[adventurous music plays]
[Parker] I saw a few bones in the pay pile.
Is that a mammoth tusk?
Rib bone, I think.
Right? Rib bone?
I don't know.
Yeah, so things are going really well so far,
you know, we're like coming out of the gate moving and we're
over 2,000 ounces, but I'm waiting for something
to go massively wrong because things don't go
this smoothly for very long.
Six weeks into the season,
30-year-old Parker Schnabel's plan
to mine more than 35 million dollars in gold is right
on schedule.
[Parker] Tyson is being an animal this year.
He's done over 1,500 ounces already here on Dominion.
And then Mitch is doing a really good job over
at Sulphur.
Sulphur had over a 350-ounce cleanup
last week, so that's crazy.
Parker's plan includes squeezing every ounce he can
out of his Sulphur Creek claim, where foreman Mitch Blaschke
has been hunting for gold rich pockets the old timers missed.
You know, it's been full throttle since the beginning
of the season here in Sulphur, trying to get all the work done
before the water license expires.
Just want to make sure that we get what's ours and don't
leave anything behind.
Mitch is down to just three weeks to get it all done.
Making the job harder, his top dirt mover,
Brennan Ruault, was recently sent to open ground
at their next claim.
[Parker] Right now we're threading a bunch of needles with Brennan
trying to have the Indian River ready.
Mitch trying to have Sulphur done before the water
license expires.
We need to get the whole project done, reclaimed,
and be out.
[pensive music plays]
-[Mitch] How's it going? -[Parker] Good.
-How are you? -[Mitch] Doing well.
Yeah, nice to be getting to the close of this one.
-We can start the next project. -[Parker] Yeah.
Holy, that's a hole.
Wow.
Very muddy hole.
[squelching]
[Parker] Nobody's done any panning in here, I'm guessing.
[Mitch] Not on this upper section.
We were trying to get it out as fast as we could, get her
to the plant and... -[Parker] Right.
Well, I'll pan some of this, just out of curiosity.
[intriguing music plays]
All right, well, let's see what we've got.
[sloshing]
Holy smokes!
[Parker] That's a hell of a pan.
Must be 100 pieces of gold in there.
-[Mitch] Wow! -[Parker] Yeah.
[Mitch] That's pretty wild.
What do you think?
[Parker] It's worth staying here a little longer and getting that last
little bit of pay, there's gold there, and that's what
we're here for.
But we got a lot of sluicing to do already this year, so...
[Parker] There's a lot of sluicing to do.
It always turns into a lot bigger project
than we think, doesn't it?
I wanna stand up there and look at it.
[upbeat music plays]
[Mitch] How far does that go?
[Parker] Straight to this tree right here.
That's probably where I would go to.
[Mitch] You know, it's gonna be tight.
[Parker] Could just have, like, Brennan come over here.
That's the best chance that you've got at getting the pay
down here in time and getting it ran.
[Mitch] That'd be sweet.
[Parker] All right, I'll keep you updated.
Over the last six weeks, Mitch has dug out all the pay
pockets of the two-acre cut and is sluicing the last
of its stockpiled pay.
But Parker believes the old-timer's dredge missed
even more gold and thinks the pay streak extends
up to the road.
He wants Mitch to expand the cut by another two acres
and sluice all of its pay before the water license
runs out.
If Parker's move pays off, he could bank another
500 ounces worth one and three-quarter million dollars.
[Mitch] Just when we thought Sulphur here was coming to a close
in typical Parker fashion, now he's saying, you know,
"Hey, I want even more dirt out of there."
We're pushing this project all the way to its absolute limit.
So I'm just hoping we can get everything done here and sluice,
but it's just messing with our timeline.
[car horn honking]
[truck horn honking]
[Brennan] Brother!
All right, the cavalry's here. We can certainly use the help.
Whoo!
[laughs]
We're here, happy to help, man.
To give Mitch a fighting chance, Parker has sent in
the big guns.
[Brennan] So we've got five trucks, two excavators, and the loader
feeding the plant.
We're on a hot streak right now.
Let's stay with it, and [bleep] finish it off,
and get every speck of gold we can get out of here.
You know, everything up here is risk over reward.
And right now, the risk is we got ourselves a lot of dirt
to move here, not much time.
But Parker thinks it's worth the reward.
