[Parker] Hi.
-So... -Mm-hmm?
Fists or knives?
[all laughing]
[Tony speaking]
Eh, it's the end of the season.
It seems like a long year, but, you know, it's a short season
up there. -[Parker] Yeah.
But what an awesome year to be mining.
Prices are good.
I know.
[Parker] You're finding some gold?
That's good.
[Parker] Well, how much have you got?
We just hit 10.
Nice.
I can't have you finding more than us.
That's a lot of gold. That's a lot of gold.
That's impressive.
Uh, shooting for 1,800, and we're about 400 ounces
short right now.
[Rick] Um...
Well, I mean, as of right now,
I definitely want to see how the season ends,
but I'm considering it.
[Parker] Is Tony trying to buy you out?
[Rick] Offer, yeah.
Uh...
-He came and visited me. -Oh.
Well, see, the difference between Tony and I
is Tony really likes to do good deals,
and I love doing bad deals.
So, if you are ever serious about selling, give me a call.
Not to try to invade your guys' deal, but ground is hard to
find, and it's worth a huge premium right now.
There's a lot of people that say, "oh, well,
"you know, the nice thing about
this business is it's not competitive."
[sarcastic laugh]
-The three of us know it [bleep] is. -Yeah.
[Rick] All right, Tony.
-It was good to see you, man. -Absolutely.
-Have a good Fall. -Yeah, you too.
Enjoy your winter if I don't see you again.
Oh, yeah. You too.
I figured Tony was having a good year, but I didn't think
it was gonna be that good.
He's a bit ahead of me.
But...
we'll see what happens.
[Rick] Those guys are killing it on the gold.
And, you know, and the offers, it's --
it's good to know there's options there.
I don't know what to do.
It's going to come down to my total.
If I hit my goal this year,
man, I want to go on my own terms.
I feel like just selling out is not the way I want to go.
But you never know.
Money talks, and results speak for themselves.
We've had a hell of a season gold-wise.
We've hit our goal.
The big priority now is just getting every last ounce we can
while prices are like this.
Yeah, it's pretty cool.
31-year-old mining mogul Parker Schnabel is running
through the finish line.
Gold prices are at an absolute all-time high.
They hit $4,000 an ounce today, which is very, very cool.
It's a good time to be gold mining
and have a lot of wash plants running.
We've got four wash plants running.
Parker is already breaking records this season,
with over $40 million in gold banked.
But he's determined to catch former mentor Tony Beets,
who is leading by 120 ounces.
[Parker] Bit of a bummer that Tony's a bit ahead of me.
We've been on top for a long time.
It's getting cold, and who knows
how much longer we've got.
Frost will probably cut us off from being able to keep
plants running.
But we're going to finish strong.
We'll give her one last good push right now
and see what we come up with.
-Hey, guys. -[Tyson] How's it going?
-Thanks for coming to join me. -[Tyson] No worries.
What's going on?
[Parker] I just wanted to give you guys
a little update on what needs to get done.
-[Mitch] What up? -Where have you been?
I call a meeting, and you're late?
I'm just kidding.
[all laughing]
For the final push, Parker's depending on his top
lieutenants, Mitch Blaschke, Tyson Lee, and Brennan Ruault.
Thank you for getting us to the end here.
-Hit our 10,000, right? -Yeah.
-Like, [bleep] sick. -Yeah.
-Pretty wild. -[Tyson] No doubt.
-Yeah. -[Mitch] What's the plan now?
I wanted just to make sure that we finish strong here.
Like, despite, you know, we hit the goal, but Tony,
this spring, told me that his goal was, like, 6,000 or 7,000,
and he's over 10,000.
[Brennan] Wow.
[Parker] And you know me well enough to know how much I hate losing.
So I think you really have to turn your feed rates up
and all that jazz.
That's mandatory.
At Dominion, I mean, we need to get those pay piles
hammered out.
Yeah, they're still pretty big.
[Parker] And Mitch, keep Roxanne running.
And that stripping project is the main priority.
And Brennan, just whatever these guys need.
Yep.
[Parker] There's not a lot of tolerance for screw-ups or delays.
If there's ever a time to push extra late, now's the time.
Yeah.
I would just go until either the weather shuts us down
or every plant's out of pay, one of the two.
-[Mitch] Let's go do some sluicing. -Yeah.
-Perfect. -Yeah, let's get her done.
-Thank you, guys. -Thank you.
At Parker's flagship Dominion claim,
Tyson must sluice the last of the Golden Mile's
stockpiled pay,
through wash plants Big Red and Golden Goose...
and with Bob in the Bridge Cut, mine as much of the remaining
30 acres as possible.
