Gold Rush: Freddy Dodge's Mine Rescue

This got to be a quick fix, Juan.

Nice-looking little plant.

Ho! Hey! Got a rock stuck in it.

The nugget factor up there is the real deal.

Shoot. Now we got that much more to do.

It's kind of like being in prison.

- You're really ugly in person. - Yeah, I know.

Speculate all you want, it don't matter

until you actually weigh it up.

Hopefully, this isn't the one that beats us, Fred.

Thistle. I hate thistle lawn.

Yeah. There's that thistle. Yeah.

I hear that works good as wiping paper if you don't have any toilet paper.

One of the best along with poison ivy and stinging nettles.

Freddy and Juan trek through Montana,

50 miles northwest of Helena in the thin mining district.

They've been called for what they believe will be a quick fix

en route to their next rescue.

Where did you meet these guys again?

I met Bryce and Heidi at one of the trade shows I went to last year, Fred.

Bryce was telling me he cashed in his entire savings on this mine site.

They bought it a few years back,

and they've got all their equipment.

I wasn't 100% sure how much time we'd have, Fred,

but I told him if we were in the area, we'd stop by.

This has got to be a quick fix, Juan.

Yeah, exactly, Freddy. I'm hoping at least.

One thing for sure.

They've produced a tremendous amount of placer gold out of Montana.

Gold was discovered in Montana in 1864

on the site of the future state capital.

Over a 100 years, old-timers in this area pulled out

5000 ounces of gold worth today, $9 million.

But their primitive mining methods mean

a bounty of gold should still be up for grabs.

This is a gamble one family staked their future life on.

- Freddy, nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you. What's your name?

- Ryker. - Ryker.

- Ryker. - I'm Heidi.

Nice to see you again, Heidi. How you doing, sir?

I'm Ted, a.k.a the Goat.

I'm the goat in the old dirty goat mine.

I'm really glad you guys made it up here.

Machine operator and welder, Bryce Waits.

His wife Heidi, mom Lori and dad Ted, nicknamed Goat,

have been mining at this site for three years.

So when I met you guys last year, you guys were

talking about your operation up here.

Are you planning on this being a full-time gig instead of just a weekend?

Absolutely.

But, um, what do you really think you need?

We're still in the throwing money phase for the most part.

You know, when you get started,

you don't realize all that stuff you need.

My dad used to take me gold panning, and way back when I was a young tyke.

Never really lost the passion.

Finally, I found this placer property and came and checked it out

and did some panning in the creek and showed gold

and bit the bullet and bought the property.

Bryce and I met through mutual friend actually at a brew fest,

so I knew it had to be good.

Both in their mid-30s, Bryce and Heidi

aim to leave their jobs in suburban home.

And he came to me and said, "Do you want to buy a gold mine?"

I said, "Okay." Like, how could I say no to that?

Even with new equipment,

the Waits' mine is running at a loss, jeopardizing their big dream.

This property for us is really our salvation.

We have everything that we could need here.

Our goal is to have a cabin and I want my kids to be kids as long as possible.

And this place allows for that.

For them to be in the dirt, you know, playing in the water,

doing what kids should be doing.

It's really our dream of trying to better ourselves

to make a good life for our kids, for us,

for our family, to all be together

and to be good stewards of the land.

I want my kids to see that hard work can get you anything that you want.

This is the American dream.

If you want a good life, you have to get it yourself, build it yourself.

But we've invested upwards of $250,000.

It really has to pay back now.

We really need to hit at least 50 ounces this season.

So far, we have not hit ten.

A lot of people doubted us when we're like, "We're buying a gold mine."

"I can't believe it."

And, you know, we'd love to prove them all wrong and say,

"Well, we made a business, you know, we made a life out of this."

What's your gold look like here?

- Is it fine gold or coarse gold or... - Coarse, gold.

All coarse or you got fines mixed in?

- Well, there is fines, but not a lot of it. - That's pretty stuff.

That's all we've collected.

- That's all you've got so far? - Yeah.

- There's like ten ounces there. - It's beautiful gold.

The Waits have mined just 3.5 ounces each year so far,

but need over ten times that to go full-time.

