Gold Rush

Narrator: On this "gold rush"...

We're losing gold.

Bunch of joke.

Todd: Here we go. We're gonna make a million-dollar mountain.

Hiatt: Whoa! Holy it's on fire.

Todd: That's it. Cut it.

Take the shaft and weld it right into the engine. I don't care.

Ibarra: This was just a stupid call. Stupid.

And now we hit... We're broke down.

We're gonna fail if we keep doing this.

Parker: That plant needs to be running. Uptime, uptime, uptime.

I know todd's going pretty hard,

But I don't think he stands a chance.

Hoo! We been busting our ass for that stuff.

Ness: Keep going. Keep going. Keep going.

You gonna take my deal or not?

I would love to kick your butt.

I'm not here to lose.

Captions paid for by discovery communications

We're in a disaster zone.

Narrator: 21-year-old parker schnabel

Is visiting his rival, todd hoffman.

Parker: That loader's smaller than our loader.

They aren't running 300 yards an hour, I'll tell you that.

Oh, man.

Narrator: After a bad start to the season,

Parker has made a comeback.

He now has 1,450 ounces of gold,

Trailing the hoffman crew by just 250 ounces.

-How's it going? -Hey, how are ya?

I'm all right.

So what can I do ya for, buddy?

I actually heard that you might be interested in selling

That gold rig you got.

Well, I would be open to it.

-That's it there? -Yep. Want to go look at it?

Yeah, if we could.

Your table'll fit right on there.

Your jigs'll go right down there.

Think we used to set it about right here,

And then you'd just shovel in.

What do you want for this?

I got $30,000 in this thing.

But last year, I did about $1.7 million, you know?

But you're talking about it like it had something to do with it.

Why don't you make me an offer, parker?

I don't know what the thing's worth.

Take 12,000 bucks?

This is the deal.

If I beat you this year,

I'ma give you this container, okay?

You do not have to pay for it.

If you beat me, pay me $15,000 worth of gold

At the end of season.

This is a great bet.

It's a bet. It's a good bet.

-I've got nothing to lose. -You really don't.

I'm just trying to figure out what your angle is.

If I beat you,

I'd probably pull off a miracle down here,

And you probably had some things go wrong down there.

And at least one guy did something good for ya this year.

And that would be me.

I'm not here for favors, todd.

Well, you could do it either way.

Are you gonna take my deal or not?

You got a chance of not paying me.

-By losing. -I'd take that one.

I'm not here to lose.

I'm taking the deal, and I'm gonna pay you

'cause I'm gonna beat you.

Challenge accepted.

If I kick your ass, it's yours.

Consider it a birthday gift.

Don't get me wrong. I would love to kick your butt.

But I think I got more heart.

-Really? -I do.

We'll find out.

I think we've got more discipline.

We'll find out. I doubt it.

-Really? -Yeah.

We'll find out, parker.

Oh, man.

Todd: I was his age once. I was 21.

No matter what he says or what he does

Or how he treats people,

I don't believe in parker's ability

To keep his team together.

Parker: He's playing a game,

Trying to get us relaxed, I think.

Todd: We got a better team, and we got bigger hearts.

And that -- that's why we're gonna beat him this year.

He said they've got more heart than us.

They don't have more heart than us.

Why the -- what does that even mean?

Narrator: Klondike legend tony beets takes gene cheeseman,

"big mike" beaudry, and his son, kevin,

On a 60-mile trip

To see the latest addition to his operation.

Despite an epic struggle

To get his first dredge to pay for itself,

Tony has doubled down and bought a second antique mining machine,

The thistle creek dredge.

This machine was built in the 1940s,

But it ran dirt for less than 5 years

And has survived 70 yukon winters.

Just for the hell of it, why not make it run?

Everything's pretty much complete.

Narrator: The thistle creek dredge is missing its bucket line.

Without the 77 cast-iron buckets

To chew through the pay dirt, the dredge is useless.

Cheeseman: Could've found an easier trail maybe.

They look to be horrible.

Cheeseman: I got 37 also.

With no spare buckets available, tony's only option

Is to take one bucket to use as a model

To have replacements cast.

They need to find a bucket lying upside down

So they can remove its connecting pin.

Uh, this is gonna be the easiest one to try.

Kevin: Oh, yeah. There we go.

Get it!

Get that chain.

Not only does the chopper

Have to lift the 700-pound cast-iron bucket,

It also has to free it from the mud

It's been sitting in for over half a century.

Todd: Here we go.

Narrator: After 3 months opening up their biggest cut,

The hoffman crew has reached a watershed moment.

Right now, we're stripping the very, very last

Of the overburden in the extension of the supercut.

I want to get this out of here as fast as we can.

So what I want to do is move every piece

Of equipment we have.

A 700 excavator, an 800 excavator,

And five 40-ton rock trucks and a d11 dozer.

And that's a lot of horsepower, lot of manpower.

And quite frankly, it's a lot of money.

We're just gonna have to be on our game.

Let's get this stuff out of here.

Just 2 months ago, I said to myself,

"that will never happen."

We will never get to the end of it.

And now here we are.

This is it. This is the last of the overburden.

Narrator: To hit their $3 million season goal,

The hoffmans still need

Over a million dollars' worth of gold.

Todd: We're gonna start running pay.

We're gonna keep sending in enough pay

Till we got a million dollars' worth of pay

Sitting up on the ramp.

We're gonna make a million-dollar-mountain.

Narrator: All season, the hoffman crew

Has used two rock trucks

To haul pay dirt to the wash plant,

And three rock trucks to remove overburden.

Now that they've removed the last of the overburden

From the supercut,

They can use all five rock trucks

To haul pay to the plant.

That will double the amount of pay dirt they can move,

Allowing todd to build a 40-foot-tall stockpile

That he hopes will hold $1 million in gold.

Hey, kevin. The overburden's done.

I'm gonna give you a million-dollar pay pile.

Bring it on, logan.

Todd's threatening to bury me in -- in pay.

Being drowning in pay right now isn't such a bad thing.

If todd brings $1 million worth of pay up here,

Our pay problems are over.

Million-dollar pay pile, bring it on.

Whoa! Holy it's on fire.

Cut the power!

Hiatt: Fire. Get up here quick.

Narrator: Smoke is pouring out of the hoffman's radial stacker.

Hiatt: Look, I'm telling you, it caught on fire.

But I don't know...

Turin: What's going on?

Hiatt: We got to wait for it to cool down.

Ibarra: Oh, no.

Oh, no, no.

We can't afford to be down.

That front seal is completely gone.

I mean, it's sizzling still.

Todd, I think it got caught on fire

And burnt up.

How bad is it?

There's something massively wrong.

-Hang on a second. -

-You all right? -Yeah.

This is supposed to have little sprockets

Right here for the gear to grab.

It tore 'em all out. It's plastic.

As you could see, I mean, it melted 'em out,

And it's toast. All those little ribs are gone.

Narrator: The tailings conveyor is powered by a motor at its base.

The motor turns a plastic wheel

That powers the conveyor mechanism,