Ten miles south, at Parker's
leased ground, Ken and Stuart's,
Mitch must run the pay from the last two acres of Pit 2
with wash plant Roxanne,
and remove the final four acres of worthless overburden,
from a new cut for next season...
all before winter freezes them out.
Right now, we're at 26 on our adjuster here.
All of a sudden, you put that at 40.
Look at how fast that dirt's coming off that belt.
I've got the yardage cranked as fast as Roxanne can
run, trying to get it done as fast as possible.
There's so much to do here
to finish off the sluicing we have to do, plus get all that
mud removed for next season.
I don't know if this is even
remotely close to possible, but I'm going to try.
[Tyson] This year, my workload has pretty much tripled.
It's been a struggle at times.
Right now, at Golden Goose, we've increased the feed rate
to 250 yards an hour, which only puts
more pressure on us.
The weather's going to really start freezing on us
any day now.
And I know everyone wants to go home, but you can't go home
until this pile is complete.
We're going to be sluicing till the bitter end.
[Tony speaking]
[Cousin Mike] Are you ready?
Good, good.
Yeah.
OK, let's go.
[Cousin Mike] Time to shut her down, Dylan.
[Tony speaking]
Tony Beets' gold fever is relentless.
After blasting past his season target, he now has
a new goal locked in his sights, secure his crown
as King of the Klondike.
To stay ahead of Parker, Tony is matching his former
protégé's four-plant final push.
At his Paradise Hill operation, Tony has tasked
son Mike with finishing stockpiles at
his trommel and Harald wash plants.
Forty miles south at Indian River, his twin shaker decks,
Sluice-A-Lot and Find-A-Lot, are in the 46-acre Corner Cut.
But after two months of nonstop running, the Mammoth Cut only
has enough pay left to run one plant.
To keep both sluicing, Tony needs to move Sluice-A-Lot
upstream, back to where he started the season at a new
three-acre extension of his Early Bird Cut.
[Cousin Mike] Everything is hooked up. Everything is ready.
And off we go.
So far, so good.
Plant is following good. A couple of corners.
A couple of hills.
Nothing we haven't done before, but we still got to get on it
and make it work.
[Tony speaking]
Stakes are extra high with the price of gold
at the moment.
At the new Early Bird extension,
Tony's crew run full throttle
to get the cut ready before Sluice-A-Lot arrives.
There is a bit of a race this season between
Tony and Parker to
see who can get the most gold.
Obviously I'm rooting for the King of the Klondike.
I'm Team Tony all the way. I mean, of course.
I wouldn't say that Tony's going to keep
that title this year.
I'd say Parker's going to win that one.
He's going to have it in the bag.
Up here where we're dumping, it's super soft,
and we're almost getting stuck.
But we've got to get it done. We've got to get sluicing.
They're moving Sluice-A-Lot.
[operator and Tony speaking]
Tony's going to be pissed.
Rock truck driver Scott Easley has flipped his box at Tony's
Early Bird Cut extension.
[Scott] The bank gave way,
and then the thing just slowly went.
I tried to put it into drive and get going,
and it was too late.
Sluice-A-Lot is less than a mile away and coming in fast.
Final stretch here.
So I get there on the radio, another rock truck flip.
So, Tony is there giving a hand.
We can't afford any more downtime.
Winter is coming, and we want to get to that gold
as soon as possible.
[Dalten] You'll take the hoe over?
OK, copy, Tony.
[Cousin Mike] So the new pad is in sight.
The road ahead looks pretty good.
[Scott] Sorry, Tony.
[Scott] Thank God I ain't fired.
When Tony ran up, I thought I was a dead man.
Oh, [bleep], it's Sluice-A-Lot in here.
[Cousin Mike] Climb up this last little hill.
We're on the path.
I just gotta make sure to get as close to the end
as possible.
[Tony speaking]
There we go.
Tony gave me the sign that it's good.
I'll fire the plant up, and we'll be back to sluicing.
All right, we've got the thumbs up.
Off we go.
Tony is back to four plants running in his push
for mining supremacy.
I think it'd be hard for Parker to compete.
I think everyone who works here has seen how much we've moved
this season, and we have no doubt Tony
is the King of the Klondike.
[Bailey] There's quite a bit of pressure right now.
The plant's run out of pay.
We're still hauling overburden and trying to
get into pay as quick as we can.
[Rick] This is one of the worst spots I've ever been in.
We got to get back on that gold.
And we got to do it quick. I know the guys are nervous.
I'm nervous.
Winter will soon freeze all the miners out.
But unlike others, Rick Ness's future is on a knife's edge.
[Rick] It's been a tough year. There's no doubt about it.
These guys have fought through
a lot [bleep] that we shouldn't have to fight through.
