Here we are at the end of the season.
At this point, we're, like,
not even anywhere near 1,000 oz,
so that's a little bit disappointing.
And gold-wise across the board, obviously,
we're way below where we wanted to be.
Thirty year old Parker schnabel
is struggling to end the season on a high note.
After starting with lofty aspirations
and a 10,000 oz target,
a series of bad calls has banked him
just half that
and left him with just one running wash plant.
Big red's doing half an ounce an hour,
you know, the last few cleanups were kind of bad.
So... we're still very short on gold
and very short on time.
With only a few weeks left
before winter shuts him down,
Parker is back where he was at the start of the season,
flush with ground but none of it thawed.
Or ready to sluice.
I'm in the elbow cut.
This little corner where we first started last year.
This pit is the most logical one to take out next,
because it would be the first one
that would need to come out next year.
But right now, it's an added cost.
You know, it's not ready to be sluiced.
But we can make it ready with a bit of ripping.
We normally don't rip gravel.
It's very hard on the 11s, but we need gold coming in.
This was a very avoidable situation.
I should have got this ready months ago
so that it would have been fine to sluice it.
So that was a major on my part.
Adding to Parker's problems,
his crew is already stretched thin.
At the bridge cut,
they're sluicing red gravels with big red.
A mile north, alongside the mined out long cut,
ten of his crew are also opening up
a new cut for next season.
One thousand feet to the south
on the corner of last season's mega rich money pit,
Parker is stripping
a three-acre area called the elbow cut.
This is where he wants to sluice next.
But he still has to remove two feet of overburden.
Then, rip the frozen pay layer in just days.
To move the dirt quickly,
Parker's breaking out another massive d11 dozer.
Yeah. They've come up with this stupid plan
with the most expensive thing they can find.
Money-burning d-11.
Briefcases of money burning.
It's got a new ripper,
a new undercarriage, new edges.
It's ready to go wreck itself in the piggy bank.
Foreman Mitch blaschke hops in the second d-11
to join Parker moving the overburden.
Right now, Parker and I are in the elbow cut,
and when you think about it, it's very expensive.
You're running a multi-million dollar dozer
that consumes a lot of fuel.
But it's the only way we're gonna get this gold
out of the ground this season.
Right now, with gold prices being high,
Parker said, "let's get some more of it."
So, he's throwing everything we can at it here.
To haul out the mud as fast as possible.
Parker has also called in his 750 excavator and biggest rock trucks,
I just gotta send it through these mud ruts like they're not even here.
Just keep moving.
Personally, for me,
I love going as fast as you can.
Driving these things is like
I feel like a giant kid in the sandbox,
just driving my big rock truck.
It's a lot of fun to go fast.
I kind of buried in the mud a little bit.
You know, when the edge gets soft there,
it's a long ways down for these trucks.
So you don't want the truck tumbling off
the back side of it here.
And we're gonna have a little look here.
Yeah, he's stuck.
Hey, you can't park there!
To rescue the truck,
Mitch pulls rookie excavator operator Jack frischkorn out of the cut,
to travel 600ft to the waste pile.
James, man, what'd you do?
Yeah, she's a bit soft.
So, right now,
we've got Jack up here with the 750,
and this is his first time pulling something out like this.
But no better time to learn than the present.
All right, Jack, bring her in.
Let's see if you can't reach in the box there
and get this thing tugged out.
You just gotta watch
that you don't slide the bucket out
and end up coming down and clipping the cab.
So, just try and get him some pull there
and just try and inch it back.
And let's see what happens here.
Yeah, you'll have a better angle there.
Try and give a little throttle there.
Yep. Work with him, work with him.
You got it. Nice job, guys.
Whoo!
Out, baby.
Right on. We got her out safe and sound.
When you're stuck on the side of a mud dump
looking down the side of the hill,
it's never fun.
You know, we got that truck back up and rolling.
It definitely cost us a little bit of time,
but we're back moving dirt now
and, hopefully, it doesn't happen again.
The truck rescued,
Mitch rejoins Parker in the cut
to get the last of the mud out
before ripping the frozen pay
so that they can sluice by the end of the week.
It's definitely expensive.
It's difficult.
So that's left us with no other option
than getting in there with the dozer
and ripping that ground.
We're just hoping there's enough gold in here
to make all this worthwhile.
Hey, Parker, you got a copy?
What do you think, man? How's your side looking?
Yeah, we've got all the mud out.