I know the old timers mined out a small section of the property

and they pulled out $2 million worth of gold.

So the gold here should be pretty good in spots,

but we've had pretty dismal runs.

It gets pretty gnarly up here sometimes, trying to get good gold.

Well, there's only one way to find out if we can help you or not.

- Let's watch you run. - Sure. Absolutely.

- Yeah. - Let's do it.

Heidi and Bryce's wash plant is an all-in-one hopper, feeder and trommel

bought online for $40,000

and modified using Bryce's welding skills.

- It's a nice-looking little plant. - Yeah, it is.

Show us around a little bit.

We bought the wash plant and drove down to Arizona to get it,

but it had never been ran, so it was in good shape,

but we had no idea how it would run,

so Bryce had to do quite a bit of repairs

and maintenance on it just to get it to be functional.

My son is a pretty good fabricator,

so I'm hoping the plant is considered decent.

So yeah, this is the sluices with the new hydraulic riffle.

- You built that sluice yourself? - Yes.

- That's not what it came with? - No, no, no.

Since most of your gold's coarse, you catching

- most of it in the top end, I assume? - Yeah. Yeah.

- You put the screen in there? - Yeah.

Welded pre-screen on the inside

because the rocks were beating the actual screen so much.

Yeah.

So now you're doing a two-day run Saturday and Sunday, right?

What do you pulling out of here for a two-day run, roughly?

It depends because of the nuggets, you know?

We've had as low as five bucks a yard all the way up to 50 bucks a yard.

The last run we did, we were right at ten bucks a yard.

Of the last 30 pans I've done up here,

I haven't found one single speck of gold, if that does you anything.

That shows you that's a real spotty deposit.

Well, the first run, what we're going to do

is we're just going to kind of step back.

We're going to watch everything, just watch what you guys do,

how you do things, watch the plant run,

and we're not going to get involved at all. So...

- Let's do it. - Let's do it.

Fire it up!

That's the hydraulic pump getting warmed up.

Yeah. You got a grub face.

Come on. Let's get some gold.

First bucket coming in.

Heidi and Bryce are wonderful human beings.

They have invested a lot.

If they had success, it'd make this young man very proud.

Bryce feeds a quarter yard of pay dirt

into the hopper with each excavator bucket.

The grizzlies clear the largest boulders onto a dedicated conveyor.

The pay dirt travels up the feed belt into the trommel

where the spray bars wash gold and fine material down into Bryce's modified sluice.

Hang tight. I got it clogged.

We're all clogged up up here now.

Now I've got to shovel it out.

This is probably one of the most major issues we have.

- That just cost him two buckets. - Yeah.

Stuck again.

Right now he's clogging up roughly every third bucket.

So if he's doing seven yards an hour,

he could be doing ten yards an hour.

It's the same amount of fuel, same amount of everything, right?

To get more gold.

He's losing about a quarter of his run time.

Go round the other side and see what the sluices look like?

Go, feel them. They're not doing anything.

Doesn't feel like they're working.

The middle one isn't clear now when I just felt.

The top ones? They are all blocked.

If Bryce's handcrafted hydraulic riffles clog with pay,

gold could be running off the plant.

Well, Freddy, you know, I think one of his biggest

problems is this hopper right here.

Heidi and I were talking for a few minutes,

and in that little quick conversation we had,

he must have gotten out of the excavator three times to work on this.

And it's plugging even before he's getting up there to shovel it, right?

So nothing's going up that dump and then

those Hungarians are a big problem.

Hey!

Cut it.

Got a rock stuck in it.

Now it stops spinning.

Might have just finally plugged up.

Right here, there's a rock on that tail wheel.

It's got it pushed up into your hopper.

I run over and hit the shut off on the hydraulic pump.

Otherwise, we'd have tore a belt out for broke something.

So, it's a good thing Bryce is paying attention.

But that's not the first time this has happened.

We had to stop, that way we don't tear the belt

or break something off that's crucial.

Replacing the custom feed belt would take weeks,

leaving the Waits without a working wash plant.

There's a lot of things to do on this little plant.

It's never going to be a race car.

But I tell you what, we can make it a hell of a lot faster.

That was it, last bucket.

Let's take a look at the sluice box.