Gold Rush

We've spent a mountain of money this year.

We have a lot more to spend.

We don't have a lot left.

Parker Schnabel's thirst for big gold

is pushing him dangerously close to going bust.

So right now, we're stripping at Dominion.

Tyson sluicing down the Ken and Stuart's.

We've never been that spread out before.

Parker's fighting a war on two fronts.

At Dominion Creek, his crew are still stripping

the 40-acre Money Pit cut,

spending hundreds of thousands of dollars a week.

To pay the bills, Parker has a second crew

sluicing Ken and Stuart's El Dorado cut

and needs it to deliver 300 ounces

by the end of the week.

Now, Parker's about to stretch his resources even further

and open up a third cut he leased

before buying Dominion.

We went to go up to Australia Creek this spring,

but the drilling maps were all, kind of, screwed up.

And I think we know what we're doing now,

and it's a pretty rich-looking piece of ground.

From Dominion Creek,

4 miles south sits Australia Creek.

Its 8,500 acres of virgin ground

was skipped over by the old-timers.

Early drill results revealed the depth of the overburden

is a third less than Dominion,

suggesting it should be easier

to reach the gold ridge pay layer.

Before we bought Dominion, we were really desperate,

so I, kind of, had to just say yes.

To mine Australia Creek this year,

it's probably one of the higher risk things we've done.

When we have this huge commitment,

nearly half a million dollars already tied up

in, like, payments for drilling

and payments for access

and just us getting the ground.

And we can't afford ground

that doesn't at least pay for itself.

But really, it needs to make a lot of money.

We've got a lot on our plate,

but, uh, typical Parker fashion here,

we're gonna add a little bit more to it.

Right now, we're on our way over to Australia Creek.

Parker's behind me with the loader.

We're gonna take the D6

and the 250 loader out and just see what we can do.

You've gotta be kidding me.

Damn it.

This is .

That's pretty good gap.

Do you think the truck was hooked to it

when they made the big jump over there?

That's a good question.

Spring meltwater

has washed away the makeshift bridge,

an old lowboy trailer blocking access to the ground

on the other side of the creek.

A lot of water flowing through there,

and we're probably looking at the best spot

to try and cross this.

There's nothing upstream or downstream

that's any more promising.

Not that puts us into a spot

where we can do anything on the other side.

Do you think we're gonna have enough time to do this project

with the other ones going on and get everything

to where we need to be by the time the snow's falling?

That's the problem.

To walk away from this would be very expensive.

Like, I already paid a hundred ounces in royalties,

plus a few other payments for a bunch of drilling and stuff.

Rock and a hard place.

Just with everything else going on at Dominion?

There's so much to do, Mitch.

I know.

Stressing me out.

It's just gonna be tough on our timeline.

How much is this gonna cost you if you walk away

versus how much is it gonna cost us

if we don't get everything done

that we need to get done over at Dominion?

And that's the problem

I've got is it's just neither option seems...

Feels particularly good.

The big advantage we've got with it is it's quite shallow.

Like, the deepest of it is 15 feet, some of it's 10.

You're not gonna spend much money stripping.

I think we, kind of, have to do it.

What do you think our best way

we to get from over here to over there is gonna be?

I think we just need to bring a hoe in here,

put some gravel on this ramp,

because it's gonna be mud.

This wouldn't take you a day.

- Okay. -Um...

So cut this out, get some gravel in it,

get to the other side.

To reach Australia Creek,

Mitch will truck in waste gravel

to build a ramp down the bank.

He'll then take his 750 excavator across the creek,

hook it up to the stricken lowboy,

and pull it out,

clearing the path to the other side,

allowing all the heavy iron

to cross and start mining the virgin ground.

this road.

Hey Jacob, you got a coffee, Jacob?

What up, Evan?

Why the are we opening up a third cut here?

I don't know.

It's gonna be pretty interesting.

Yeah, we gotta get across this river first.

The bigger this company gets,

uh, obviously, the more money is going out

at a more rapid rate,

and Parker is spending it like he never has before.

It's still just really hard to stomach.

You know, you wanna try and have something left over

once you get that gold out of the ground.

Thank you, thank you.

Right now, I'm just spreading some of this rock here

and this is gonna be the foundation for our ramp.

Ramp complete,

Mitch must now haul the old bridge out of the way.

Jacob, I think I will just try and hook the front here.

Hopefully, I can lift it up and just wheel it right out.

Sweet.

You ready?

Let's do it.

It is really stuck in there.

This thing has proven to be pretty stubborn here

and not wanting to come outta here too well.

.

That's why you don't stand on your chains.

Well, that ain't gonna happen.

I'll dig around this end a little bit.

Let's go to the back, see if we can pull it out a bit.

Okay.

It is really stuck in the water good.

Well, let's try this again here.

There we go. Now she's moving.

That's working much better.

Yeah, it's moving.

There we go.

Well, what do you think, buddy?

That's one more obstacle out of our way.

Right.

Now it's time to get to the other side

and we can get to work finally.

-Yeah. -Nice job, man.

Thank you. That was awesome.

The creek clear, Mitch can now move in the heavy equipment

to start stripping Australia Creek's virgin ground.

Well, here we go.

This is the end of the line.

This is where the road stops and Parker's ground starts.

And now the real work begins.

We've gotta open up a cut.

We've got a sluice it, and on top of that

we got two other mining operations going on,

so a lotta work to do.

We're already almost halfway through the season,

not a whole lot of time left for it all.

Hopefully there's a lot of gold in the ground

because we had to work to get here.

Right now, we're in full throttle.

We've got a thousand ounces, you know, to get this year.

And at the current rate,

I don't think we're gonna get there.

100 miles east

in the mountains above Keno,

Rick Ness is behind the eight ball.

Over a third of the way through the season,

he's brought in just over a tenth

of his thousand-ounce season gold.

We need to up our gold tanks

at least 60 ounces a week,

uh, for the rest of this season

if we're gonna hit a thousand ounces.

As of right now, we're mining the Bacon Strip.

It's not really paying out like I wanted to.

We're doing everything we can right now,

but by the end of this week, we need to up our production.

Last week,

Rick's first big call of the season

was to sluice the 1.4-acre Bacon cut,

but got a disappointed 11 ounces of gold.

This week, he needs 60 ounces

or he will be forced to find richer ground.

Hey, Buzz!

Hit the water.

There's a... I see there's one of the drive belts

at the plants on the ground. It shouldn't be.

I don't know what's going on here.

Yeah, that's toast, .