[thrilling music plays]
[Rick] First gold weigh of the year.
You're always hoping for a good one, right?
It can set, you know, kind of set the pace
for the rest of the year. Uh...
We had the opposite of that.
A hundred miles away, Rick Ness is still trying
to recover from a major setback
after failing to obtain
the water license needed to mine his gold-rich
Duncan Creek Claim.
The Diamond Cut on his new claim at Lightning Creek
delivered just seven ounces.
[Rick] We're always in a race against time, but, you know,
we start having gold waves like that, it just becomes even
more and more serious, you know.
There's no way we can make money off of that,
but that doesn't mean that we can just call it quits here.
Rick now finds himself in deep water.
He's had to shut down washplant Rocky, but has just one
week to pay landowner Troy Taylor
100 ounces to complete
his purchase of Lightning Creek.
[Rick] We've got to move on.
We've got to strip some new ground.
We've already started that. We've moved up the valley.
We've just got to pivot and pivot quick.
We're late to the game this season, so we had to come
into this location,
It's definitely not as good ground as Vegas Valley.
Hopefully, we can get gold out of here to at least
pay the bills.
[Kai] Everyone's getting pretty beat down.
When you see low numbers and no gold coming in, it doesn't feel
too good.
[Kyle] It's definitely getting a little stressful,
being a little behind the gun here.
So, we're going to shift over here and change the odds.
Hopefully, start running some paydirt soon.
[Bailey] This is definitely the beginning of working
our way up the valley, for sure.
You know, we need as much uncovered as we can,
but pretty much it's just going to be trial and error.
We want to make sure that, you know, this is going to be
good pay and not garbage.
Rick's going to come down to figure out what he wants me
to do moving forward.
[Rick] Look at this.
[intriguing music plays]
What you thinking, Bailey?
[Bailey] It's like the bedrock's right there,
and then it goes to sand.
Obviously you don't want sand, but...
[Rick] Interesting.
There's no telling what this bedrock might do.
-You're probably just going to have to follow it. -[Bailey] Yes.
Some of that along the banks looks like pay.
-[Rick] OK. -[Bailey] But there's a spot
right there where there are bigger rocks.
Look at that big rock right there.
[Rick] That's what we want to see. Nice.
[Bailey] Do you want that top gravelly stuff?
[Rick] I think so.
Yeah, I would say that's the stuff we run.
Bigger rocks
should mean bigger deposits of gold.
Over 150,000 years ago, a giant glacier eroded
and picked up gold from the Mount Hinton motherlode.
A massive ice sheet bulldozed down the valley,
tearing up the landscape.
When the ice melted, the gold settled in scattered pockets
with the heavy rocks and boulders.
I like it. Get the plant running and then start hauling that to plant.
-That would be great. -[Bailey] Yeah.
[Rick] We can call this the Boulder Cut.
-[Bailey] Cool. -[Rick] Hopefully it's got gold in it.
[Bailey] OK. Thanks, man.
Yep.
Bailey's getting on it right here.
You know, he's doing a good job of getting this stripped off,
and there's a lot more bigger boulders and stuff in that ground.
It just looks more promising, so I've got
a good feeling about that.
[Kyle] We're all pretty excited to run this stuff.
We'll get this fired up,
and we'll start pounding dirt through it.
[engine revving]
[water gushing]
[rattling heavily]
[Bailey] Well, right now we're hauling pay to the plant.
This pay layer definitely looks, you know,
a lot better than...
the Diamond Cut.
You know, there is big rocks in here.
I'm hoping it's going to be really good.
[rumbling]
[loud crash]
[Bailey] [bleep]!
[soft creaking]
Something's going on with the bucket.
It's not feeling proper.
It doesn't have any strength trying to curl right now.
-Hey, Ryan, you got a copy, man? -[Ryan] Go ahead, Bailey.
[Bailey] Yeah, something's wrong with the 750 for sure.
[Ryan] OK, all right, man, give me just a minute, and I'll be over.
Hopefully, Ryan can get down here and figure out what's
going on, because this is our main machine.
That's the only thing that we got down here
that can load rock trucks quick enough.
So right now, we're on a standstill.
[dramatic music plays]
We got issues with the 750 right now.
I probably got a couple more hours worth of pay here.
If there's no pay at this plant, there's no gold
in the box.
So it's pretty crucial to have that thing back up and running.
