Yukon Gold

The Yukon is a magical place.

The sense of adventure...

The freedom...

The dream of hitting the big paystreak...

Let's sluice!

Yeah, yeah! Swapping it up.

I love the gold.

Whoo!

Chasing gold, you're taking on a huge risk and a huge challenge.

Shut the water off!

Patience can't be bought, eh?

The quest for gold has claimed many a people.

No, no.

The gold has consumed them.

Come on, gold.

-Holy... Look at that! -Whoo!

Holy!

Whoo!

Go, baby, go! Come on, go, go, go!

I wouldn't trade it for anything.

The Yukon...

This spring,

gold prices are at a five-year high,

soaring above $1,700 an ounce.

Well, this is the time to strike, while the iron is hot.

Find me some gold!

Veteran miners are back.

Desperate to finally score a huge payday...

It's do or die.

Yee-haw!

And rookies flock to the gold fields...

What happened there?

Risking it all to strike it rich.

We have the balls to go for it.

It's a dream of ours to get to this point.

Be careful what you wish for.

Another stellar day in the Yukon!

On the road to Dawson City...

Rockin' and rollin'!

...Big Al McGregor is back chasing gold,

and this year, he's set his sights sky-high.

Starting out this season,

I think I want to shoot for a thousand ounces.

Seems like a magic number, doesn't it?

But given the price of the gold

that'd be a nice little chunk of change.

A thousand ounces.

That's worth over $1.7 million.

Hey, old man, are you around?

Hey, good guy.

I haven't seen you for a while.

-You've been sluicing, that's for sure. -Yeah.

After two weeks of hard sluicing,

Al brings his first haul of the season to Don's Gold Shack

to be cleaned and weighed.

Throw the whole thing in and go.

-Gold in one side and dirt in the other. -Yeah.

We think we found a very nice pit.

We're sitting really pretty right now.

There is potential to hit the jackpot.

Oh...

So how's it going?

-Above ground, my friend. -Hanging in there?

Yeah.

Al has faced a long, uphill battle.

I've gone through hell in the last couple of years.

His wife and mining partner, Colleen, passed away two years ago.

And Al's still recovering from his own fight against a rare cancer

that caused him to lose feeling in his hands and legs.

I'm walking with braces, but it beats the hell out of a wheelchair.

I still miss Colleen a lot. I mean, that's a given.

It's tough, it's tough.

But this is a dream that Colleen and I started.

And I'm going to finish it. Just that simple.

But for the past two years, Al's mine has barely broke even.

It costs about 600 ounces to run this through the season,

if not a little more.

So, yeah, you dream of hitting it big,

making this very efficient operation.

Getting my money back would be nice.

-There's some. -Yeah.

- Getting excited now. -You're making me smile.

Weigh it all at once.

It should probably produce two ounces an hour.

Two ounces an hour would give Al 300 ounces of gold.

Yeah, I got high hopes. I'm excited.

Always new hope every pit, eh?

This'd be a bad time for you to trip.

-The winner is... -The winner is...

Oh, shit. She's light.

121 ounces of gold...

That's less than an ounce an hour

and far short of Al's two-ounce target.

This one sucks. It just gets uglier and uglier.

There you go, brother.

I'm starting to wonder what the hell you have to do

to enjoy a successful year up here.

I guess shit-ass dumb luck, maybe. I don't know.

But it kind of sucks the big one.

- Ho! - Wow, what a beauty.

In southwest Yukon...

Whoo!

Now, that's great! Here we go, she's on.

Ed Long and Riley Gibson are prospectors from Whitehorse

opening a mine for the first time.

Eddy and I grew up hunting, went to school and played hockey together.

We've been prospecting high and low for years now,

but this is a different kettle of worms.

This has been a dream for me since I was a kid.

I always wanted to be working at a big placer operation.

Just bring her in, eh.

-So I guess we got a... -Big convoy.

Big convoy. We're going to have Riley in the front of the pack.

The new miners will transport the $250,000 sluice plant

to their claim at Rabbit Creek.

a gruelling 60-kilometre journey through the Ruby Mountain Range.

It's narrow and winding and goes through the mountains.

It's kind of sketchy at the best of times.

Get in there nice and safe.

Get this show on the road.

Two weeks into the 16-week season,

these rookies can't waste any time.

Oh yeah, very excited.

Been a long time in the making and it's finally coming together.

Ed's travelled the road to Rabbit Creek many times before.

This is a traditional territory for my First Nation,

Champagne and Aishihik First Nation.

This is where I call home,

and this is where my people lived for thousands of years.

I want my family to be out here for generations,

and my dream is making a living on my traditional territory.

I drive by it every time, and it's still gorgeous.

It's all about the freedom out here, having a lifestyle

that’s kind of really bush-centered.

Being self-sufficient is what the whole end goal of all of this is.

What's that?

Skidder stopped working.

All right, our first curve ball

-The skidder broke down. -The tranny's cold and the oil's good.

Might be out of diesel.

I doubt it.

-It's out of fuel, Eric. -No fuel, eh?

It's a rookie mistake.

We ran out of diesel here,

We're going to get the Tidy Tank around and get her filled up.

Hey, Riley, you've got to copy.

Riley has the extra fuel in the back of his pickup.

Riley, Jarret, you've got to copy.

But he's at the front of the convoy and out of radio range.

What if we take some diesel off your truck?

-I got... -There's no way to get it out.

Well, we can siphon it. You got a hose?

Ed's father-in-law, Walter, breaks out an old-school idea.

Trying to get some energy out of this tank here.

Ed's my son-in-law, married to my daughter, Kristen.

I'm helping him a little bit financially and just moral support, too.

Hey, there we go.

Well, who's doing the suction?

Whoa-ho! The boss!

Whoa! He got a mouthful.

My home brew is much better than that.

This is how we used to do in Saskatchewan, when we were poor back in the '60s.

Walter saved the day by getting the diesel flowing.

It keeps you young.

A lot of my friends retired,

and I'm not ready for that yet.

There's more to life than folding the wife's panties.

Okay, we're good.

The new miners still have a 50-kilometre trek

over a steep mountain pass to get to Rabbit Creek.

Always nervous with a quarter-of-a-million-dollar machine

on the back of a truck going up the mountains.

We'll keep it going.

Ten after, bro. Been waiting for you. Jeez.

Quarter after. Honk, honk.

West of Dawson City in 50 Mile valley...

Andy Tai and Paul Joseph are childhood buddies from Whitehorse

starting their second season mining.

Andy, when we turn this up, if you hear it cycling...

-Yeah. -...cut back just a little.

OK, you don't like that noise?

It's not running right. It's going to blow up.

Oh, okay.

I left Whitehorse to move down to Vancouver

Got into venture capital, raising money for public companies.

PJ just gave me a call out of the blue,

asking me if I'd like to be part of a gold-mining adventure.

I said, "Sure. Let's go check it out."

Mining was definitely a way to get back to my Yukon roots.

You're good. I'm going to head up, start hauling you some pay!

Okay.

Andy never mined a day in his life.

He's never been on quite an adventure like this.

It's super muggy out here.

He was totally green to everything in this world.

I like being in a machine.

I like just to do my job, move dirt.

There's definitely freedom and independence in this lifestyle.

We don't answer to a big corporation or company.