Gold Rush

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In the Yukon...

We've hit desperate times.

..the Hoffman crew takes a fall...

..and hits rock bottom.

Dave, I'm just about out of dirt.

Until Dave Turin's discovery...

Holy cow. Now, that's impressive.

..turns their fortunes around.

Tony Beets pushes his crew...

Watch out, Kevin.

..to breaking point.

All right.

Parker Schnabel's dream of Fantasy Land gold...

I know that there's really good gold here.

..hits a frozen wall of permafrost.

It's just solid blocks of ice.

Fantasy Land's dead again.

..that suddenly derails his 2,000oz season.

We need to find a lot of gold here in a short amount of time.

At McKinnon Creek in the Klondike,

the Hoffman crew is fighting to keep their season alive.

They're almost three quarters of the way through the season,

and have mined nearly half a million dollars' worth of gold.

They're battling to hit Todd's target of 1,000oz,

worth $1.2 million.

Andy Spinks digs paydirt worth $14 a yard

out of Dave Turin's new cut.

I'm pleased with how the wash plant's running.

The guys are working.

Everything's going good.

Hey, Andy? This is working awesome.

Logan Pierce hauls Andy's pay to the plant.

This is the smoothest I've ever seen this operation go.

We're sluicing a serious amount of paydirt.

Jack Hoffman feeds Monster Red.

The material is very good.

If we don't do something stupid, we're going to make the thousand.

(BLEEP)

Dave, this is Andy, do you copy?

Yeah, go ahead.

Dave, I'm just about done with this cut.

We're just about out of dirt.

You're kidding!

I know it's not what you wanted to hear, but...

I'm scratching right now just to finish up.

This has gone a lot faster than we thought.

All right.

Let me come look at it. 10-4.

Dave Turin is partnered with Todd this season,

but he's in charge of the mining.

I figured we'd have at least a couple more days.

It's just not as deep as what we thought.

It's just a little shallow. I think it's great ground, but...

You know, it is what it is.

Get to bedrock, that's all we've got. But we've got to find more ground.

Yeah, I get it. All right, I'll go look.

See what we can find.

All right. All right.

Finding new ground to mine this late in the season

will be a real challenge.

Almost the entire claim is frozen solid

and it's too late in the year for the ground to be thawed by the sun.

So we've got to look around, try to find something that's thawed out.

Now we've got to go look for an Easter egg in the grass, I guess.

Without paydirt that's already thawed,

the crew will have nothing to run.

Hey, Todd? Andy's already down to bedrock.

Are you kidding?

I think we ought to look at those drill maps again.

Yeah, there you go.

Well, what do you think about the haul road?

Those drills are awesome.

Do you think we can get something there?

Well, I'll grab Steve and I'll walk an excavator up there

and we'll dig some test holes or something. All right.

The haul road runs from the wash plant

800m up to the higher cut,

right through an area of good drill holes.

Todd's hoping that the ground beside the haul road

has had the frost pulled out of it by the tailings

that were used to build the road.

Steve Pasley, the crew mechanic, heads out to dig some test holes.

Right now, our mission is to find thaw ground.

So if this is thawed, here,

this could make a nice little cut for us.

If it's frozen...

..our season may come to an end pretty quick.

Right there, I'm down to gravel.

Hey, Steve!

Is it frozen? No, man, it's thawed.

Oh, you're kidding! In fact, I got water in the hole.

That's awesome. It's all thawed, Todd.

OK, that's a good thing.

This is going to be our next cut, right here. Right on.

This is a big deal, especially this time of the year.

20ft from the road.

We'll get in here and strip it real quick. Get it on the trucks.

Get it to the plant and keep feeding the monster.

I think we just got pretty dang lucky.

16km east, at Scribner Creek...

..Parker Schnabel works towards his 2,000oz, $2.4 million goal.

He's mining the Far Cut,

but they're down to bedrock and his paydirt is about to run out.

I'm scraping up the last of this one cut.

Follow the bedrock and I'll get them cleaned.

Keep the plant running as long as we can.

Chris Doumitt feeds the wash plant.

These last couple of weeks have been nice.

I mean, they've been keeping the landing totally full of pay,

but now it's dwindling.

Well, this Far Cut really held us over for a long time,

but looks like we're knockin' on the door again.

But unlike the Hoffmans, Parker is one step ahead of the game.

Across the creek, he has the other half of his crew

already working to get down to gold-rich gravel in Fantasy Land.

Now, we've got a big push going on right now

in trying to get this cut stripped out.

We've put a lot of time and energy in this ground here.

You know, if we want to see that 2,000oz,

we've got a lot of dirt left to move here.

Sometimes you've got to spend a little money to make some,

and we're definitely spending a lot here.

I know that there's really good gold here,

um, it's just a hell of a fight to get it.

What the (BLEEP)?

Yeah, that's solid ice. (BLEEP)

Before he even reaches paydirt, Rick has hit permafrost.

Hey, Parker, have you got a copy?

Yeah, Rick, go ahead.

Dude, I'm over in Fantasy Land and I'm hitting ice.

Is it everywhere or just where you're at?

Well, I've just started hitting it,

but it's solid, and I'm not even close to gravel yet

and it's just solid blocks of ice.

Why don't you go around and try somewhere else,

see if it's everywhere? I'll be over in a little bit.

All right, wish me luck.

I had no idea that there was going to be this much frost.

It's going to be too difficult of a process

to try to dig through this.

This late in the season, this far north...

Rick?

..the permafrost won't thaw.

It's the same as last year, man.

And it's everywhere? It's everywhere.

I tried over there. I tried it this side.

I tried up over here.

It's nothing but ice.

We may have gotten here a little earlier this year,

but not early enough. Apparently not.

Well, we can get in here with the dozer

and start ripping it, but it'll be too late...

Yeah. ..to throw the stuff, to thaw and run it through the plant.

Let's get out of here.

Yeah? Yeah.

Fantasy Land's dead again. Yeah.

What's happening to our (BLEEP) season?

West, at Eureka Creek...

..Tony Beets works overtime to get his 75-year-old dredge

rebuilt and gold-mining before winter closes in,

freezing everyone out of the Klondike.

Halt! (WHISTLES)

Go, go, go, go, go!

He's a month behind schedule...

..and desperately trying to catch up.

Tony insists his crew works at double speed

to rebuild four critical parts of the dredge in just two days.

Things got to be done in an order

and if they don't get done in that order,

it means us tearing it back apart in order to get the things right,

and then put it back together again.

The crew doesn't want to rebuild the dredge in a rush,

or out of order.

We're just making sure we can put it together

way we're ordered to put it together and stuff fits.

We're not sure we can.

Yo!

All right!

First on Tony's list, the gearbox and the bull gear.

When it's running, a chain of buckets

delivers paydirt into the dredge.

The bucket line is driven by the large cog of the bull gear...

..which in turn is powered by the drive cog of the gearbox.

For the mechanism to work,

both cogs have to be perfectly aligned.

Lift the damn thing up.

Jerry's in the crane, hoisting the gearbox up first.

Mike guides it into position.

The gearbox and bull gear are irreplaceable,

and have been sitting unused for 27 years.

Hey!

Up! Up! Up! Look out!

.

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At Eureka Creek,

Tony Beets and crew are reinstalling the bull gear

on their 75-year-old mining dredge.

Hey!

Look out!