We're 420 ounces shy of our goal yet.
And that's a lot. That's a lot of ounces to get.
And we don't have a whole lot of time to do it.
In a chaotic season of uncertainty and major missteps,
Rick gambled a million dollars mining a massive new cut,
only to get no gold.
That was a big debacle, a huge waste of money and time.
People are hoping that I'm panicking.
The vultures are circling right now, but I'm not panicking yet.
Buyout offers from big shots, Tony and Parker, have come in.
[Rick] I've been offered a seven-figure amount for this,
and it's a lot. It's tough to ignore.
Maybe it's time to go.
But if we hit our goal or get past it, and then the profits
can continue to get better, why would I leave?
Now, as Rick's crew fight to dig out the final 10 feet to
hit pay in the Last Chance Cut, he's got a risky Hail Mary plan
to get more gold fast.
[Rick] It's going to be a fight.
But with these guys all in on it, I know we can get it.
-What's going on, guys? -[crew] What's going on?
What's up?
I just want to thank you guys.
You guys have been doing a hell of a job.
That being said, I know you're all tired from it and giving it
all you've got, but we're still a way off from our target,
and that would be devastating for sure.
The gold will be in that dirt, for sure, but I think
it's gonna come right down to the bitter end.
We're running out of time, so I think we need to give a little
more, and I think we need to get back to Lightning Creek.
One last push down there.
[Kyle] Yeah, that gold wasn't that good to begin with.
Yeah, but it was picking up at the end.
What if we do another clean out here and we're short?
If we pull another 50 ounces from there, I mean, that's big.
I mean, you guys gotta stay, get Monster Red running,
that's the priority,
but we need everything we can get.
The way it's set up down there, you know, we could get going
right away. -Yeah.
We're almost at the end, and let's just push a little
harder and we'll [bleep] be there, right?
-Yep. -Yep.
[Rick] All right.
Early in the season, Rick bought new ground
at Lightning Creek.
-Let's do it. -All right.
After a shaky start,
the gold improved.
[Ryan] 50.4.
[Bleep] yeah, that's way better than last time.
I got some news.
Then a six-month license extension to mine Duncan Creek
came in.
We got our water license.
-Yeah. -[Rick] [bleep] yeah!
Rick abandoned Lightning Creek.
[Rick] Shut down Lightning Creek.
We're moving back to Vegas Valley.
[Bailey] Sounds good to me, man.
Now he wants to squeeze another 50 ounces from
Lightning Creek to help get him over the line.
[Bailey] I hope this move is going to be worth it in Lightning,
but we won't know until we start running some dirt.
If we do reach that 1,800, my mind's going to be blown
because with all the struggles we've had this year.
Since I've joined Rick, it's always been a push,
it's always been a gamble.
And in Rick fashion, we are swinging for the fence
again at the end of the year.
While the stripping crew battle on
in the Last Chance Cut,
Rick and Kai head eight miles north to Lightning Creek to
sluice a leftover pay pile with wash plant Rocky.
[Rick] Everything should be good to go.
We got enough pay up there right now
to start up the plant.
All right. This hokey old thing.
All right, let me give this thing a shot here.
Come on, you old girl!
Here we go. Let's do it.
We got water, we got power, and the shaker deck's moving,
so time to throw some dirt at it, get some gold.
All right.
Here we go.
Oh, hell yeah.
Rocky sluicing,
Rick is one step closer to pulling off
his double plant plan and banking
the 420 ounces he needs.
Everything looks good.
[engine sputters]
[Kai] No way!
Oh, [bleep]!
[Kai] You gotta be [bleep] kidding me.
[Rick] What happened?
[bleep] [bleep].
Well, look at this. It's still smoking.
Ugh!
Well,
I don't know.
At Lightning Creek, the feed pump for Rick Ness's
wash plant Rocky has failed.
[Rick] [bleep] pump blew a belt.
That's the belt that drives the cooling system.
That's why the [bleep] thing's smoking,
because it's overheating.
This [bleep] tensioner should not be that loose.
That's what holds tension on the belt, right?
So when it's loose, it just hops, hops, hops,
and that belt just rips.
And then it stopped cooling, so then it overheated.
This thing's just shot to hell.
She's toast.
Rick's desperate push to get two plants running is over
before it even started.
[Rick] Very quick, very catastrophic end to the day.
Got half a bucket through that thing.
I mean, that's not even worth getting out of bed for.
Now, his only hope for 420 ounces
lies in the Last Chance Cut
and getting Monster Red sluicing.
Well, that's a pretty [bleep] sad showing.
The Last Chance Cut, that's what we have to do.
The gold will be there.
It's just whether or not we can get at it.