It's crazy how good progress we're making.
I can't believe we got it done.
That's just pay dirt.
Now we've got to get this bunch of pay ripped out.
Get Roxanne down here.
And keep some decent gold coming in.
We've got to get this done.
We're running dirt.
This is the end push!
Let's go, go, go!
If Rick's right about this Vegas valley,
we're all excited to see what kind of gold we got in the sluice runs.
Rick ness is on a make-or-break treasure hunt.
After hitting it big.
Before deciding to gamble on Vegas valley.
Now, after burning six weeks and one million dollars,
he's finally sluicing the 160-foot deep cut
and is just days away
from finding out if his big gamble.
It could be his last ever season.
Tensions are running high.
Everybody's nervous about it because
we don't necessarily have all the time in the world.
But I'm betting on it paying off.
The bottom line is, you got to put gold in these guy's pockets.
I mean, at the end of the day, that's what they're here for.
They got bills to pay.
Bailey, quit off.
Did you know if you can't turn right,
a lot of times, you can turn left?
You know, it can be toxic for a crew,
and when that happens, you kind of lose control.
My buddy zee is on his way in right now.
Actually, I'm shorthanded as usual.
Rick has called in best buddy "zee" zaremba.
Look at the smile on his face.
Danny!
- What's up, buddy? - What's up?
What's going on?
- Good to see you, buddy. - Good to see you.
So we haven't seen any gold in a couple months here.
And everyone's probably happy about that.
Yeah, yeah, very happy.
Everybody's finding a way to get on everybody else's last nerve.
It's just it's such a mess.
Great, just great.
- Yeah. - Man, I'm sorry.
She was the one that pushed for me to come up.
Well, god bless her for letting you take-off like this.
I mean, that's...
You know how much she cares about you, too.
I do. Yeah.
That's incredibly generous of her, to let you come up here.
- Yeah. - Like, I really appreciate it.
It's not lost on me, that's for sure.
No, whatever you need.
Like I said before, whenever you need help, I'm here.
Let's go see the guys.
Let's go see 'em.
Rick puts zee straight to work
trucking pay out of Vegas valley
to monster red's pay pile.
I know kind of how.
Someone always tosses him in the truck
that's not working properly.
Thanks, Bailey.
- You, Bailey. - Bailey is just laughing at me.
There's all that bickering I was missing.
I'm glad we're all on the same page.
Me too. Hopefully, we can all move forward from this.
Usually, when that happens, it's 'cause it's trying to rip itself apart.
If this belt's torn and we can't fix it, then that's it.
I mean, we don't have another feeder to feed this plant.
If we're waiting on a belt, we might as well pack it up.
These things go 30-40 grand, so I can't afford to have a spare.
Everything on the site.
We're, we're so.
I found a rock!
That is a big rock in here.
It's stuck.
I'm assuming that had come through this side
and actually rolled down into this cog pulley right here,
Holy.
Well, then, if that's the case,
let's just let some tension off
and try to pry that out of there.
All right, Kyle, can you reach the tension?
Yep, you're good.
All right. Tensions off.
Wow...
Holy. That's big.
And pretty much could've just packed it up for the season.
But imagine... Ease the tension off it.
Pull it out, re-tension it.
That could have cost us the a major up this season.
Fire it up.
With monster red running,
After a mid-season lull in gold production,
klondike legend Tony beets is gaining momentum.
But it's already raced through its one-acre cut
and will soon run out of pay.
Close to his 30-year-old shaker deck.
Well, we'll have a look in the back and we'll have to move the plant.
But cousin Mike wants to use the newer, more reliable sluice-a-lot.
To get sluicing, Mike must drag the 45-ton wash plant
past the camp, around a broken bridge
all the way through the mined out cut to a new pad.
Just 'cause your last name is beets.
What?
And we already are struggling, getting uphill
and barely moving through these spinning tracks.
Yeah, I'm getting pretty close to the edge.
Okay.
- Yes, I do. - Right?
Is that what you wanted to hear?
And bank more gold,
Parker has blown $250,000, opening up the new elbow cut,
He wants to keep that going on all day.
So we're gonna have traffic on the road.
We're just gonna have to watch out with those guys.
Hopefully, we can get this done today and get it back running.
And all its parts a mile down a narrow Ridge road.
Safely avoiding rock trucks hauling pay to its new pad,
200ft downstream from the elbow cut.
We have haul trucks on it, but we have no time to waste.
