Gold Rush

.

As time is running out for Tony Beets...

Six months' hard work,

finally it's coming to a head down here.

Everybody ready? Let's go. Let's make this happening.

..the all-important bucket line breaks...

Whoa, whoa! Shut her off!

..pushing Tony to his breaking point.

It's not (BLEEP) funny any more.

The Hoffman crew is out of pay...

This is all the paydirt we've got. You're frickin' kidding me.

..and winter locks up Monster Red's sluice-box.

This is the problem, right here.

Just when it looks like the season's over...

Gonna have to shut it down. (BLEEP)

..Andy hatches a plan...

Do not shut that plant down. I will get you dirt.

..to make one last push for 1,000oz.

Parker Schnabel is on main pay...

Definitely some of the better stuff I've seen.

It's coming together pretty nicely.

Yee-haw!

..but the young mine boss is tested...

..when his machines fail...

I've lost all controls of the excavator.

..and the Yukon winter hits.

Do you quit or do you fight for it?

I still think just hang in there till the end.

At McKinnon Creek, winter has arrived.

Whew! It's cold this morning.

Really cold.

And the Hoffman crew has run out of thawed paydirt.

You know what? I think we took a chance, took a gamble

on that haul-road cut.

Didn't pay off.

Kind of a waste of time in the end.

I don't know what we'll do, though.

Higher cut's about all we got now.

Guess that goes to show

maybe we should pay attention to the dirt results.

Last week, Todd and Dave had to abandon

the cut on the north side of the haul road,

leaving them 186oz short

of their 1,000oz, $1.2 million goal.

You're frickin' kidding me.

To make matters worse,

Monster Red's sluice-boxes are frozen solid.

This is the problem, right here.

This has, uh, kinda snuck up on us this morning.

This is gonna take us a couple hours to thaw out.

It's time that we really don't have.

We should be sluicing.

The crew now has to waste precious time

thawing out the sluices.

Right now, if you put gold in it,

it'll just wash right on down and out the box.

Well, the plan is we're gonna run the water.

Once that gravel gets thawed out and it starts moving,

then we can sluice again.

So, we're just gonna go kinda slow, let it warm up, thaw out.

As it gets colder at night, this will continue to get worse.

We're gonna have to figure something out.

It will take a couple of hours for the sluices to thaw,

but the crew faces a bigger problem.

A shortage of thawed paydirt threatens to shut them down.

Mine boss Dave Turin desperately needs to find gold-rich ground

to keep their season alive.

Well, we're gonna check

to see how good the gold is at the higher cut.

Five weeks ago,

the Hoffmans stripped an extension to their higher cut.

They started mining it and found good gold.

But it soon ran out.

The drill holes on the south side are patchy,

but Dave thinks they could still hold the best gold.

All we're doing is kinda going on a hunch,

because we know it wasn't real good,

but we're moving to a different section of the pit,

a little bit deeper into the bedrock.

Andy Spinks digs test holes in the south side of the extension

for Dave to pan.

You know, working in this cut, for the most part,

it's all nice and thawed out.

Digging right down into bedrock,

so hopefully it's got a lot of good gold in it.

What's happening is the bedrock's changing.

There's always the possibility of hitting a hot spot here.

So we'll see what we've got.

This looks bad.

Yeah, there's nothing in it.

Now you're talking.

As Andy digs the next hole, there's a change in the rock.

Here's exactly what we're looking for.

We still got river rock, and then you got bedrock.

See how sharp and angular it is?

And you got all this round rock.

Right where those two meet is where all the gold is.

These are the treasure hunts that we go on.

Every gold-miner's looking for stuff like this.

The rocks indicate

that an ancient river once ran through here.

Any gold carried by the water would have sunk

along with the heavy, round river rocks,

eventually accumulating in a pay streak on the bedrock.

Holy (BLEEP).

Holy cow.

I think this could be a good pan.

Look at that.

I got three big pieces just showing themselves right there.

Holy (BLEEP).

We needed this.

I don't know what you did.

We hit a good spot.

That's probably one of the best pans I've had up here.

If the rest of this is like that...

Nice time of year to hit that.

Maybe this is the break we're looking for.

I'm gonna get some of that to the plant. No kidding.

East at Scribner Creek...

..Parker Schnabel has already banked 1,723oz,

worth over $2 million.

He's on track to hit his 2,000oz, $2.4 million goal.

Starting to get cold, and we've got a lot of gold to find still,

so we need to keep on it, really.

You know, this cut has really been paying off real well.

If we just stick with it,

we should be able to break a 2,000 mark.

Looking good.

Hey, this is some pretty good-looking pay -

a lot of big, coarse rock.

Coarse gold, too.

You know, we've been finding nice nuggets.

Definitely some of the better stuff I've seen.

Everything's coming together pretty nicely.

Couldn't ask for better timing for it.

Just a week ago, Parker diverted a creek

to mine a rich gold streak of main pay on the riverbed.

Now his crew is removing a vast area of overburden

to get down to the thawed paydirt on the side of the creek.

But to move the mountain of overburden,

they need every machine they have.

It's the end of the season, and this is really our only focus.

This is the berm cut. This is what we have.

We're stripping overburden and we're hauling pay.

We've got all of our machines in here.

We're in a very, very small area,

and we're just going at it cos, really, this is it.

Gene and Rick dig out the paydirt in the two 460 excavators

and send it off to the plant,

while Greg chews through the overburden in the larger 700.

I'm moving overburden as fast as we can,

trying to get Rick down to some more paydirt.

It's about taking what we can get.

We've gotta dance. We gotta move back and forth,

both excavators loading.

We're moving today.

I've lost all controls of the excavator.

This is bad news. I don't know what's going on.

I got... I've got no controls.

I'm gonna go get Mitch.

thing.

The 700, right now, is moving

twice as much dirt as a 460, just about, and we need it bad.

Hopefully, Mitch can work his magic in a few minutes,

have the problem figured out,

and get us wired back together and off and rolling again.

Otherwise, this could...

this could finish us off, right here.

Without the 700 clearing overburden,

the crew's supply of paydirt won't last for long.

Hopefully, it's something simple and quick.

What the hell's going on, Greg?

It just stopped. Just dead.

The hydraulic's not responding, so the next thing is

I'm just gonna keep following the wiring back

and see how everything looks.

See what it's got for pressure.

So, what's the story with this pig?

Lost the pilot pump.

The pilot pump sends hydraulic fluid throughout the 700.

It's kinda the brain.

It's what tells everything what you're asking for.

Without it, the excavator won't run.

We don't have any spares out here, so looks like a little bit more

than just a five-minute fix, here.

All right. Let me know. All right.

We need this thing running. I'll see what I can do.

Overburden's the game right now.

We've got 40ft of overburden and only 4ft of pay.

This was the machine that we were moving all our mud with,

and we were winning the battle until now.

.

.

At McKinnon Creek,

with temperatures now dropping below freezing at night,

the Hoffman crew needs a way

to keep their sluices from freezing solid.

Kevin Hiatt has a plan.

If you go hunting, you realise that if you slam a heater

in your tent with you, it keeps it warm.