Gold Rush

Narrator: On this "gold rush"...

I think it's time to try and push it a little more.

This old machine wasn't designed to run that fast.

It's busted!

We're never gonna have a wash plant this close

To fantasy land again.

Holy

I've never seen one this destroyed.

I don't give a

As far as I'm concerned, you can both go home.

Turn the feeder off!

Holy frick!

Todd: We're gonna beat parker this year.

We're looking at selling this property.

One of the potential buyers...

Is parker.

Captions paid for by discovery communications

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We've found a lot of gold here, and that's been good.

Now it's time to move on.

Narrator: At scribner creek, parker schnabel mines

The last of the pay dirt in the boundary cut.

Parker: Everything's working well and it's gone by quick, too.

You know, that's the nicest part of this.

Been pretty low cost

To sluice as far as people go and, you know, no trucks.

And it's been nice to do over 1,000 ounces

Without hauling any pay.

Narrator: Parker's plan to run a more efficient mine is paying off.

Without spending a dime to truck pay to his wash plant,

His massive boundary cut

Has produced over $1 million in gold

And taken him to a total of 2,104 ounces.

Parker has more gold than todd hoffman

For the first time this season.

It doesn't seem like too long ago

We were just setting the plant up,

And now we're about to move it again,

To the far end of the cut so that we can sluice the pad

Of the north end.

I go where the gold goes.

Narrator: By moving the wash plant

To the far end of the boundary cut,

Parker plans to chase the gold-rich pay to the north.

But foreman rick ness has a different plan in mind.

So I've been thinking about fantasy land.

Uh-huh. And?

And I'm thinking now's the time, man.

Now's the time to what?

To get fantasy land.

You know, we've -- we're never gonna have

A wash plant this close to fantasy land again.

That's kind of the plan, though, is to work away from it.

Having mined out the boundary cut,

Parker wants to move goldzilla north

To mine the next section of ground.

But before they shut down to move the wash plant,

Rick wants to mine a nearby cut

They've already stripped called fantasy land.

But they'd have to start using rock trucks again.

I don't think we should, honestly.

Like, we haven't trucked a yard of pay,

And we've done, oh, what, over 1,000 ounces here?

Yeah. Trust me, I love the new system.

It's working great. But, you know, we --

We're never gonna have a wash plant this close

To fantasy land again, and it's not big enough

To justify moving a wash plant there.

So it's -- we keep moving farther away from it,

We're never gonna do it, man.

You got a ton of money in that thing.

Yeah.

And we've been waiting, what, how long now

To find out what's in there?

Two years.

You know, I really think

That there might be some good gold over there.

I think that's fantasy land, parker.

Narrator: Two seasons ago,

Against foreman gene cheeseman's advice,

Parker spent over $100,000 to strip fantasy land.

Parker: It's a bit of a risk. You know, we are taking a gamble

Here with it.

But we're gonna give it a shot.

Narrator: Initially, it paid out well.

How's that for fantasy land?

That's, like, a proper nugget.

But for two years now...

What the

Broke the shank off.

...Permafrost has frozen him out.

The gold we need is right there.

It's just frozen.

Oh, fantasy land, fantasy land.

This is the best opportunity we've ever had, you know.

I think it should be thawed by now.

I mean, it's been sitting for over a year.

Kind of feel like we should take it.

You'll just need to prep a road and put a pump in, huh?

That's it, man. Then it's ready to go.

We can do it in three days.

We can make it happen. You reckon?

Yeah. It's a bit of a haul.

It is, but we'll put the people on it, hammer down --

Three days.

All right. Cool.

All right. Three days of hauling pay ain't the end of the world.

No. Good call, rick.

Thanks, buddy.

As much as I hate it.

As much as it pains me.

Now it's thawed,

The 50,000 square feet of virgin ground

Should be easy pickings.

Rick rallies the troops.

Gonna get it done.

And I think it's gonna be just what we need to get us

Past our season total and whup todd hoffman's ass.

So I'd say let's just hit it with everything we've got

And get it done.

Let's do it. Let's go.

Whoo!

Narrator: To keep the plant fed, four rock trucks

Have to haul 160 loads of dirt

For each of the next three days.

Parker: This whole cut, I mean, if we can get all this around that,

It's gonna really be a big boost for us.

Rick: There it is, mitch.

First load of pay out of fantasy land.

About time, huh?

Whoo!

You probably thought this day was never gonna come.

We hope it's got everything we need to get 3,000 ounces

And beat the hoffmans this season.

That's parker's big goal.

That's the goal we've set for our team,

And it's what we're gonna make happen with this cut here,

Hopefully.

Parker: Nice to be finally sluicing it, you know?

Not the way I want to do it.

And, you know, we're deviating from the plan

Quite a bit by trucking it and all that.

But hopefully it pays off.

It's a really, really important time.

We need to reach our goals.

Narrator: At mckinnon creek, the hoffman crew

Is back to mining their supercut.

But for the last four weeks, their enormous cut

Has failed to produce the 200 ounces of gold

They need a week

To hit their 2,700 ounce,

$3 million season goal.

Pierce: With the amount of dirt we've run,

We should have many thousands of ounces,

But just hasn't worked out that way this year.

Narrator: For the first time this season,

Todd hoffman has fallen behind his young rival, parker.

To catch up, he has to figure out

What they're doing wrong in the supercut.

I mean, I don't have to tell you guys this,

But 2,700, in my estimation, is slipping away.

Part of the reason why I mined here

Is 'cause I had drill holes.

This didn't mine like it drilled.

Plain and simple.

If it did, I'd be kicking parker's ass.

This hole right here is 12 ounces per 100.

There should be a lot more gold in that sluice box,

According to the drill holes.

The gold just wasn't in the dirt.

You wanna know what we ought to do?

We ought to go out there and take a really good look at it.

We could do some test pans in there at bedrock.

Sound good? Yeah.

Let's do it.

Narrator: Dave heads out to test an area

Of the cut they thought they'd picked clean.

Turin: So this is bedrock.

And sometimes the gold can settle down

In between these rocks that are laying sideways.

So I'm just gonna test here,

See if we left any gold in here.

This could be the difference in our season.

See that? See there?

There's probably 25 pieces of gold in that.

Multiply this by 100,000 --

That's a lot of gold.

We're going after 2,700 ounces.

We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars

To get to this point, and we start leaving gold.

That's bad.

Narrator: It's logan's job to get all of the gold-rich pay dirt

Out of the supercut.

We got a little bit of a problem.

What's that? At the other end,

What we thought was done --

This is what we're leaving behind.

Shoot.

It's way too much gold to be leaving in this cut.

Well, what was it in?