At Lightning Creek, the Ness crew 750 excavator has
gone down, preventing them from digging pay dirt
from the new Boulder Cut.
[Ryan] I'd zip that plate off.
Let's make as much room as we can.
I'll get in there and I'll crack it open.
[drill whirring]
[clanking]
All right.
Where is she at?
-All righty. -OK.
We've got a pilot hose over here that comes from the back
main pump and goes all the way up just underneath the cab
that's chafing pretty bad.
The 750 excavator's bucket moves forward when hydraulic
fluid is pumped through a hose into a cylinder with a piston
at 5,000 pounds per square inch.
The bucket is then forced to retract when the cylinder is
injected with hydraulic fluid by a second hose.
Ryan has discovered this hose has a leak in the body
of the excavator near the pump.
He plans to disconnect the hose and remove it, then replace it
with a new one, restoring the hydraulic
system's full pressure, allowing the bucket to once
again haul six yards of boulder pay dirt with each scoop.
[creaking, hissing]
-[Kai] Right here? -[Bailey] Yeah, go ahead.
Oh, yeah, you're getting there.
-Look at this -- right there. -Yeah.
[Ryan] So this will get us going, get us back in the pay,
and keep things rolling.
All right, got it all zip tied up.
Gonna get our bottom plates on,
get our top plate [bleep] mounted back,
and Bailey will be right back at it.
Oh, baby!
[rattling]
[whirring]
All right, bottom side's good.
There you go. Perfect.
Hey, Bailey, 750's fixed.
[Bailey] Thanks, Ryan.
[adventurous music plays]
We got the 750 up and running again, which is awesome.
We've got three trucks.
We've got to hurry up here and get that pay to the plant.
I really need this to work out. We all need this to work out.
This is our spot for the summer, and we need
to start getting some [bleep] gold out of it.
I'm not going to sleep well until we get a whole run
out of this ground.
And if it doesn't start showing us gold, well,
you know, what [bleep] good is it?
I'm not full panic mode, but I am...
definitely got my hand over the panic button.
A month and a half into his season,
King of the Klondike, Tony Beets,
is cashing in on his Early Bird Cut.
[Tony speaking]
He's already banked over 1,800 ounces of his 6,500-ounce
target and is now opening the Corner Cut.
40 miles away, on Paradise Hill...
Pretty busy right now, here at Mike's shipping department.
Turn my way a bit.
Go to grab the next one.
I'm told to get this organized, I'm told to get this ready,
I'm told to get this going.
This is all Indian River [bleep].
I'm just a delivery boy.
Trommel's not gonna happen anytime soon at this rate.
If he wants to see gold, my dad's gonna have to leave me
alone and let me do it.
At the start of the season...
You gave Kevin a bunch of help getting him going, so is there
anything you're gonna help us with?
Tony's youngest son, Mike, made a case
for his own claim.
[Tony speaking]
Tony tasked Mike with getting
their Paradise Hill operation running.
But two weeks ago...
[Mike] I don't know what the [bleep] going on.
...Tony stole half of his equipment and crew.
[Tony speaking]
[laughing]
He tried to take all my people and then all my [bleep],
and then expect me to still run the hill.
Now, Mike's Paradise Hill trommel still sits idle
and he has no gold coming in.
[Minnie] Hey, what's going on?
What's the problem?
[Mike] Right now, with my equipment,
I can do one project at a time.
I can sluice, I can strip.
I do not have enough to do both, which means I ain't going
to be able to run the [bleep] trommel here.
[Minnie] You will not.
[sighs]
You know Tony's train of thought, right?
The Indian is the only thing that's producing right now.
So that's where he wants to focus on.
[sighs sharply]
It's a little bit worrisome that he takes your equipment.
Why can't I start taking [bleep] back?
That would go over really well.
You and I both know that. So that's not going to happen.
So what are you going to do now?
Do you have a plan B?
[Mike] We have Harald.
We have a nice plant sitting down in Hester.
It's basically stupid-proof.
Just got to fuse some pipe, hook it up to the pump,
test the pump.
And then I just got to get an excavator and a loader down
there, and I could be sluicing. -That's great.
How would you feel to just have your own claim, just your
stuff, no interference with your father, like Kevin?
I would like it. It'd be fun.
You think that's going to happen?
[bleep] no. He's too busy out there.