Well, hopefully it's enough.
[Parker] It's getting cold, and people are wore out.
It's been a long season for everybody.
The overarching theme for me is doing everything we can to find
as much gold as we can.
100 miles west,
with four wash plants going full tilt, Parker is within
striking distance of Tony's gold haul.
[Parker] It puts a huge amount of pressure on keeping
wash plants running.
It just
consumes my thoughts now.
In the Golden Mile,
Golden Goose and Big Red
power through the pay piles at a combined
season max of 500 yards an hour.
Doing pretty good down here at Big Red.
Do my best to get through as much as I can.
What the [bleep] is going on up here?
Oh, yeah, [bleep]!
My shaker deck shut off.
[grunts]
Oh, you [bleep].
Whoo, I'm out of breath.
The shaker deck stopped.
Nothing's [bleep] working.
Alec, Liam, do you got a copy?
[Alec] Yeah, go ahead.
Hey, man, my shaker deck shut off, and I need you guys
up here right now.
[Alec] OK, yeah, we're on our way.
Thanks, buddy.
[bleep] me.
Oh, I'm sick of this [bleep].
Oh, the cavalry's arrived.
[Alec] We replaced the motor a couple months ago, so that should
still be good.
Holy!
When was the last time this was opened?
[Alec] I think the feed conveyor is the shaker now, because that's
the motor wires there. -[Liam] Oh, what?
I'm imagining the shaker contactor malfunctioned
or broke, and that's why we're running this backup
feed conveyor one. -[Liam] It's been hours.
[Alec] Now this guy has probably failed.
[Tyson] What's going on, guys?
[Alec] We're not able to get the shaker motor going.
-[Tyson] Seriously? -Yeah.
Something in our contact breaker's malfunctioning.
It's not letting power go from here to here.
Can't sluice without it.
Well,
do you guys think we have one? -[Liam] No.
We don't have any replacement parts or any contactors that
look like this in stock.
[Tyson] [bleep] sakes, man.
I'll go and find Parker.
We can't go home until the Golden Mile is sluiced.
Without Big Red, I don't think it's gonna happen.
Parker's not gonna be happy.
-How's it going? -What's going on?
Big Red's contactor, essentially the starter
for the shaker deck, just [bleep] the bed.
[bleep].
There's no real solution for it.
[bleep].
We don't have one, huh?
No.
And with the weather the way it is,
if we lose the night, we're screwed.
I'll get one as quick as we can.
Um...
I'm gonna have to hunt down Jack, so I'll get him
in the air. -[Tyson] OK.
And we'll have one by the end of the day.
Maybe.
But if it doesn't look like we can get one tonight, then...
[Tyson] Frost fighters on the sluice runs.
Good [bleep], it's a nightmare. All right.
-[Tyson] Sounds good. -Thanks.
To Whitehorse, it's a seven, eight-hour drive
each way.
Jack's an hour and a half to Whitehorse and an hour
and a half back, so the plane is paying for itself on runs
like this.
Parker owns a Cessna 172 and employs a pilot full time.
Jack fills his time when he's not flying with
running an excavator, and he is right here.
Big Red's down for some electrical part.
They have one in Whitehorse. Can you fly down and grab it?
-Yeah. -OK, perfect.
Time is of the essence. Can you spin up there now?
-Sure. -Perfect.
I'll try to get down to Whitehorse, grab that part
and get back up as fast as I can.
We'll get it slammed in and get the plant back up and running.
If we don't get it back here tonight, we're in trouble.
-[Alec] Is that enough? -[Liam] Yeah.
We got to run a little bit of water.
The gold might shift a bit,
but we can't let Big Red freeze right now.
Parker Schnabel's Big Red is down with
an electrical failure.
If it doesn't fire up before nightfall, it will freeze.
[Tyson] This is about the worst time Big Red
could have [bleep] the bed on us.
Hopefully Jack can get us the part here in no time.
Parker's crew are praying for a replacement part to be
flown in from Whitehorse, 300 miles away.
[Alec] Guess we play the waiting game now.
-Is that an airplane right here? -[John] I think so.
[bleep] Is that Jack?
-Yeah, Jack! -[all cheering]
There we go!
-[Parker] You got the goods? -[Jack] Got the goods.
-Hopefully that's the right one. -[Parker] Sick.
Thank you, Jack. I'll see you later.
-You're a lifesaver. -[Jack] Thank you.
-[Alec] Oh, man. -[John] Woo!
-[Liam] He's got it. -[John] Our savior.
-[Liam] That's awesome. -Wicked.
-Thank you so much. -[Parker] No worries.
Let me know when you get it back up and running.
-[Alec] Yeah, buddy. -[Liam] Definitely.
