Gold Rush

You got a copy, Mitch?

I need you to come here urgently.

We have a problem.

Woah!

Stuck in there, I bet.

I'll jump in there real quick and see if I can get it out.

Training up Tatiana in the excavator.

She's been trying to work on getting this ditch cleaned out.

And, she just got a little too close to the edge here.

And it's very soft.

You get out here on the edge,

and it'll just suck you right in.

Come on, baby.

Come on. There we go. There we go.

Third climb.

Did that without pulling ourselves back in.

All right.

That was a close one.

Yeah, that edge, you know, it's just silt in that ditch.

- Yeah. - And it's pretty deep right there, so.

- Okay? - Yeah, just as you're doing it,

um, keep yourself back here.

Like, this is all solid.

We had the dozer out on it.

- Yeah. Good lesson. - Well.

- Okay, thank you. - Yeah. Have a good one.

This is the cost of training people.

Mistakes happen.

It's the end of the season.

It's starting to get a bit cold.

The time's running out.

Parker Schnabel is hurtling towards the end of his first season mining,

his new colossal Dominion Creek claim.

So, we massively have to step up our mining rate.

Right now, we have six years left on the licenses.

The only way to really do that

is to really aggressively go after the stripping.

To stay one step ahead,

Parker has a crew stripping a new cut

so that he'll be ready to sluice in the spring.

But he still wants to smash through his $7000 ounce gold

and see just how much the money pit can deliver.

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

I don't wanna strip in an inefficient way

Mitch is hungry for people

up with Rocksand sluicing in the money pit.

And I don't wanna give 'em to 'em,

because I don't wanna rob the stripping crew of people.

People will always want more people at a wash plant.

But you are screwing your future self.

And I don't like screwing future self.

Except when I'm drinking.

Foreman Mitch Blaschke

still has 10 acres of the money pit left to sluice out,

but only three crew to run it.

Working with Mitch, Sandy Dubois,

feeding Parker's only running wash plant, Rocksand,

and clearing tailings.

Mitch got me to take over for Tatiana,

so Tatiana could get some well-deserved hoe time.

And yeah, I'll just be running the plant for now.

Six hundred feet away,

Tatiana Costa is learning to work the excavator.

By clearing the settling pond's drainage ditch.

So, the silt that comes from the fine tailing,

plugs the ditch.

This could cause a huge flood

and it would be game over for the rest of the season.

Are you in here, Mitch?

Yeah, go ahead.

Whenever you have a minute,

if you can come here just to make sure I'm taking the right amount.

Yeah, I'll be there in five.

All right, thank you.

Just heading back out to the cut,

gonna check in with Tatiana.

You know, she got hung up in that ditch earlier.

We got her out of there.

Hopefully, she's got that water flowing nice by now.

Why is the water so high down here?

What is going on?

Culvert pipe blew out.

I should've been more specific about all that water.

When you release it and you got that much hell back,

you gotta, like, let it go gently.

- - It blew out our dam. - We need to go deal with it.

So, right now, our water blew out.

The basket's almost exposed here.

If we lose too much of this, the pond's gonna go dry

and the plant's gonna have to get shut down.

Move these cars!

Get this outta the way. Outta the way.

Move your car.

Or I'm gonna move it with the loader.

Rocksand draws water from connected ponds.

When the drainage ditch in the settling pond

became blocked with silty tailings,

the water level started rising.

Tatiana cleared the silt,

but released the built-up water too quickly,

causing a torrent to rush downstream

blowing out the berm and culvert

that kept the pond system at the correct water level.

The water level is now dropping in the intake pond

and threatens to expose the pump's hose,

which could cut off the water supply

and force Rocksand to shut down.

Hey, Sandy, you got a copy, Sandy?

Yeah, I got a copy.

Hey, just keep an eye on that wash plant.

Our water table's dropping here.

Just be ready to hit that, off button

in case we need to shut her down.

Yeah, sounds good.

You know, I had Tatiana working on

getting this ditch, cleared out here.

That culvert pipe was holding our water table in our pond system

at the appropriate level.

But we just had way more water trapped on the other side,

and now we got, some serious washout going on.

So, we're gonna have to plug this thing off here,

just get it fixed up.

This water's just leaving rapidly.

I got Tatiana in the loader,

She's rifling material over here as fast as could be.

But right now, it's all about stopping the water flow.

If the water doesn't circulate,

then there'll be no water to the pump,

which would be a big problem.

Mitch, I could just start to see

the top of the basket over there.

If it runs outta water,

you're gonna have a massive pile-up.

If we don't get this thing plugged off

and get out water table back rising,

we could lose, you know, a good section of sluice in here.

All right, we've got the, water plugged here.

Roger that.

That should, eliminate any more leaving our pond.

The berm finally plugged and water safely contained,

Rocksand is still bringing in the gold.

You're training new people.

You got to, be there to watch what they're doing

and, you know, I wasn't here, keeping an eye on this, and...

You know, it went from digging this thing out,

everything's good to, complete disaster

in just a matter of moments.

Fortunately, this is something that we got fixed here

before there was too much carnage.

But we still got a lot of dirt left to get through here

before the season's over.

Finally have Monster Red up and running.

This is, like, the last big push for us.

Two cups of coffee this morning,

I'm on top of my.

We are buzzing.

Pulling pay out of Rally Valley,

hopefully we got enough outta here,

hopefully that pile's big enough.

Hopefully the weather doesn't set in,

and hopefully there's enough gold in that pile.

I guess only time will tell, right?

We're near the end of the season.

We're definitely running behind.

I mean, winter's here. You can feel it.

It's in the air.

At Duncan Creek,

Rick Ness's comeback season is hanging by a thread.

If this doesn't work this year,

if I don't get this 1000 ounces,

I don't have the capital to come back again, so.

You know, I'm, I wanna leave here

knowing that I left nothing on the table.

Rick is still 300 short of 1000 ounce gold,

which he needs to cover costs,

give his crew a gold bonus,

and fun next season.

We've got a lot of time to make up for,

a lot of gold to get.

You know, it took longer than it should've

to get all that pay out of Rally Valley.

But now we've got a huge stockpile sitting up on the pad

and all we got to do is get it run through Monster Red.

We have to run it as hard as we can all day.

I mean, 350 yards an hour plus no stopping for nothing.

That is what is gonna get us to our 1000 ounces.

Rick's crew are finally sluicing.

Rally Valley's nugget-rich pay dirt.

Two years ago,

it brought in more than 180 ounces per week.

Nearly double their best weekly haul this year.

Now, in his first week running non-stop,

Rick needs it to deliver big again.

The team's keeping it together.

There's been a few hiccups, nothing major.

Overall, best team I've ever had by far.

And, um, without them,

I wouldn't be anywhere near where we're at right now.

What the? There's hardly any water going through the plant.

Ryan, cut the power.