Gold Rush

.

Up in the Klondike...

Fire it up. Let's go get some gold!

I like it, Jack!

..the Hoffman crew fires up their biggest wash plant yet.

They don't call her Monster Red for nothing.

But they quickly learn that to process three times the paydirt...

Keep that pay running.

We're digging as fast as we can.

..they'll need to feed the monster more water than they can supply.

Dammit. Shut it down.

We better figure it out quick.

Over at Scribner Creek...

Oh, what the hell? We got a problem.

..Parker discovers that he's losing thousands in gold every week.

It's obvious we are (BLEEP) away money.

But he acts fast...

What do you think? Looks fancy.

..ramping up his wash plant...

That prewash looks like a war zone up there.

..and gets the best clean-up of his career.

That's the biggest clean-out we've ever had.

And Tony Beets and crew risk life and limb...

..to get their 75-year-old gold-catching dredge on a convoy...

Cut it, cut it, cut it!

..to its new home.

At McKinnon Creek, the Hoffman crew is at a crossroads.

Last year when we were in the jungle getting our ass kicked,

we all felt like zeroes.

This year, I think we're coming out of a hole.

Almost halfway through the season, the crew has only 136oz of gold,

worth just $160,000.

But they've taken a drastic step to upgrade their operation.

People think that we're gonna fail this year, but you know what?

They have no idea what's coming at 'em.

Time to make this bad boy spit out some gold.

Guys, let's bring it in. Let's do it.

This is a new beginning. Fire it up!

Let it clear. Hit the screen, Dave.

To save their season they've traded up from Little Red

to one of the biggest wash plants in the Klondike, Monster Red.

Put the water at 3,000 gallons a minute and let's rock and roll.

Let's go get some gold!

Ah!

Power! That's 200kW, buddy.

Clear! Feel it rumbling in the ground

like a train going by.

Here comes the first bucket of dirt.

My dad's putting her in right now.

This nine-metre-tall beast can run 300 yards of paydirt an hour,

three times what Little Red could handle.

300 yards an hour right now.

Once you throw a bucket in, you gotta get another bucket, bam, bam.

It's so hard to keep up with this plant.

They don't call her Monster Red for nothing.

Keep that pay running.

We need to get 4,000 yards every day trucked to the wash plant.

Right now the trucks are running, we got paydirt, everything's good.

This is awesome. We've never been this big.

We started off the season with nothing.

Now we got the best wash plant in the Klondike,

and let me tell you, there's a lot of little tricks to this plant.

We got an electric variable-speed hopper feeder,

electronic grizzly bars, 62-foot conveyor.

This is a 20-foot shaker deck.

That's personally-made - it's all custom.

200kW generator powering the whole thing,

and here's the sweet part...

..these are our sluice-boxes.

We got four main runs.

I got a nugget-trap run on the far side, there.

This plant is good to sluice 10 million yards of material

before you even gotta look at it.

It feels like I got a foothold in the Klondike this time,

and you ain't gonna be able to peel me out of here very easy.

Well, that doesn't look good.

Oh, that's not good.

We're running out of water.

After running dirt for just four hours,

the water level in the intake pond is so low the pump is sucking in air.

Monster Red demands 11,000 litres of water every minute.

Yeah, we got a problem. Not enough water in the intake pond.

But then you go over here and there's all this water in the tailing pond.

We don't know why we're running out of water.

Should go in a circle, but we better figure it out, figure it out quick.

The intake pond supplies the water for the wash plant,

which washes the rocks, runs down the sluices

and flows out into the tailings pond.

The dirty water then circulates

through a buried pipe called a culvert

into two settling ponds.

It returns to the intake pond cleaner

and ready to run through the wash plant again.

Todd to Dave. We're almost out of water in the intake pond.

You're fricking kidding me!

I don't think the water's flowing around fast enough.

How bad is it? It's bad.

We're gonna have to shut the plant down in a minute

if we don't hurry up and get something going here.

