Gold Rush

Up in the goldfields of the Klondike...

Get the (BLEEP) truck back here.

..Parker's season is falling apart.

I think we got a problem. That's the edge of the cut.

His 2,000 ounce goal is looking more and more like a fantasy.

If we can't find something that's thawed, we might be in trouble.

His new untested ground is a disaster.

Garbage.

And his crew is losing confidence in him.

We'll run 100 hours.

That will be a 100-hour waste of time.

You don't want to waste time?

It's my (BLEEP) time to waste.

At Clear Creek...

Pull it up!

..Tony Beets struggles with the heaviest part

of his 75-year-old dredge.

But he has no idea if his under-sized crane is strong enough.

If the ladder's too heavy, it will pull the crane over.

One mistake, and someone will get hurt.

Up, up, up!

And over at McKinnon Creek...

..Todd Hoffman has persuaded his crew to give mining one last shot.

I'm glad we're not mining diamonds this year.

But straight away... This is ridiculous.

..Todd's operation is chaotic. I'm out of pay.

This is ridiculous.

The crew demands the return of Todd's right-hand man.

Why is Dave not here?

But getting Dave Turin back...

What is Todd Hoffman doing here?

..will cost Todd more than he bargained for.

I'll do it if I'm a partner.

And I can be 50% owner and I call all the shots.

In the Klondike,

Todd, Jack, and Thurber pull the mats

at the end of their third week at mining.

I hope we got some good gold. I seen some, Thurb.

What do you think? This looks good, Todd.

I'm seeing lots of gold in there.

I'm seeing it up at the top there.

It's chokey.

Looks excellent, man.

Look at that. That's what the guys came to see right there.

We took a big risk. I want to see a lot of gold in this clean-up.

Make them feel like they made a good decision.

Last week, Logan, Kevin, and Andy

made the decision to return.

None of them saw any real gold all of last season.

How does it look? What do you think, man?

That's not bad.

Let's measure it up.

20.

25.

34, 35, 36.

37, 38.

38.14. That's awesome.

It's been a long time since I've seen gold.

We didn't see a lot of this in the jungle.

I'm glad we're not mining diamonds this year.

You worked and sweated your ass off in the jungle.

We got jack (BLEEP).

This 38 ounces, with us three guys,

what can we do with all you guys?

That proves that there's gold in the ground. Let's get to work, huh?

For the first time this season,

Todd has a full team of miners working on McKinnon Creek.

If you want to get the pump, I'll get the plant going.

Sweet.

Logan Pierce and Kevin Hiatt fire up the washplant.

Here we go. I'm taking the water up.

Andy Hall's paydirt.

Right there, drop it.

Good job.

And Jack feeds the washplant in the 460 excavator.

This is as good as it gets right here.

The Hoffman crew is firing on all cylinders.

You guys got this plant sweet. Running good dirt.

We're finally doing it. Our first!

That's the sound of money.

My guys are here and it feels good.

We're going to kick some ass this year.

After eight hours,

the crew has already run 600 yards of paydirt.

Todd?

Yeah? I'm running out of paydirt.

Wait a minute. What?

You're out? Yeah, I'm out of pay.

The loader has got a distance to go.

And it can't go fast enough.

Three scoops in my bucket and the loader material is gone.

Todd has Andy in the loader,

hauling paydirt 730m from the cut to Little Red.

Andy, you got to get in there and get that faster if you can.

It ain't working.

We're at the point where we're going to run out of dirt.

You must be joking.

I'm loading as fast as we can.

But it's just way too slow.

Not going to keep up with all the (BLEEP) paydirt this way.

OK, Todd, Thurber, this is the last load.

I'm going to run this one through and that's it, I'm out of pay.

You want to shut down? Yeah.

I have to. I'm out of pay.

This is ridiculous.

We got good gold, good paydirt.

We just can't get it to the plant fast enough.

Jack and Todd, they're not good at planning.

That's the problem we have. There's no plan.

So we got to do something.

This isn't working.

I don't usually argue with you on things. I just do my job.

But I don't want to fail again.

We failed last season. I can't do that again.

No, I agree with you 100%.

I think you got great ground.

But without a plan,

and without Dave here

to figure out how to move this dirt,

it ain't going to work.

Why is Dave not here?

For four seasons, Dave Turin was Todd's right-hand man

and his secret weapon.

Two years ago, Dave was a key reason

the crew mined over a million dollars of Klondike gold.

But after last year's jungle disaster,

Dave left Todd to mine at Carmacks

with Freddy and Derek Dodge.

Big, nuggety Carmacks gold.

Now the crew is demanding Dave back.

I've already tried to get him here at least twice.

He says no, he ain't coming.

Last time, he actually sounded annoyed that I called.

So it's us, dude. We got to do it.

We got to do it on our own. We can't do it like we're doing it.

We're not going to put money in everybody's pockets.

You need to get in your (BLEEP) truck and drive to Carmacks

and talk to him in person.

North, at Clear Creek.

Tony Beets is racing to take apart his 75-year-old dredge.

His plan, move it 240 kilometres to a new claim.

And mine like the old-timers did 100 years ago.

Today, he faces his biggest challenge yet.

Removing the heaviest section of the 64m dredge.

What does that do?

The trommel is inside, right?

For 22 years, Tony's dredge mined for gold using a series of buckets

that ripped through paydirt

and sent it to a washplant inside the vessel.

On a good year, it produced 5,000 ounces of gold.

Worth $6 million today.

The 72 cast-iron buckets,

weighing around 20 tonnes,

are carried by a massive steel structure called the ladder.

A gigantic conveyor.

Tony has no idea what the ladder weighs

or if the 50-tonne crane can even move it.

The crane may be on its limits here when we get set up.

It's got a scale on it, so we can kind of tell what's safe.

We'll tug on it and see what it says, huh?

To detach the ladder,

Tony first has to remove the steel bolts

that secure it to the dredge

nine metres above the ground.

All right.

Let's do it.

Need gloves? No.

Once we cut her loose, we're committed.

Then we have no choice. She's got to go.

Just four 25cm steel bolts connect the massive ladder to the dredge.

With the steel bolts detached,

Jerry now plans to lift the ladder up and away from the body of the dredge.

No-one has made parts for a Yukon dredge for over 30 years.

If they damage the ladder,

there's no replacement.

If it does take the weight, we can take the ladder off.

Lower it on the truck and get it out of here.

If it doesn't, I'm not sure what we're going to do.

We're overloading.

The crane won't hold it. We got to stop.

At this angle, the crane can lift 13,000 kilos.

But it's not enough to budge the ancient steel ladder.

It's not going to take the weight like we figured.

So how the (BLEEP) is that going to work?

At Scribner Creek,

Parker Schnabel has been sluicing for four weeks.

He has 171 ounces of gold.

Worth just over $200,000.

To hit his 2,000 ounce, $2.4 million season goal,

he has to get 100 ounces a week.

So far, he's averaging just 43.

He needs to rethink his operation.

Hey, Chris. I've been looking at this pay pile.

Things are going pretty well, huh?

Yeah, the plant's running like a top.

I think we got enough to make it through the day anyway.

There's more than that if Rick keeps it coming.

You know what I'm thinking?

I'm afraid of what you're thinking, Parker.

You should be. I'm thinking we should start running 24/7.