Hoffman Family Gold

Hey, I'm dropping dirt right now.

Drop it like it's hot, baby.

With 482 ounces of gold mined so far

I'm feeling good. This is what it was supposed to be like.

The Hoffmans are pushing both plants

to hit 1,000 ounces.

I need pay dirt, I need it right now.

The ancient riverbed pay is almost done.

After discovering rich new pay dirt...

- The narrows are dull. - -My gosh.

We got a lot of ore in it.

And hitting a jackpot clean out.

- Yeah, man. Yeah. - Suck it.

This is a lot of gold.

The team faces a challenge

that could put their 1,000 ounce gold out of reach.

- We have a problem. It's bad. - Damn it.

With the holy roller hemorrhaging money...

It's about 5,000 an hour. It could be down.

We need to stay running.

And just a few weeks left...

We just don't have a lot of time.

It's a real pain in the ass.

The pressure's on hunter to step up.

If they're not running, it hurts everybody.

Can he rise to the challenge?

We need to crank through this as fast as we can.

Pick up the slack.

But will the Hoffmans fall short?

This was a mistake.

So far, the black Pearl's been crushing it.

Last week, we got more gold than the holy roller.

And, we hit our goal for the week.

So, we're coming off a big win

and I'm hoping we do it again.

Let's do it, baby.

All the work we put in is finally paying off,

not only for us but for everybody as a team.

I really want to win, but also, I want my dad to win

and I want everybody to win.

These guys deserve a win.

Both plants are going right now

and that's really what we need.

I'm feeling good about things.

This is really what it was supposed to be like.

We got two plants running head to head,

which is, you know what, actually a really good thing.

The, two plants that are actually one covering for the other.

Hunter beat us last week.

This week, I think it's going to be ours.

We're just gonna run a ton of yardage and figure this out.

The goal in mining is to reach your best yard-per-hour ratio.

Running more yards and pay dirt each hour leads to more gold.

But there's always a limit depending on the type of pay dirt

and what the wash plant can handle.

So, right now, I guarantee you

we're actually getting a lot of gold every hour.

Back on track.

I'm watching the sluice box the whole time

and if you overload it, blind it over, you're gonna lose gold.

It's scary because you look in there and you're like,

"am I losing gold into my sluice box?"

And every time, it's like, "no, I'm not."

So, take it up a notch, Todd.

You're at 120 yards an hour.

Hundred-thirty, 150.

Now I'm at 200 yards an hour.

I'm going way faster than the black Pearl.

At the end of the year, man, it's the yarder's game.

How many yards are you going to pump through this thing?

That's a big bear.

He's coming this way.

Boy. He's checking us out, dude.

He's right there.

He's coming over the hill.

We have our fox den right here

straight across and they have

mom and dad fox and five little, little pups.

It's kind of scary, you know, just out of the blue.

Here comes a grizzly bear out of... middle of nowhere

to take out our whole little fox family.

Jack ain't having any of that.

There's always things we're running into up here in Alaska,

but, you know, having a bear just rush into camp like that,

it just reminds us

that, mother nature really is in charge.

Andy, you got a copy?

Yeah. It's not safe right now

for guys to be walking around.

Stay in your truck.

Be tough.

We should probably move everybody back.

We've had encounters with a few bears up here

and if they start coming towards you or into your camp,

you better be prepared.

They will attack you.

And you got to be super cautious.

A good bear is a bear that runs away from you.

Hey, dad.

Be careful.

It's right in that creek bottom.

Sometimes, you have to fire a couple of shots in the air

to make it safe for the miners and for the bear.

Sometimes, the bear is smart enough to take off.

Stay in your truck.

We need to get this bear out of here so we can get to work.

He doesn't want to leave. He's hungry.

The bear was right here.

Seen it right here. Well, it crossed the ridge top

and it came down across where the rock trucks...

It's probably 75, 50 yards from the trucks

and then it went chased it, came back up the hill.

Now, it's coming back towards camp across the road.

He probably smells kitchen grease and all of our breakfast

and everything else. The suckers can smell two miles away.

It's kinda scary right now.

It brings it back to reality. We're in the middle of nowhere.

And, these bears are serious and they're very, very hungry.

There he goes.

We got a job to do, they got a job to do,

and hopefully, we can all get along.

It looks like the bear's safely gotten away

and we can get back to work.

Okay, let's get them going.

Fire up the black Pearl.

Last week, we finally got over 100 ounces for the first time.

And now, we're seeing some great goals.

Okay, let's fire this thing up.

Randy, fire up the pump.

These new cuts that we're getting

the gold out of, from dahl and north port.

Right now, it's super encouraging.

It looks like our goal is actually reachable.

Right now, we are running good.

The name of the game in mining is yardage.

Yeah, and so if we want to get to our gold,

we just gotta keep running.

And Todd's even dragged me down to run the plant.

By the end of the season,

we have to have the gold.

We have a problem.

Splitter's leaking.

There's a bunch of gold underneath the, sluice box right now.

A lot of it.

We're gonna have to shut the trommel off.

Idle the generator down.

Hey, Randy?

Do you have a copy?

Tater, you on this channel?

Do you want to come up here for a second? We have a problem.

What's going on?

That's looking like...

They're having some sort of a problem with their sluice or their shoot

or something like that, which is not good.

Hopefully, it's not something that's been going on all day,

'cause that can be catastrophic.

Come over and look at this.

Now, look over here.

What do you see?

Bunch of gold underneath it?

Starts up here.

You see it underneath the splitter right here.

It's hitting the back of the hydraulics and coming down.

So, there might be a hole.

Yup, there's a hole right there.

- It's a hole? - Inside... Yeah, there's a hole.

Son of a gun.

We got a leak, Jack.

Is that what went wrong?

Duck down. Watch your feet.

We've been washing gold down the hole all day.

No.

We're trying to get the lid off.

Step number one, don't get fingers caught in it.

We're going to need the 360 and a chain and a shackle.

Pull this off.

We are shut down, not catching any more gold.

The splitter's got a hole in it and is leaking

behind the sluice box and down on the ground.

So, we got to get it fixed 'cause we can't run it like that.

You're just throwing away gold.

We're not running till it's fixed

and we're not making any money.

So, we need to get her done now.

Turn ends right there.

It's right exactly where you'd expect it to,

where all the material goes.

The holy roller trommel connects to the splitter,

which connects to the sluice box.

The purpose of the splitter is to evenly spread out the water flow

that travels into the sluice box

so as to avoid pay dirt bunching up and collecting in pockets.

But a hole has developed at the bottom of the splitter on the right side

causing gold-bearing material to leak out onto the ground

instead of being caught in the sluice box.

When the trommel's running and we're putting material through it,

all the larger material comes out the end.

Everything half inch and smaller

comes down through this splitter,

the water and sand, and small rocks like this.