Want to have a little wager?
$10, I say it will.
We can also say $20.
You scared?
20 bucks.
With that being said, I do think you have to go back
to work. -[Mike] I'll see you later.
[Minnie] Mike got a little bit of a rough end of the deal here,
because he doesn't have all the people
and all the equipment.
But it's just the way Tony is. It -- it's --
He focuses on what's right in front of him, not what's
60 miles down the road.
Mike plans to use what little equipment Tony left behind
to make a quick score
by sluicing a pile of old-timer tailings
that he believes are rich in gold.
But first, he has to connect the water supply
to washplant Harald.
[Mike] So, I'm going to be testing out our new
fusing machine here.
Without no water, you ain't sluicing [bleep] at all.
[Zach] If Mike can fit through, the pipe will fit.
[Zach] Spread your wings and fly, Mike.
[imitating seal barking]
[laughing]
It works!
Right now, we're gonna lift up the pipe so I can line it up.
My way.
Stop! I just lined them up.
I'm tightening them up now.
I'm waiting for the heating pad to warm up.
Put it in there. Yeah.
[Zach] OK.
[Mike] That melts the pipe so that when I push it together,
it fuses.
Get ready. [grunts] There you go.
[clanks]
It's working.
[thunder rumbling]
I heard thunder.
Pull the tarp, bring it over here.
[rain pouring]
Now it's raining pretty good.
Hold it up!
Try to cover it so it doesn't get pissed on rain.
If rain gets into the melted junction,
air bubbles will form,
and the fuse will burst under high water pressure.
[clinking]
[Mike] If we don't get this fused together,
I ain't getting no water to Harald.
[ominous music plays]
Yeah, that should be good.
The rain seems to be stopping.
You guys can take it off.
Before Mike can test if the fuses will hold,
he needs to connect the pipe to the pump across the creek.
[Mike] Lift it up in the air.
[creaking]
Yeah, it's looking good.
Excellent. That's good, Zach.
Pull it in.
Good!
Next step is to put the [bleep] suction in.
Chain this up, try not to get hit in the face with the bucket,
because it's not on my bucket list of [bleep] to do.
Ba-dum-tss!
[chain rattling]
[suspenseful music plays]
[water sloshing]
[Mike] Pipes are all hooked up, fused together.
All I have to do is test fire the pump, make sure
everything's working good.
[engine revving]
[water gushing]
Enough water. That's good.
That's lovely. I love it.
I'm firing up.
[epic music plays]
Everything's working!
[Zach] First scoop into Harald. Here we go.
[epic music continues]
For the first time this season, Mike is on the gold.
[Mike] Nice to finally get this thing going.
Got it there.
[pensive music plays]
[moose groaning]
[Mitch] Man, it was brutal.
There's no way we would have made this happen without
the trucks and the extra help up here.
But we are finally down to pay, and we're going to load that
in the trucks and haul it down to Roxanne.
At Sulphur Creek, Mitch Blaschke has hit pay
in the first section of the new two-acre extension.
Now his crew is in a race to sluice it all before the water
license runs out in less than three weeks.
Holy [bleep]!
Loader operator Sean Holcroft
is feeding the new pay through washplant Roxanne.
Parker, he's got some deadlines going, so we really
got to bust our balls here and get moving.
I got this old 220 loader. Thing's a little ancient.
Still able to wash rocks with the plant, but she's a bit
of a rough ride.
I have my second year down here now.
A big step up for me, a little bit
more responsibilities.
They're letting me do a lot more.
It's pretty awesome to have this opportunity.
I really love it.
[loader revving]
I don't know what the [bleep] is going on with this thing.
[engine winds down]
Feels like we got the brakes locking up.
Let's take a half load.
Oh, my [bleep] God.
[bleep] painful, man.
[alarm beeping]
Getting a low hydraulic oil warning here.
[suspenseful music plays]
Hey, Mitch, this 220 here
it's [bleep] up real bad.
Like, it just ain't got no power,
barely making it up this ramp.
There's no way I'm gonna be able to keep up with this,
even at 100 yards an hour.
This is not what we need right now.
[whirring]
Unfortunately, you know, with 220 being down right now,
we're gonna shut Roxanne down.
Shutting down Roxanne could mean losing
over $8,000 an hour.
Parker has all these ambitions and things he wants us to do
this season.