Tyson must now drag the 40-ton wash plant up the 30-foot path.
This is a steep and narrow ramp.
We're dragging rocks in and up the 480 here.
I don't know how much it's going to like pulling it up this slope.
If this thing gets off to an edge,
it's going to topple right over.
Come on, keep it going!
It doesn't want to pull it, if it's just climbing up on an angle.
Whoa, whoa,
well, you can see when Tyson's got the angle all wrong there on the bucket,
it will never work like that.
Mitch, I know how to pull a wash plant.
So get your panties out of your butt.
Yeah.
It's called work smarter, not harder, right?
You guys doing all right over there?
Yeah, one day at a time.
Keep it going!
Here we go. She's back to the top.
We're getting close to the sluice runs.
How are we looking?
Keep it going.
This is the tricky bit.
The wash plant's got to come in with a couple of engines and the sluice runs.
Now, we just got to get Tyson off the hill here.
Well, here we go.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
That was a little close for comfort.
Everybody's done an awesome job.
You ready to fire this thing up?
Yep. All good to go.
All right. Let's get her shaking.
We got some dirt slung up this thing.
Sounds good.
Here we go.
All right. It's the first bucket of pay dirt.
It's the end of the season.
We're pulling prey from Vegas valley.
Hopefully, it's good and the weather holds out.
It's the water line, let go.
. Hose blew off.
It just slid right off.
So I'm heading up top.
Ryan's gonna feed that water line up to me,
And it is up our universe, man.
That are right in line with this rock right here.
Is rock that's big enough to fit through here.
That's our first section, the second section of screen deck,
the rock that's supposed to be coming through these
is only supposed to be that big.
So that big rock right there is going through,
and it's puncturing the smaller screen decks.
And what that's doing is causing bigger material
to build up in our distribution box.
Paydirt is fed into monster red's hopper.
It's unfortunate, but we've got to get it fixed now.
When you think about it
would have been several more hours till the end of the day.
A little newer.
Now we're going to fire back up.
I'll jump up there. If you want to fire it up,
we'll make sure all those screen decks
that we put in aren't gonna bounce out.
Okay.
We're gonna try to keep sluicing for as long as possible.
With son Mike running the trommel at paradise hill.
Full ass, baby.
Did you just shatter the window?
It looks beautiful.
Michael, let's start with yours.
To hit their 5,000oz target,
the beets need their three wash plants to deliver 637 oz.
First up, Mike's trommel from the hill.
Okay, you ready? Go.
Ten, 20, 30,
80, 90, 150, 160,
230, 240, 250
251.48.
That's a pretty good amount of gold, Mike.
It is.
So what happens with sluice-a-lot?
Second to weigh in,
the gold from the extension of Tony's comeback cut.
Ready, set, go.
Sixty, 70, 100, 110... A hundred and twenty.
146.46.
- Incoming! - Hey.
Hey, buddy.
You got some new scenery now?
Yeah. Getting Roxanne up on the flat pad there
was definitely... We didn't have a lot of real estate.
It was quick, fast, in a hurry.
Yeah. Nice job getting that up there.
- Thanks, man. - That was a tight one.
Yeah, definitely.
Hopefully, there's some gold in that stuff.
Parker is gunning for 8,000oz this year.
We needed that pit to come out this year.
It'll probably just refreeze if it temps start dropping.
- Thank you. - You too, Tyson.
Yeah, you too, Tyson.
And it's so nice to come into something as nice as the elbow cut.
I really screwed up by not stripping it this summer.
That's what gives you the sleepless nights.
- Well. - Yeah.
As long as you don't come to that door one day and go,
"I just fired myself."
I think about it all the time.
Don't do that.
Too many people depend on you now.
Now, it's time to see if they've hit the jackpot.
You guys put your gold bonuses on the line for that.
A long-time stripping, digging a deep hole and not knowing,
"you know, if we get to the bottom, what would be at the bottom?"
This is the start of it.
Yeah, it's definitely been some challenge.
- Starting that cut. - Should we weight it up?
All right, so there's a fair amount in here, so let's count it out.
Rick's old hotspot,
rally valley, averaged 300oz a week.
He's hoping the first pay from Vegas valley
will deliver at least 200.
And
10, 20, 30, 40, 50
56.7.
And, cool.
I'll tell you right now, there's 200 in this bottle.
- Yeah! - 256.7 oz.
It's going to get more and more difficult the deeper we go.
But it'll mean that there's that much more gold there.