Gold Rush

.

All clear!

Up north in the Klondike...

Do not dump that dirt.

..the Hoffman crew is at breaking point.

I say we stop.

That is the dumbest thing we've ever done.

Dave Turin has to find richer ground...

Something's gonna have to change.

..or their season could come to a grinding halt.

We're talking about leaving and going home.

Tony Beets works overtime

to assemble the dredge's steel skeleton...

..but the damaged sluice boxes...

..frustrate his crew.

I don't think this thing's ever gonna catch gold.

And Tony has to fight...

..to keep his dream alive.

Parker Schnabel...

What's for sale?

..begins the hunt for his own Klondike claim.

What kind of price would you be looking for?

..but good ground doesn't come cheap.

$3 million. Wow.

Back at Scribner Creek, Parker opens up a new cut...

Welcome to Fantasy Land.

..and puts his crew in a world of hurt.

I'm sick of this (BLEEP).

Think about what the hell you're doing.

Hey, Gene!

At McKinnon Creek,

the Hoffman crew is over halfway through the mining season.

But with just 258oz of gold,

worth over $300,000,

they are just a quarter of the way to their 1,000-ounce goal.

If it was easy, everyone would be up here doing it.

It's not just a guessing game or luck.

There is some...organised chaos to all this,

believe it or not.

This season,

Dave Turin and Todd Hoffman are equal partners,

but Dave is in charge of mining operations.

He has the crew running dirt worth just $4 a yard...

..not enough to even cover their running costs.

Nobody's making any money yet.

And obviously, we wanna turn the corner

and start making a profit

and getting a return on our investment.

My guys are down.

Everybody's bummed out, including me.

At the worst possible time,

claim owner Peter Tallman shows up to check on the Hoffmans' progress.

How's it going, Todd?

How ya making out?

Moving some dirt. Yeah, I can see that.

But, uh, the end result to get gold isn't...isn't there.

We're at four bucks a yard.

And, uh... Four bucks?

Nobody...nobody runs $4 a yard.

There's more gold in my driveway.

We should be a lot farther along than we are now.

This isn't gonna make either of us any money at all.

We need to see some gold.

We're stuffing the dirt through the plant as fast as we can go.

Todd, there's...there's gold everywhere in the Klondike.

Very few places you can make money at it.

Here is one of 'em.

If I'm not seeing $10 a yard, you're going broke.

OK.

All right.

Good to see ya.

Yep. Good luck.

Todd has to give Peter

a 20% cut of the Hoffman crew's gold.

If they can't get onto good ground,

no-one will make any money.

I'll take the heat

when it comes to being in the furnace with the landowner,

but privately...

..Dave better figure this out and figure it out fast.

Dave, you got a sec? DAVE: Yeah.

Here's the deal. Peter just showed up.

And, uh...

..he's super-disappointed.

We gotta get 10 bucks a yard.

I don't know what we're supposed to do.

I can't... If you don't figure something out,

we're gonna be packing up and leaving.

You wanna be a partner?

You wanna be the mining expert?

You better dig us out of this hole.

If you can think of something, Dave,

and save our bacon, you better start thinking now.

Give me some time. I'll figure something out.

8km east, at Eureka Creek...

..Tony Beets is in a race against time.

He's on a mission to resurrect

his 75-year-old million-dollar dredge by the end of the season.

Just like the old-timers did a century ago,

Tony is dead-set on catching Klondike gold

in the dredge's sluice boxes.

But he's way behind schedule.

He's got less than two months

till the brutal Yukon winter will shut him down.

We have to do this in the right order...

..because that thing come apart in a sequence,

and it's gonna have to go back together that way.

His crew has assembled the pontoons, or hull.

Their plan this week:

rebuild the 68-tonne steel skeleton,

then weld the sluice boxes in place.

Let's put some bolts in.

The dredge's superstructure

consists of 150 I-beams connected by 5,000 bolts.

The massive steel skeleton

supports all the dredge's gold-catching equipment.

It's gonna take everybody working together here

to make it go smooth, I think.

This is how we get stuff done in the Beets family.

We tend to...hit it with a hammer.

Oh, and swear at it a lot.

OK, Mike.

You're welcome. (LAUGHS)

Tony heads back to his Paradise Hill mine,

leaving his dredge crew to finish the day's work.

Let's get the bolts in here.

It's in there.

Monica, wanna throw me some more bolts?

I need bolts.

You think there's more in the container?

I can go look. I can go do that.

Hey, Mike, Jerry, can't find any.

I got three.

That's all you could find, was three bolts?

That's all I could find.

There's gotta be more over there.

They're all empty boxes.

That's (BLEEP).

Check myself.

There isn't any.

Yeah, you better get on the phone with Tony.

Where are we gonna find 2,000 bolts in the Yukon

this afternoon? You're not.

The crew torched off thousands of bolts

to dismantle the dredge.

Tony ordered replacements, but not enough.

Well, you know, it's getting a little ridiculous.

That's just the way it's been going.

Just five hours in,

the crew has no choice but to call it a day.

We're done.

East at Scribner Creek...

..Parker Schnabel's crew has hit its stride.

They've been mining for three months now

and have already passed

last year's total of 1,029oz of gold,

worth well over $1 million.

You know, we're over halfway through the season.

You know, we're looking pretty good for reaching Parker's goal.

But, you know, if we wanna see that 2,000oz,

we got a lot of dirt left to move here.

At the start of the season,

Parker's grandpa suggested he buy his own claim.

Now, with Grandpa John visiting,

Parker wants advice on the claim he's been eyeing.

You know, the truth is I've been looking around

and talking to people quite a bit about ground,

and there's not much up here.

Oh. Pretty well all occupied.

Yeah, no kidding.

They're heading to Last Chance Creek,

a claim near Bonanza Creek,

where the gold rush began in 1896.

In its first year,

Bonanza produced 125,000oz of gold,

which today would be worth $150 million.

A century later,

this area still contains some of the richest ground.

This mine belongs to claim owner Lee Ohlmick.

Hey, Parker, you made it.

Hey, Lee. Oh, nice.

How are you doing? Good.

You brought your grandpa with you? This is my grandpa.

Parker said he was gonna bring y'all. That's great. Super.

I'm glad that I'm here.

But anyway, while he was here,

I wanted to come up and maybe take a look at your ground.

We can go in my truck, if you like.

The guys are up there working, but I can show you around.

23 years I've been here, at this spot.

Here's our sluice plant.

How long have you had that plant, Lee?

20 years. And it hasn't worn out yet?

What are you... What's for sale?

This is the main parcel, or the main portion,

that a person would be concentrating on,

from here up, that mile-and-a-half. OK. Well, how wide is this valley?

It's 100ft mining width, about. Mm-hm. I see.

And how thick is your pay layer?

Well, probably 8-foot sluice section. Yeah.