But we got one old loader out here, and right now
we're not sluicing.
To fix the loader, Mitch calls in mechanic Taylor Matejka.
[Taylor] I've got an alarm for low hydraulic oil.
You can see there's nothing in the sight glass.
With the machine running,
the transmission oil was way high.
It should be at the bottom of the sight glass here.
We're way over full.
So what caused this is the parking brake.
And it's got a piston inside with seals that release
the parking brake.
These seals have failed, and the parking brake is
dragging, and it's filling the transmission
with hydraulic oil.
I'm just going to pull the drain plug
on the transmission here, and we'll let her buck.
There it goes!
Hopefully it's just the seals, but if it's a --
If a piece of [bleep] got between
the piston and the housing, we might have a [bleep] piston
and that's gonna be a huge problem.
The 220 loader's parking brake is spring-loaded and controlled
by hydraulic pressure.
To access the brake, Taylor will first cage it
by using three bolts that compress the springs,
releasing the brake and securing the piston
to the brake cover.
He will then remove the 16 bolts that hold the cover
in place and lift off the caged parking brake piston.
Taylor can then remove and replace the damaged seals
before reinstalling the brake, uncaging the springs,
and refilling the hydraulic oil, allowing the parking brake
to function properly.
[drill whirring]
[Taylor] We're just buzzing the parking brake out here.
We've got it caged with these three bolts.
[intriguing music plays]
There we go!
We'll take it out, put it on the back of my truck.
Hopefully this thing is not [bleep], because we can't
afford a down loader.
You can see here, there's no real damage to the piston,
but the parking brake seal is completely [bleep].
We need to replace it.
Sean was right to give me a shout right away.
We'll swap the seals out and put this thing
back together. Let's get started.
We'll peel these seals off.
We're at the assembly stage now, just putting
these seals in.
[Mitch over radio] Hey, Taylor, you got a copy, Taylor?
Yeah, go ahead.
[Mitch] How's it going over there, man?
We're putting new seals in the parking brake right now.
Thank God it was just the seals and we had them in stock.
I give us about an hour and a half, two hours, and this thing
will be up and running. -[Mitch] All right, man.
We'll be ready for it.
[Taylor] Mitch is chomping at the bit to get this thing
up and running.
And it's just, you know, race against time to get
this thing back together.
It's all good.
[adventurous music plays]
Fill it with transmission oil,
and we can be back to making money.
Transmission's full.
Parking brake's reassembled, resealed.
Everything's hooked up.
Lay down.
Good boy.
[dog chomps]
I'm going to take it down to Sean
so they can go fire up Roxanne.
[upbeat music plays]
[Sean] Oh, [bleep] yeah, buddy. Thanks, man.
Five hours after shutting down
and $40,000 of gold production lost,
Roxanne is back in the game.
Washing rocks, Roxanne shaking,
getting that gold.
[Mitch] We got Roxanne on a good clip here.
It's sluicing along very nicely.
We're pushing this project here at Sulphur all the way
to its absolute limit.
We're getting through it,
but we're not out of the woods yet.
[birds chirping]
[rumbling, creaking]
[suspenseful music plays]
[honking]
[Ryan] We understand, we're not mining Vegas Valley.
It's different.
It's up for us to prove that there is something here.
It's going to be nonstop.
It's not going to be, uh...
It's not going to be an easy season.
I think this will be our toughest season with Rick.
Rick's crew is sluicing pay dirt from the new Boulder Cut,
which they hope will finally deliver some gold.
[Bailey] We're going to probably work our way up this valley,
probably all season.
Hopefully, the farther we go or the more that we run,
the better it looks.
[Rick sighs]
[somber music plays]
[somber music rises]
What's going on?
[inhales]
I got some news.
[ominous chord strikes]
What's going on?
I got some news.
We got a water license on Lower Duncan.
-Oh, really? -Yes.
[all cheering]
-Yeah. -[bleep] yeah.
[Ryan] That's actually really good news.
[Rick] Got something for you guys.
[soft thud]
[all laughing]
[all cheering indistinctly]
Gah!
[laughing]
[Rick] [bleep]! Cheers, boys!
[indistinct chatter]
[bleep] yeah.
[Rick] We got the news today from the attorney.
They granted an extension until November 2025.
We can go break ground, Vegas Valley,
and start draining it. We could [bleep] get gold
from Vegas Valley this year.