All right. Thanks, guys.
[Alec] Let's get this new guy hung and see if we can get this
plant shaking again. -[John] Perfect.
[Alec] This is so crusty. Oh.
[Liam] Don't break anything.
[Alec] OK.
-That's our new part installed. -[Liam] Sweet.
[bleep] yeah, let's do it.
Moment of truth here. See what happens.
-OK. -[Tyson] [bleep] yeah.
Nice work, fellas.
It's a beautiful sight, isn't it?
Thank God.
[Tyson] Parker was able to pull it off.
We got Big Red back up and running.
So all we have to do is finish off the last bit of pay
and go home.
[Kevin] If everything does go belly up,
I can actually hear Tony, "Sucks to be you."
Though I think deep down, even if they don't say it,
they'd be pretty heartbroken
that I wasn't able to make it [bleep] happen.
While dad Tony battles for mining supremacy, eldest son
Kevin Beets is in deep trouble.
What separates me from Tony is just
more planning and foresight, less smashy-smashy.
But Tony did pull out 10,000 [bleep] ounces this year,
so he's doing something right.
Unlike his swashbuckling old man, all season, the sophomore
mine boss has been sluicing slow and steady to protect
his equipment and only wash plant.
But low risk has delivered low rewards, leaving Kevin nearly
800 ounces short of his 2,000-ounce goal.
That's a big number for us, because we need that to come
back next year.
That covers all our costs, that gets us enough to get
started next year, and if we don't have that,
we're running on [bleep] fumes.
So, we're going to fight,
and we're going to make it [bleep] happen.
Let's turn the [bleep] up.
Look at it flying in there.
Kevin's Hail Mary plan? Turn up his wash plant speed
for the first time this season, from 100 to 150 yards per hour
in the hope he can get through his Sphinx Cut pay pile before
winter freezes him out.
[Kevin] Hopefully, that'll put us on the fast track to 2,000 ounces.
[Chelsea] We got it turned up.
So, we're just slamming the pay in there.
Chelsea March keeps pace with the turned-up plant.
We've got a pretty big pay pile to get through.
I don't know if we're going to have enough time to run all
this pay through before the end of the season, honestly.
So, yeah, we just have to sluice as much as we possibly
can and run through this pay.
[bleep]
Looks like we've lost water to the plant.
Hey, Tyler, there's no water at the plant.
I'm going to shut it down.
OK, 10-4.
Yeah, the pump's smoking. The pump's smoking.
[Chelsea] Holy [bleep]!
Copy, Kevin.
Yeah, you got to get down here. The pump's on fire.
The pump is on fire.
[Tyler] That is a lot of smoke coming out of there right now.
[bleep]!
Oh, ow. I shouldn't have touched that.
Ha-ha!
What the [bleep]?
Uh, don't touch that either. That's also hot.
OK.
Well...
So our [bleep] return fuel lines, and it looks like
the [bleep] injectors, too.
Kevin's last-ditch plan has backfired.
When he turned up the plant, he increased
his pump's water pressure to deal with the extra dirt.
The added workload has blown
the pump's fuel lines and injectors.
[Kevin] This kind of puts us dead in the water
until we can fix it,
find a replacement or something.
And so close to the end.
[sighs]
I can't [bleep] stop now, though.
So I will go bug Faith and see if she can do the magic
that she do.
Because yeah, if not,
well, that's it. We're [bleep] done.
[grunts]
[sighs]
Hey, Faith.
[Faith] Hey. How's it going?
Uh, the pump has basically gone ker-[bleep]-blewey.
-Uh... -Oh, [bleep] -- OK.
Um...
And you... I'm guessing you can't fix it.
I know the last time we tried to get similar [bleep] parts,
it was at least a two-week [bleep] venture, so...
And with the time we have left, I don't think that's
gonna work.
Or we could try asking Tony, seeing what he says.
Yeah, don't really like to go back to the old man.
I'd rather we fail on our own than just keep getting help.
It is close to the end of the season.
Chances are someone's selling a pump.
Yeah, yeah.
I'll reach out to a couple miners that I know
around the area.
Yeah.
Well, I'll go, yeah, redirect the troops if you want
to get on that and [bleep]. -OK.
-[Kevin] And best of luck, mams. -You as well.
[bleep] sucks.
[sighs]
I really hope she can pull something
out of the [bleep] ether.
If I don't get the pump, I don't know if we're gonna be
able to come back. I'm a bit worried.
This is Kevin's dream.
This is our dream to run a business ourselves.
And hopefully we get to keep on with this dream.
So, I got my fingers crossed.
At Scribner Creek, Kevin's fight for survival
relies on partner Faith finding a new pump for his wash plant.
