Gold Rush

The crew was all here early.

Water's pumped out.

We're already pulling pay out of Rally Valley.

This is easily the best start of the season

I've ever been a part of up here.

Deep in the Yukon,

Rick Ness's crew digs paydirt,

eager to find out how much gold

lies at the bottom of Rally Valley.

Hey, you gotta fuel up this loader

before starting the day off.

Haven't seen Rick today.

It's definitely not normal that Rick's not here in the morning.

Something must be bothering him.

Something's going on.

He's kind of hiding out in his trailer.

Hope he's got things under control

and little worried about him.

- Hey, Troy. - Hey, Rick.

Last week, Rick received news that changed everything.

We've got a big problem

with the water license being approved.

And I can't guarantee you'll have the license next year.

Without the water license, you can't mine.

I mean, I--

I've got millions of dollars invested in this.

My entire future is hanging in the balance right now

and I, I, I don't--

I just can't even deal with it at the moment, so.

After four years of exploring Duncan Creek

to find the best gold,

Rick was on the brink of buying the claim outright.

But now, he only has six months of guaranteed mining,

forcing him to rethink everything.

The season he took off,

obviously, he was struggling with a lot of stuff and

personally and what not and,

I worry about that.

I know he's got a little bit more on his plate this year.

Gonna go check in on Rick.

He missed dinner the last couple of nights,

just making sure everything's okay.

Oh, doggo.

Oh, hey.

- What's going on, bud? - Hey, bro.

Oh, .

Man.

I just wanted to make sure you weren't down in the dumps like that one year.

I don't know.

I've been talking with Troy.

I got some news.

It's looking like they may not approve

our water license for next year.

That's really slammed me right in the face.

Yeah, not the best,

best thing to wake up to when you get up here.

I feel bad I'm not out here,

but it's just obviously dragging me down.

That's everything I've invested in this.

Not just this place, but in this whole business.

This was supposed to be, uh,

the last year of paying this off and,

being set up now for whatever I wanna do,

- basically the rest of my life. - Oh, yeah.

I know you didn't come up here for a snatch and grab,

but it was more of a...

- Long term thing. - ...long term thing.

So, I get it.

If this ship is sinking,

why throw any more money at it?

It's not a fun thing to think about right now,

but unfortunately it's just sitting right there

in front of me and I can't not.

- Well, this might be the last year mining. - Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know if I've got it in me.

You know, financially, uh, in my heart, I just don't know.

So, I've got decisions to make.

We got your back.

So, whatever you need, we're here.

All right.

Well, I'll get back down there.

- Later, man. Appreciate it. - Awesome.

All right.

I'm worried, this water license thing.

It's just .

I don't know what he's gonna do.

Hopefully, we see him tomorrow down there in the cut.

Pretty much every machine that we have

is at work right now.

We have a lot of ground to get through,

and so we just needed to get sluicing early

in order to try to get through it all.

It's a pretty big struggle getting ahead.

Really, we have to be up there

in the 10,000 ounce range a year

over the lifespan of this project.

For Parker Schnabel to bring in 10,000 ounces,

$25 million in gold this season,

everything rides on mining out the long cut first.

It's a little stressful.

The long cut is kind of the only piece of ground

that we have anywhere near pay.

There's definitely a lot of tough decisions here to make,

like when to start sluicing

and even, like, what material to sluice.

Last week,

Parker's plans completely unraveled...

Doesn't look like there's any gold in here.

...when he discovered the long cut

wasn't ready to sluice.

We found a lot of sand, a lot of mud up there.

That makes me really nervous.

We can't put that through a wash plant.

We need to go deeper.

Parker miscalculated the depth of the pay.

Scrambling for a backup,

he's charged most of his crew with stripping a new area.

The bridge cut.

But there's more bad news.

Right now, all the pits are frozen, so that sucks.

So, we're back to the long cut,

trying to get things figured out here.

The theme of this place for a while

is gonna be battling frost.

Determined not to let the long cut defeat him,

Parker's come up with a new plan.

He's ordered his crew to dig an 8000 foot long ditch

around the edge of the entire cut

to help drain its meltwater

and speed up thawing the overburden,

so they can get down to pay.

Going deeper at the cut's edge,

Parker's crew will hit pay in the ditches first,

which build stockpile and run through wash plant, Roxanne.

Mitch is definitely gonna have his hands full

of trying to get these ditches down.

Parker wants some income and see some gold,

and that means that we've gotta get out here

and get aggressive.

Foreman Mitch Blaschke

leads a skeleton ditching crew.

He's breaking up the permafrost in the ditches

with a 480 excavator,

the only machine available with a custom ripper,

the devil's finger.

Our ditches are gonna be our lifeline here

to keeping Roxanne going.

But as you can see,

we're just beating this thing up.

It's rattling, shaking.

But you can see

we got a pretty good amount of water

ripping down this ditch, which is a good thing,

because that's letting us know that this cut is thawing.

I'm just working on getting some pay for Roxanne.

Tyson Lee follows behind Mitch,

collecting ditch pay

to build the stockpile Parker wants,

ready for Roxanne by the end of the week.

You know,

these next six years have a lot riding on them.

We've gotta work faster, work harder, work smarter,

and try and get back sluicing.

Yeah, we're trying to chisel our way through,

and get down to some of that nice yellow gold that's at the bottom.

Oh.

Oh, man.

Oh, yeah, you don't wanna turn either, huh?

You've gotta be kidding me.

Like, of all the machines.

I heard, uh, something go wrong with it.

It sounded like I had a big rock, like,

caught between the tracks and the bottom side of the machine.

And you could hear that,

you know, the gears popping there.

And now, the machine doesn't wanna turn side to side.

Hey, Taylor, you got a copy, Taylor?

Yeah, go ahead.

Hey, buddy, I wish I had some good news,

but, uh, the 480 just, uh,

appears it lost the swing drive here.

All right, yeah, I'll be on my way.

Not good right now,

I need this machine out, moving dirt.

How's it going?

I think the old swing motor there has seen better days.

Yeah.

I mean, first, first thing to do is yank it out and see.

Um, well, we won't know the carnage

until we take it apart.

We got the crane here.

We're gonna get this thing pulled out,

get it apart and see what we find.

- Here we go. - Nice and slow.

Check this thing out, man.

Holy .

There is no fixing that.

The bearings, they're hanging out at the bottom,

you can see the bottom of this here.

It's completely sheared off.