Was that a verified email?
-A verified email, yes. -OK, good [laughs].
-[Rick] Yes, yes. -Yeah.
We 100% have a water license, a land use permit,
and everything at Lower Duncan.
In just four years, Rick's claim on Lower Duncan
paid out nearly 6,000 ounces.
But after losing the water license, he had to abandon it,
including a pay pile that could contain
more than $1.4 million in gold.
[Rick] We already got a pile up there ready to run, and, you know,
we can actually run that now.
So what does that mean for this deal?
Well, that's a good point,
because we can't just walk away from this.
I promised Troy another hundred ounces to buy Lightning Creek.
I'm not just gonna pull a hundred ounces out of here
and give it to Troy and walk the [bleep] away.
You know, we've got to pull some serious gold out of here.
But this is really good news.
I don't even think you've seen the best
out of Vegas Valley yet.
No, and I'm hoping we haven't seen the best out of this.
You know, I think our future is really [bleep] bright.
I've got a lot to figure out, but we've got a water license,
and we are going back to Vegas Valley.
-This is cause for celebration. -[bleep] yeah, [bleep].
[Rick] Thank you, guys.
-[Rick] All right. -[all laughing]
[Rick] You know, in my head right now, I'm very happy.
There's a lot going on right now.
It's like one extreme to the other, right?
We had no water license.
Now we've got a water license in two spots, you know?
I want to just run the Vegas Valley.
I know the gold's there, but I've got obligations
on Lightning Creek.
You know, I owe Troy 100 ounces.
You know, that's a quarter million dollars, so...
There's a lot to figure out, but at the end of the day,
this is good news.
[adventurous music plays]
[sloshing, rattling]
[Zach] It's nice to be finally sluicing.
It's been a long time coming.
At Paradise Hill, despite a lack of equipment,
Mike is determined to prove to his dad
that he can bring in the gold.
Just careful not to overload it.
It's nice to get this going. It's exactly what I wanted.
Closer and closer every time.
[water blasts, gushes]
[Zach] Oh, [bleep]!
[Zach speaking]
[Mike] Shut it down.
[dramatic music plays]
[Mike] [bleep]!
Close the bypass!
[dramatic music rises]
Ugh! [bleep]!
Gonna be a pain in the ass.
Yeah, but that's got to get [bleep] fixed
before we can keep going.
I'm going to lift this up, take these off so I can get
this little orange piece here, and I can check the rubber.
[intriguing music plays]
[whirring]
If you hop in the excavator, I'll wrap it around,
and we'll just lift it.
[Mike] Yeah, these are coming off like butter.
[clanking]
[Mike] My gasket's ripped completely.
[Zach] Yeah, she ripped right apart.
And my only two rubbers I got are too small,
or a wee bit too big.
[Zach] You can make that work, though.
-You know what I mean? -Cut holes.
We're going to have to [bleep] around with this [bleep].
What we're gonna do is mark out all the holes, and then
we'll just push the bolt holes through.
[banging]
[Mike] Then I'm going to cut,
and yeah, the bolt will fit through it.
Yeah, there should be 12.
[clinking, banging]
[Zach] It's a little scabby, but it'll work.
For the bush fix gasket to work,
it must form a tight seal
between the two metal flanges.
[Zach] A little bit more my way.
There we go.
If we do this and it works, it should last until forever.
[whirring]
[Zach] Hey, that's my butt!
[Mike cackles]
Let her down.
That's tight. It should all work.
[engine revving]
[gushing]
Hey, Colby, hop in the loader!
Let's get going!
Finally getting this done.
My dad would be happy to get any gold, so I'm going to grab
every ounce of gold I can out of that dirt.
Between me and Colby, we should be able to get
this thing going.
This will be running for the rest of the season.
Whoo hoo!
Mike Beets may be dreaming of his own Klondike kingdom,
but there is already a crown he wears proudly.
[laughing]
According to everyone, I'm a king of [bleep] around,
so this should be nothing new.
[laughing]
Go chase the beaver.
[director] No, no, no!
You made [bleep] me do it!
Geez, I leave you guys alone for, what, two minutes,
and then you're [bleep] around again?
[Mike] Let's go!
Nah, just [bleep] around.
[cackles]
[calm music plays]
-[Ryan] Whoa! -[Rick] Oh, yeah.