[Kevin] Got good news?
-[Faith] A neighbor is shutting down. -Yes.
-We have a pump right there. -That's very nice.
-Yes. -I assume we're first in line.
Yes.
Well, at least we have to run right now to go get it.
-[bleep] hell? -All right.
OK, I'm guessing you're going to go deal with the money part?
-Yes. -I should go grab it?
[Faith] Yes.
All right, sounds good. Let's do that.
New pump on site,
Kevin tasks Buzz Legault...
[Buzz speaking]
...with lifting the old one out and new one into position.
[Kevin] All right, let's fire it up.
I can see it from here. We got water.
Means pump is working.
She's flowing all the way over there.
Listen how nice that [bleep] sounds.
Very nice.
Back to getting some [bleep] gold.
[bleep] yeah. Oh, ho!
Beauty!
[Faith] Hello, hello?
-It's running again. -Yay!
Oh, my God.
[Kevin] And with the pay pile, we can at least get through
it now. You saved the day, Faith.
-Mm. -[chuckles]
[Kevin] Faith, did good finding that pump -- it's running lovely.
We can finally get through our pay mountain.
Plant's all turned up.
I think it's a good [bleep] day.
We're finally on pay, boys.
-Start making that stockpile. -Well, hot diggity dog.
About [bleep] time.
In the Last Chance Cut, the Ness crew have finally hit
pay and now must sluice nonstop to have any hope of reaching
their 1,800-ounce goal.
We're way too close to the end of the season to be sitting at
400 and some ounces shy of our goal.
It's gonna come down right to the last [bleep] day.
Just go right on top.
The crew hustle to build a stockpile in time
to fire up for night shift.
[Zee] There it is.
[Bailey] There's some good-sized boulders, which is a good sign.
There's normally good gold.
I just hope that there's going to be enough
gold in it to reach our goal.
-This rock looks good. -[Zee] It does, actually.
[Ryan] The weather's moving in, so it's going to be pretty
important once this plant fires up that we don't stop running
this plant.
-[Ryan] She's chilly. -[Kyle] She is.
Six hours after hitting pay,
as the temperatures drop to 28 degrees,
there's finally enough stockpiled pay to fire up.
[Kyle] She's frosty.
[Ryan] Yeah, the carpets are hard.
Ain't going to thaw until we get [bleep] fired up.
[Kyle] Nope.
Boy, she sounds cold.
It's time.
Rick better get his night shift ready.
That ain't shutting off.
[Rick] You ready for this, buddy?
Yeah.
[Ryan] Everything's fueled, everything's topped off,
so I think you guys are ready to rock and roll, man.
-Thanks again. -[Ryan] All right, brother.
Thanks, Kyle.
Get the [bleep] out of here for the night.
-[Zee] All right, you ready? -[Rick] Let's do it, buddy.
Rick and Zee step up to work through the night
so the exhausted crew can get some sleep.
[Rick] We've got no choice right now.
We've gotta run the wheels off everything
if we want to get to 1,800 ounces,
then running a night shift is the way we gotta do it.
Hey, Rick, you got a copy?
Yeah, go ahead.
[Zee] I'll tell you what,
it's more stressful doing it at night.
[Rick] It's really [bleep] hard to see.
[Zee] I've been told I do my best work in the dark, but, like,
I don't know about this.
This is Zee's last shift
before he heads home for the season.
[Zee] It sucks going home this early.
I'm just stressed at home.
We haven't hit our goal yet.
So if you have pay laying on the ground
and there's hours left in the day, you run the plant.
Hey, Rick, you got a copy?
-Yeah, go for Rick. -There's a clog on this hopper.
[bleep]
Damn it.
Dude, this whole feeder's piled up.
I don't know why it stopped.
Something [bleep] got caught in there.
There's two flat rocks just jammed in here on the side.
It is loose now.
You can see all the flat ones here, too.
-Look, that got through. -[Rick] I know.
I think that's it.
Let's [bleep] give her [bleep].
[creaking]
[bleep]
-It ain't spinning. -[Zee] Oh, [bleep].
The [bleep] belt, it ain't spinning.
Yeah.
[Rick] The head drum's spinning, but it's not catching the belt.
Can't get traction.
At Duncan Creek, the feed conveyor on Rick's
Monster Red wash plant has failed to fire up in the cold.
Maybe I'll just heat that [bleep] up.
-Can you grab that Tiger Torch? -[Zee] Yeah.
[Rick] Thanks, buddy.
This is the head drum. This is what turns.
It's really cold, so when rubber gets cold, it gets hard,
and it's just not catching.
I should just be able to add some heat to it,
warm it up. It should get some traction.