I'm gonna take the excavator down

and see if I can get more water flowing around.

All right.

Todd to Dave. I see what the problem is.

The pump is sucking up water

faster than the culvert is actually letting it through.

Todd's water recycling system

was designed for his old, smaller wash plant.

Monster Red demands four times the water.

It's sucking the intake pond dry before it has time to refill.

I'm gonna try to cut a ditch to get as much water as I can through.

Hopefully, that takes care of it.

Todd's convinced the culvert to the settling ponds

is too small to allow enough water to pass through.

His plan: dig a channel alongside the culvert

to increase the volume of water through to the intake pond.

But he has just minutes before the pump runs dry.

Finally.

Todd to Dave. Did I make it in time?

No, it's too late.

Todd's fix is too little, too late.

The intake pond is already too low.

I'm just worried about all the sticks.

I think it's gonna plug up our suction line.

I think we ought to shut down.

Well, we didn't make it. We're gonna shut down.

We ran a good five hours, but we just ran out of water.

Shut it down. Dammit.

We're gonna shut it down for a bit.

OK.

To shut down on your very first day, that's not a very good deal.

16km east at Scribner Creek,

19-year-old Parker Schnabel is back mining the Far Cut,

the ground that gave him 148oz - worth over $200,000 -

in just four days at the end of last season.

We're finally in the far cut. Been waiting all spring for this.

It's time to make up for lost ground here.

This cut is promising.

Every pan that's come out of it has been looking better and better.

With 678oz banked,

worth $813,000, Parker still has a fighting chance

of hitting his 2,000oz, $2.4-million season goal.

Oh, what the hell?

Hey, Parker, you on here?

Yeah, go ahead. We got a problem.

You ought to get here and look at it as quick as you can.

Yeah, I'll be right there.

What's up, Gene?

Uh, we got a problem with the coarse tailings here.

It's got a lot of dirt.

That's where the gold's at, so... Right.

You know, that side's clean, that side's dirty.

I'd sure hate to think

that (BLEEP) away a bunch of gold out here in this stuff.

Tailings are discarded out of the back of the wash plant.

They should have all the gold-rich paydirt washed off.

If they're not clean, Parker's losing gold.

Well, what do you want to do, Gene?

I think we should run a test, you know.

Clean the box out, run 1,200 yards and then we'll know, I mean...

If you're wrong, we're losing a shift of sluicing.

If I'm right, we can figure out how we can get some more gold.

What's the tipping point as far as doing something about it?

You can't try to catch every last flake.

Well, I realise we can't catch every flake,

but maybe it's, you know, an ounce.

If we're losing more than an ounce a day, better change something,

and maybe I'm wrong, but I just... I don't like not knowing.

I'm not too excited about the idea of losing a day of sluicing.

No, only I just... I'm sorry it's gonna slow down the plant,

but I think it's a smart decision. My opinion.

All right, let's do it.

Shut it down! You happy?

He doesn't want to stop the plant.

I understand that, but I don't wanna lose gold either.

If there's no gold, we lost a shift.

If there is gold, we've been losing gold.

I don't like lose-lose situations.

To find out if they're losing gold, the crew installs clean mats.

Then they run 1,200 yards of old tailings

back through the wash plant.

Parker hopes that at the end of the day

the sluice-box will be empty.

If it isn't, they've been losing gold.

There we go.

That's the last bucket of our 1,200-yard test.

Let's go see what's in the box.

Hopefully, there's nothing.

So, right now I'm just jigging the concentrate

from our tailings run.

First time I've ever sluiced tailings.

Yeah, I'm not really sure how to feel about it.

Interesting.

Parker weighs the gold on the back of his ATV.

If there's anything more than an ounce, he's got a real problem.

Five point one...

six. Seven.

That's half an ounce an hour.

That'll be six or seven grand a day.

There's no point in running pay until we fix the problem. No.

Five ounces, worth about $6,000,