-Nice glasses. -[Bailey] Thanks, man.
[Rick] How are you? No fire?
[Bailey] No, it's too hot for that.
[Heather] It's hot.
-Summer finally got here. -Yeah, it came fast.
It was a smart move to pivot from the Diamond Cut.
There's no way we can make a living off it.
And, you know, I like the spot that we moved to.
It's definitely looking better in every way.
There's boulders there.
[Bailey] Yeah, it is nicer material compared to that stuff that
we just dug at the start of the Diamond Cut.
-So we're on the right track. -Yeah.
Well, I guess maybe we should weigh up the gold.
Rick's previous spot, the Diamond Cut,
produced just 7.35 ounces.
Now he's hoping the new Boulder Cut
will deliver at least 30 ounces for its runtime.
[Rick] All right, count it out.
[pouring softly]
One, two...five, seven, eight, nine, ten, twelve...
18, 20...
-22... -[tapping]
22.35!
Worth $78,000.
[Rick] Definitely an improvement.
You got to look at it that way. Three times better.
[Ryan] Yeah.
I mean, obviously, that water license coming in is huge.
But a lot of decisions come with that, you know.
There's a lot of pieces that have to fall into place.
[Ryan] What's going through your head?
Tough it out here?
I mean...
We're going to have to go back to Vegas Valley.
I mean...
I want to.
And maybe at the end of the day, this is just not
the happening spot right here.
[Rick] We can't abandon this place.
I did buy it, but the one thing that I can say is that we can't
afford to just shut this down while we're, you know...
We got to take advantage of all the sluicing hours we can get.
How many gold weighs do we say there can be improvement before
we [bleep] finally say,
"We need to get our asses back to Vegas Valley?"
At the end of the day, I owe Troy, you know, 100 ounces on
this ground, so we can't just walk away from it right now.
It's the only spot we're getting gold from.
Does he care where the [bleep] 100 ounces comes from?
Because I'm telling you now, you're going to get 100 ounces
a lot quicker. You do the math,
it doesn't make sense to hit 1,800 ounces
by the end of the season.
You know, it's going to take a while to get
Vegas Valley ready.
So the minute we're able to sluice down there,
we will go there. That's a promise.
I think we should go there now.
Well, that's too [bleep] bad.
I think there's gold here.
I hope you're [bleep] right.
Definitely the pressure's going to be on, man.
Thanks, guys. I appreciate it.
[Bailey] Yeah, this gold weigh is better than last week, but it's not
as good as what Lower Duncan could be.
There could be 400 ounces in that pay pile.
So, you know, for us to try to reach 1,800 ounces,
we need to be down there right away.
[Rick] Well, the gold total for the week, 22.3 ounces.
Yeah, three times as good.
But the exciting thing is we got the water license
extension back on Duncan Creek, so we go back to Vegas Valley,
which is huge news.
Now everybody's just arguing on when.
They want to go there immediately,
but the timing's just not right, you know.
It's going to take a few days to get that ready,
and I'm not willing to stop getting gold
from Lightning Creek until it is ready.
So we're going to stick it out here, and we'll be back
in Vegas Valley soon.
[birds chirping]
-Hello. -[Minnie] Hey, guys.
-[Tony speaking] -How are you?
Here. How are you?
-[Tony speaking] -Yes.
Good, good, good.
[Minnie] Have a seat.
Yeah, I set up Harald.
-[Minnie] Yeah. -We, uh...
Did some old timer tailings, didn't we?
[Mike] Might as well sluice it -- sitting there.
[Tony speaking]
Oh, there's a little bit.
[Tony speaking]
[Monica] I'll pour slow.
[Tony] There we go. One, two, three, four...
And a five, and a six, and a seven, eight, nine...
10, 11, 12, 13, 14...
14.28.
Worth nearly $50,000.
[Minnie] I'm proud of you.
[Tony speaking]
[Monica] So you wanna see what comes from the Indian?
[Tony speaking]
So far, the Early Bird Cut
is averaging 270 ounces a week.
[Monica] Michael, ready to count?
[pouring softly]
[Mike] 10...
30, 40, 50, 100...
-110, 120, 170, 190... -[tapping]
[thrilling music plays]
200, 210, 250...
260, 270, 280, 290...
310, 320, 330, 340, 350, 390...