Just shutting it down like this is a killer.
That should do it.
Should be [bleep] warm enough to get going.
We'll see.
[Zee] Good. Here we go.
-Ready? -[Rick] Yeah, hit it.
[Zee] She's moving.
We're good.
[Rick] [bleep] yeah. Good to go, buddy.
If you don't laugh, it's just
going to make you crazy.
[Rick] [bleep] love it, buddy.
Thank you. Nice job.
There's always something happening, especially
this time of year.
But we are still running,
and we're going to [bleep] stay that way.
But we've got a long ways to go.
[Taylor] Mike, do you have a copy, Mike?
[Mike] Someone calling for me?
Yeah, Mike, we're all done with the pay.
We just put the last bucket through for the season.
Yes.
Yeah, yeah, I'll do that.
[Mike] Sounds like a plan, Dad.
Tony's Harald wash plant has run the last of its pay pile,
putting the king a plant down in his battle to beat Parker.
Tony heads back to Indian River
to keep his two shaker decks on the gold,
leaving youngest son Mike at Paradise Hill to finish
a stockpile at the Beets' biggest gold
producer, the trommel.
[Mike] The end is nigh.
I'm looking forward to being done for the year,
because I am tired.
But I'm going to have to run this 24 hours a day to get
through all the pay I got.
I want to go out with lots of gold, you know,
go out with a bang, as it were.
-[Zephyr] Copy, Mike. -[Mike] Yeah, go ahead.
[Zephyr] Yeah, the distributor is spinning.
I need you over here now.
[Mike] You shut her down. I'll be there in a second.
[Zephyr] Copy.
[Mike] I mean, I really don't need no big problems today.
What the [bleep] kind of idjit...?
Look at this.
Just look at this.
Ho-ho-ho-holy [bleep]!
The whole thing is full of big rocks.
That completely jammed up my distributor.
Oh, man. This is a serious [bleep] up.
The trommel filters gold from worthless dirt,
throwing the waste tailings out the back of its barrel.
Overnight, these tailings have built up, spilling into a chute
that feeds the plant's distributor box.
The spinning pipes that should evenly spread the gold-rich
slurry into the sluice runs below have clogged up,
eventually blocking the whole distributor.
To clear the system, Mike needs to remove the rock jam
and flush out the box, including half a night's worth
of gold-rich paydirt.
[Mike] Start her, Zephyr!
There's a [bleep] ton of rocks, big rocks,
as you can see coming out.
It's a long and painful process of just
getting in there and pulling it out.
As far as the trommel goes, it's the biggest [bleep] up
I've ever seen.
[Mike] Watch out, gentlemen!
Halfway through his day shift, Mike has enough cleared
to open up the bypass and flush the rest of the rocks
and the gold-rich paydirt.
Love to hear that.
That's the sound of money washing away.
[Mike] Turn on the distributor, please.
[Colby] It's [bleep]!
It's [bleep]!
-[Graeme] He says it's [bleep]. -[Mike] Huh?
He went like this and said it's [bleep].
The motor's fried.
Kill it.
The motor's broken.
[bleep]!
Uh, get that one off. Get him to bring it up here.
At Paradise Hill, after clearing a rock jam in
the trommel's distributor, now it won't fire up,
leaving the Beets with just two plants running...
Ow, you [bleep].
...and only days of sluicing left.
[Zephyr] Whoa!
It's a little on the crispy side.
Rock got caught, and it jammed the [bleep], it stopped
and the [bleep] motor couldn't turn.
Unable to turn the distributor,
the motor burnt itself out and needs replacing.
[Mike] I got a motor here.
[Colby] Hopefully we don't have any problems with this one.
[Mike] OK, gentlemen, we're going to start putting it back together.
Everybody in the hole.
I could be sluicing tonight.
That's if everything goes right.
But considering how my luck's been going with this plant,
I'm probably going to find about eight little problems.
[Graeme] OK, you're good to go.
[Mike] Once it warms, fire it up
and just turn on the distributor.
It works good.
Turn the sluice box on.
Ah, there it is.
-Hey-oh, got her working again. -Awesome.
[victorious music plays]
After eight hours shut down,
Mike has the Beets' family empire back to running
three plants for the final push.
[Minnie] It was quite a disaster, eh?
-Yeah. -Good job, man.
That's all I can say.
Unfortunately, I'm experienced in it.
[Minnie] I know.
[Mitch] The temperatures are well below freezing.
I was hoping to be in a better place than we are right now,
but it is what it is.
We still got paydirt here,
and we've got a cut that needs to be down to gravel
if we're going to get it sluiced next season.
At Ken and Stuart's, Parker has foreman Mitch
running night shift to help him beat Tony, and Mitch wants to
finish ahead of schedule.
