Gold Rush

It's been a long, long, hard season.

I think I can say for everybody

that we're definitely glad that we're nearing the end of it.

King of the Klondike Tony Beets' operation

may have turned a corner.

His biggest gold producer, the trommel,

is finally up and running 24/7 on Paradise Hill.

It's really good to see that the trommel is turning and we're actually sluicing.

It's always nice to be at Paradise.

Right now, Tony's not around.

He always seems to be, you know, out in the boonies or something.

40 miles south,

Tony's determined to keep his newfound momentum going.

Seven weeks ago...

...Tony's shaker wash plant

suffered a screen deck failure...

...and halted mining at his Indian River claim.

Now, Tony has a plan to reignite the operation.

Instead of waiting for a new screen,

Tony's gone and purchased a nearly brand new wash plant

from his next-door neighbor.

That'd be nice.

That's very nice.

Do you just kick this tray down and you spray everything out?

Yeah.

yeah.

What?

$800,000 is a lot of money to spend right now. There's no money, man.

But that's actually too expensive.

You don't even know how much money you have.

I don't wanna talk to you.

So, what's the game plan?

Near the end of the season. I wish we would have had more time.

It's gonna be a struggle.

The bottom line is you gotta fight hard.

100 miles east, Rick Ness's comeback season is on a knife edge.

With just over a month left, he's only halfway

towards the 1,000 ounces he desperately needs this year.

Yeah, I know the best gold we're gonna mine all year

is here in Rally Valley.

We're gonna get as much pay out here as we can this week.

And, then, we're gonna turn on Monster Red

and try and run it all before the winter chases us out of here.

The Bench Cut gave us good gold all year.

Yeah, there's some left up there, I know there is, that we can get.

After last week's big 92-ounce haul,

Rick's decided to continue running pay from the Bench through wash plant Rocky.

The pressure's on me and Bailey to keep this wash plant running

while the other guys are hauling pay out of Rally Valley.

The pressure's on. Season's coming to an end.

At Rally Valley,

Rick's working on his next move...

building up a stockpile of pay dirt.

At the end of the week, he plans on shutting down Rocky

and firing up his massive wash plant, Monster Red.

We got a lot of work to do to hit 1,000 ounces.

We've got not many people.

You know, we've been short on people all year,

so I got my buddy, Zee, coming in.

He was here at the beginning of the season to help me get started,

so it's gonna be helpful to have him around to start up Monster Red.

It's just me and Rick. Literally, just the two of us.

Long-time friend, Zee Zaremba, helped Rick kickstart his season

and resurrect Monster Red after a year out.

We're gonna run some dirt.

Oh, yeah!

This is huge, man. I'm proud of you.

dude, I couldn't have done it without you.

-That's yours. -Aww!

Just coming back from spring, but everything looks a lot different.

It looks good.

Looks like they've been hard at work.

What's going on, buddy?

Oh, yeah!

-Good to see you, bud. -Yup.

What do you think?

The ground's not the only thing that looks different. You look good.

-Yeah? - Yeah.

I've been putting on some weight.

Nothing wrong with that.

I've been doing that for years.

So, in Rally Valley now, huh?

Yeah, dude. So, think about this,

just a few weeks ago, we'd have been standing underwater,

So, yeah, we've made some progress.

It looks good. So, you been good, though.

Yeah. Yeah, really good. I mean, I've...

I mean, I've had no choice but to throw myself 100% into this.

You know what I mean? If I didn't, there was no way it was gonna work.

- Yeah. -I feel better than I have in a long time.

I can feel good about myself doing this because I can do it.

- Yeah. -I mean, I know I can.

It just... it just...

you know, just sideways for too long and...

But it was a good reminder and...

Yeah, I feel a hell of a lot better,

-just even about myself now. -Yeah, good.

The year you took off, and all those demons you had to shake,

and to come up here and see you looking like this, and all you got accomplished

-is awesome, dude. -Thanks, man.

I'm still very aware, though, that, you know,

the biggest hurdle is coming up, you know?

Anybody can start something.

-You gotta finish it, right. -Finish it.

But I'm just glad that you're here for it, too.

-You know I'll do anything for you. -Oh, yeah. I know that.

I need you to get Monster Red fired up.

I mean, I ran it that whole year up at Duncan, so...

Yeah, exactly.

I'm excited.

-I need your help running one of them. - Yup.

-You ready to jump in the truck? -Sure.

Give me another one.

Good luck.

I'm super excited that Zee's back

to help me finish out the season.

You know, he was there with me here in the beginning to start it.

It only makes sense he's here at the end.

Last time I was in a rock truck would've been

five years ago. It's been a while.

I'm just gonna run it down by bus and get Monster Red set up for the final push.

Zee's first task,

remove all the old boulders from around Monster Red's hopper feeder.

Yeah, I mean, it's not the most ideal piece of equipment to be running...

but it's kind of all we got right now, so...

I always wanna help Rick out, so I'm just happy to be back

and contribute a little bit myself.

When I left in the beginning of the year,

we had just gotten up and running, so...

it's good to see how much progress all these guys got done

this year so far, so...

No! Oh, no, no.

What the ?

Oh, my .

What the ?

What the ?

Get over to the tailings pond! We're about to lose a truck!

At Duncan Creek, Zee is hanging over a 20-foot deep tailings pond.

-You all right? - Yeah, I'll be fine.

Just hang tight.

I don't like that it's leaning like that.

I don't want that thing to tip over into the water.

All good, buddy.

There you go.

We got that "no around" chain.

-Yup! -Here we go. Good!

With the rocks removed,

Buzz carefully pulls Zee back onto solid ground.

Don't turn your wheel!

Straighten that wheel out!

Straighten the wheel out!

Straighten the wheels.

No! Dude, the other way!

There we go.

It was like , what the ?

Real bad.

Had my fingers crossed the whole time.

-You all right, buddy? You all right? -Yeah. Yeah.

Could have been a lot worse. He's lucky.

It's a bad spot to be.

Let's get the out of here and get back to business.

-Yeah, haul more pay. -It's getting cold.

Yeah.

So, yeah, we're in the final push.

Trying to get Monster Red running, trying to get Rally Valley to run.

And this happens, you know, it's accidents, so...

Good thing no one's hurt, the machines are okay.

Cost a couple hours, but we'll get back to business.

Two weeks out from the end of the season,

we're spending money like crazy.

We pretty well smashed all previous spending records.

We've also smashed the 5,000-ounce target we had, which is good.

But I'm still losing money with that target.

29-year-old Parker Schnabel is on a roll.

He's blown past his initial 5,000-ounce goal,

and, now, he wants more.

We've upped the ante another couple thousand ounces,

and want as much gold to go in our pockets as possible.

That's the goal.

To hit his new 7,000-ounce target,

Parker's got two operations running.

Wash plant Slucifer

is chewing through Australia Creek's boomerang cut,

while on his Dominion Creek claim, he just brought in a brand new toy

he hopes will increase his gold haul.

We've got our new plant, Roxanne, here on Dominion.

It has a few teething problems,

but I think that once we get a few little bugs worked out, it's gonna be amazing for us.

I'm digging pay here for Roxanne.

We got a lot of dirt to get through.

And if we're gonna hit that target, we need the plant running fast,

and we need dirt going up the belt.

Foreman Mitch Blaschke is dialing in Roxanne

in its first full week of sluicing.

Right now, I just wanna put two people on this wash plant, day and night.

Parker said, you know, no way, that we're still short on people.

This plant is definitely a bit faster.

Operator Sandy Dubois pulls double duty in the loader,

feeding the plant,

and clearing waste tailings.