[Tony speaking]
-No. -[Tony speaking]
[Mike] It's 398.18.
Worth almost $1.4 million.
But I mean, you didn't make four.
-[Monica] Oh, my [bleep] God. -[Mike laughs]
Bringing the Beets' season total to over 2,300 ounces.
[Tony speaking]
[Minnie] You said at the beginning of the season
that there were maybe
some opportunities for Mike as soon as he started
getting gold out of the hill.
So what's happening with that?
-[Mike] Yep. -Bye.
[Minnie] I do hope Tony will honor what he said to Mike because
he's been working very hard to get this all sorted out,
so he should get him set up.
Honestly, Mike really deserves it.
The frustrating part is I think I have a better chance
of learning to breathe through my ass than I have of going out
on my own.
Whatever.
-[Mitch] What's up? -[Brennan] Yo, yo.
[Mitch] Well, how did we do this week, Chris?
Roxanne's just chugging away.
Man, that was an unreal pan down there at Sulphur.
That pan was probably one of the best ones
we've ever seen.
It's up there. Top ten.
I hate saying anything.
I don't want to jinx anything, you know?
Yeah, I'm pretty good at that.
[all laughing]
How's your juggling act going?
You know, it's keeping me busy, that's for sure.
[chuckles]
[Chris] We're going to start out with you, with Bob.
-How's that? -[Tyson] Sure.
Let's see how Bob did this week.
Big Bob.
At Dominion Creek, Tyson's been running washplant
Bob in the Bridge Cut, where it's averaging
170 ounces a week.
[Tyson] Here we go.
We got 20, 40, 60, 80...
100, 120, 160, 180...
188.4!
[Brennan] Nice.
[Chris] Not bad. That's a good weight.
So Bob's chugging along.
Brennan, you want to do a Sluicifer here?
-Go for it. -All right.
Sluicifer in the Golden Mile
is pacing 200 ounces a week.
[Brennan] 20, 40, 60, 80, 100...
120, 150...180, 200...
-[pouring softly] -[tapping]
Holy [bleep]!
232.1.
Wow! Holy [bleep]!
-[Chris] Yeah. -Nice.
[Chris] That's pretty cool, isn't it?
[Brennan] Beautiful.
That's a good week for Dominion.
[Parker] 420 ounces or something?
That's a good number.
[all laughing]
[Chris] And then there's Roxanne, Mitchell.
[Mitch] Whoo! She looks heavy.
Let's see what we got here.
-All right. -Let it rip.
-Ready? -Yep.
Now it's time to find out if Parker's move to extend the cut
at Sulphur will pay out.
50...
100, 150...200.
Oh, yeah, keep going.
-250, a little bit more. -Sick.
[suspenseful chord rises]
[Mitch] 300 right on the dot.
[Chris] Plus this.
-We have another one. -Whoo!
It looks like it's got a little in there.
[Chris] Ready?
All right, we're going to keep adding to her.
Here's another... 40, 80, 100,
[tapping]
106.5.
-[Mitch laughs] -[Chris] 406.5 ounces.
-OK, yeah, yeah! -[Brennan] Atta boy, nice!
Mitch, go ahead and take everything up there.
[Mitch] Whew!
With just one plant,
Mitch has nearly matched
Tyson's two-plant run.
[Brennan] Dude that's a lot for one week.
[Chris] Yeah, so this week,
our total is 827 ounces.
Sick.
[Chris] Is that crazy or what?
I was not expecting that.
827 ounces
at record prices
is worth $2.89 million,
the most cash Parker's ever banked in one week.
That's Parker's happy face.
[laughing]
[Chris] There we go.
800 ounces, dude!
You've got to be happy about that in a week.
Oh, yeah.
[Parker] I just hope we can keep it up.
There's still so much season left.
Good way to start it, though.
-[Parker] That's a good way to start it. -[Chris] Yeah.
Thank you, guys.
[Chris] Cool. I'll bag this stuff up.
[Parker] We've all got [bleep] to do.
After several years of just moving from the Indian River
and getting set up and a lot deeper ground on Dominion,
it's taken a long time of stripping and...prep
and finally this season, like I don't want to jinx it,
but...
It's looking really good.
We're coming out of the gates running, so hopefully we can
just keep that up, right?
And then Sulphur is just killing it.
[epic music concludes]