirt.

Obviously, the pressure is on right now.

Um, everybody's feeling it.

You know, nobody... Nobody is immune to that.

I'm working with big Rick now. The big Rick ness.

Though it's pretty cool to be coming into rally valley,

this is some real rock truck, trucking, I'll tell you that.

Hauling the pay to the stock pile, operator Trey Charlie.

If you're first starting out on a rock truck,

this is definitely not the road you wanna be trained up on.

That's for sure. She's a bit risky.

I got my seat belt on, just in case.

There's still a chance of rocks coming down off the wall

but we said there's no getting away from it.

Everybody's just gotta pay attention.

The road down here is pretty slimy.

Holy.

I'm sliding right now.