Gold Rush

Narrator: On this "gold rush"...

whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!

This is quite a commotion, isn't it?

It's like having unprotected sex.

This isn't the spo -- way it's supposed to be.

Okay?

Here's 40.

Oh, yeah. We're in trouble.

Hey, hey, hey! Knock it off!

That cut's done! I'm done!

Oregon was meant to be a beautiful homecoming.

Good luck.

This has turned into an absolute nightmare.

captions paid for by discovery communications

a little more. Right there.

Beautiful.

We're done. That's it.

I still need you to put this section in.

You can't take the 200 and dig the hole?

I can't operate that 200.

I'll sink it -- I've already wasted an hour.

I should be doing overburden.

Narrator: At the buckland mine in oregon...

Keep going. Keep going.

The hoffman crew is facing failure.

All right, andy. We're hooked up.

I'm outta here. Nobody's been paid

for over a month.

And they're at breaking point.

Todd, you got a copy?

Hey, andy. How you doin'?

I got a problem with randy. I need you to talk to him.

Try to keep it positive if you can, buddy.

I got 5 feet of water. The pumps don't work.

Narrator: Halfway through the season,

they've mined just 204 ounces worth less

than $250,000.

Todd hoffman's 5,000-ounce season goal is history.

This has really turned out to be a really rough, rough year.

We okay? -No.

I've already wasted an hour.

-Well, do you want me to do your job?

-Why? Why is this a problem?

-You start screaming and yelling at me.

No, listen to me. -Because I have a --

-no. Listen to me! No more !

-Can I -- and this is why I'm leaving.

-No, listen to me! -Don't! No!

Come here! We don't quit.

Come on!

Hoffman: Hey. Hey.

Calm down. Don't leave me. I love you

don't... I love you.

Listen. Calm down.

Listen to me. Come on.

I can't do it.

Come on, man. No. No, no, no, no.

No, no, no, no.

It's okay. It's okay.

You're doin' good.

You're doin' good. We've had a hell of a summer.

It's okay. All right?

Sometimes, you just stand down.

It's okay.

Do you want me to go back to work or not?

I want you to go back to work, man.

I want you to go back to work. You're all right.

tempers are flaring.

Every -- everybody's pissed

because we're not getting gold.

And it's just tough. Um, you know,

when your mechanic just frickin' shed a tear...

You know it's bad when your mechanic is crying.

It's not easy to do when you're losing, man.

And all we've been doing this summer is losing.

I don't know. I gotta try to keep these guys together.

And it's not easy, man. It's not easy at all.

Narrator: After a disastrous start to the season,

the hoffman crew came to the buckland mine

5 weeks ago,

determined to turn their fortunes around.

Krisher: No one's been in here, seriously, since the '20s.

How do we know they didn't just pick it clean?

The dredge didn't make it to the bottom.

There will be gold at the bottom.

Dig down right in here.

Narrator: But last week,

their dreams of bedrock gold were shattered.

Bedrock.

nothin'?

The dredge didn't really miss jack .

We're looking down a barrel of a serious failure.

Enough is enough.

Narrator: Freddy dodge,

todd's gold recovery expert and friend

for the last 7 years called it quits.

I gotta go, for now.

I know. It just hurts.

We started stripping this cut

hoping that the dredge had not gotten down to bedrock.

Unfortunately, they have.

It's gonna be sidepay.

It's what the dredge couldn't get.

That's what we're chasing.

Narrator: The crew's only option --

dig alongside the wall of old dredge tailings

in search of another small pocket of sidepay.

And this cut has been an absolute pain in the butt.

The pay wasn't where we started, you know?

And now, I got nothin' but water problems.

Todd: How's it going?

Not very good.

Crap. Well, we need more pay to keep that sucker runnin'.

We've got our work cut out.

But I'll get your pay dirt.

It's all I can ask, buddy.

We're in trouble.

Narrator: No one knows if there's gold

and no one's getting paid 'til they hit a real pay streak.

I just bought my first house.

And, .

It's so -- it's nerve-racking not getting paid.

Tensions are pretty high.

Hunter: It's hard to keep working when

it's really frustrating.

Morale's really low.

Narrator: One hundred feet down in the cut,

everyone's pinning their hopes on andy spinks

finding a new pocket of pay.

Spinks: I keep diggin' a hole deeper

I've got a bunch of water coming into my cut

where I'm trying to dig.

I don't want to waste another day

or 2 trying to reset all my pumps.

My biggest concern is just getting paid to the plan.

Pierce: Andy, the high wall's comin' down.

Ah !

Oh, you've gotta be kidding me.

Can I get one more thing to go wrong today?

Narrator: At paradise hill,

tony beets' $250,000 power barge

is finally finished.

It's the linchpin of his plan to expand his mining operation.

Tony's new $1.5 million dredge

lies abandoned 100 miles south.

He'll use the power barge to retrieve it.

But first, he has to get the barge 15 miles

down to the yukon river.

Yeah.

The barge is so big,

tony's hired a team of welders

to build his own monster trailer.

Tony has constructed a steel bed

80-feet-long-by-8-feet-wide.

His plan: Take the front axles

and 6-foot wheels from two old loaders,

weld them directly to the base of the bed

to create a monster trailer capable of hauling

his 26-foot-wide 60-ton barge.

Just gonna go around, right here.

And then we'll roll them things in there.

A little more, jay!

More!

All right.

Tony has spent 2 weeks

and $10,000 building his trailer.

Tony:

cheeseman: Just go around to the other end. I wanna lo

narrator: Foreman gene cheeseman is worried about the height.

It's gonna be pretty tall.

Nine-foot-eight. It'll be damn close.

Gotta go double-check our measurements at the bridge.

The only route to the yukon river

passes through a box bridge.

Hurry.

26, 11.

I think we're, like, 26, 6.

So we got, like, 4 1/2, 5 inches.

The clearance on the bridge

is less than 17 feet, 4 inches.

The power barge and the monster trailer combined stand

at just over 17 feet.

I don't know what to say.

Minnie: Hey, guys.

I don't like the sound of that?

You know, I don't get it.

Why didn't you measure it?

Yeah, it's too close. We're not...

So...

We spend a lot of money on --

on the welders and everything else.

And we have nothing for it.

So don't you think you guys

maybe should get going and find something else?

just deal with it. Go fix it now and get going.

Schnabel: I'm really not happy with where we're at this point

in the season.

The halfway mark, and we're nowhere near halfway.

Narrator: At scribner creek, parker schnabel

is halfway through the season