I'm trying to make it home in time for my daughter's birthday,
and for that to happen,
I've got to have everything here finished tonight and be
on the road first thing in the morning.
[Sean] Got quite a bit of pay here to get through.
I'm not a real big fan of the night shifts,
but it's stuff we all got to do, you know?
By the end of the shift, Sean must sluice 2,000 yards
of the pay pile through wash plant Roxanne.
And in the cut, Mitch and Brennan,
in two D11 dozers, must remove the final acre of
a four-foot-deep layer of mud...
...then rip through the frozen pay layer beneath
to allow it to thaw.
We're just going to have to push through and get it all
done as fast as we can here.
[Mitch] This is it.
We got to make her happen tonight.
I appreciate you putting in the extra hours
to help me get all this done.
Oh, man, I couldn't be happier to help you, my friend.
I'm hoping to be able to get home for my daughter's birthday
in time.
How old is she turning this year?
Dude, gonna be six already.
Feels like two years ago when I
was racing home to be there when she was born.
Yeah, man, seeing how old Pistol is now, dude,
it's hard not to get sad and look back on all the days
that I missed him being a young kid, you know?
But I've always been able to block it out of my mind
pretty good while I'm up here.
You don't need to lie, saying that you block things
out of your mind there.
I know there's not much up there anyway.
Come on, baby. Come on.
Come on, come on, come on, come on.
Yeah, buddy, we're rolling it down.
[Brennan] A lot of horsepower side by side here, Mitch.
[Mitch] Buddy, there it is. Look at that pile of dirt.
I'm starting to see some gravel here kicking up.
How are you looking?
[Brennan] Guys, I think I'm starting to see the same here.
Hell yeah!
Let's get this stuff ripped up and out of here on time.
Right on, buddy!
Mud removed, Mitch and Brennan use the D11's powerful rippers
to tear up the frozen gravel layer.
[dozer winds down]
[Mitch] Oh, you got to be kidding me! Come on, man!
Oh, man.
She's ground right down.
There is no way that's going to make it.
We are so close to having this done, but that tooth is not
going to make it through the rest of this.
At Ken and Stuart's, Mitch Blaschke's mission to rip
a frozen cut by morning has ground to a halt.
[Mitch] You can see here, this is our ripper tooth.
When you're ripping in this gravel, it's so abrasive that
this last little bit that's left here, that'll be gone in
a couple of pushes.
We're going to rip down and grab a new tooth.
We'll be able to finish this out with one more.
If the tooth is left to wear down any further,
the ripper shank will be damaged.
[Mitch] The sun's starting to come up.
We don't got a lot of time left.
We've got some spare parts up top.
Let's go have a look.
Let's get this thing done, man. We're so close.
Oh!
[bleep], is it heavy.
We're going to rip down, throw it on that dozer,
and get back out there.
Found one, buddy.
You ready?
[Brennan] Perfect.
[Mitch] All right, let's get back out there.
-We're about out of time. -[Brennan] Sounds good.
[Mitch] Yeah, buddy, here we go.
Back in action.
Just got to get this last little bit ripped, we're going
to have this thing done.
Well, Brennan, I'm seeing lots of rock in this.
I think this is exactly where we need to be.
Oh, that's the best news I've heard all night, man.
[Mitch] We've got this cut down on gravel for next season
here at Ken's.
Well, buddy, we did it.
[bleep] yeah, nice work, brother.
Man, what a project, dude. What a season.
It's been a hell of a year working with you, man.
Yeah, man, it's been a fun year.
[Mitch] I gotta get down and check on Roxanne.
You never know what the weather's gonna do up here
in the Yukon.
It's our first snowfall for the season.
Hopefully this doesn't hang around for long.
It's such a good feeling here to be at the finish line.
Here comes the boss now.
-What's happening? -Well, you know.
-Beautiful day? -[Mitch] Yeah.
-We knew it was coming. -[Parker] Yeah.
Hopefully it doesn't hang out for too long,
for it to burn off.
-It's gonna be a nice day. -Yeah.
Um, well, it looks like you're about done.
You don't have much of a pile left,
[Mitch] Yeah, it's shrinking pretty quick.
Stripping is done, so we made it.
Sweet. You've done your tour of duty.
You've had a hell of a season, Mitch.
-Thank you. -Good job, man.
Thanks, dude. Appreciate it.
[Mitch] It's just so awesome
to see what we've accomplished this season.
But the best part is now, it's time to go home, and I can
spend some time with my family.
[Parker] He's done an incredible job, but regardless of that,
we've got a lot of ground still to mine.
There's just a few scoops left.
The Ness crew have been running Last Chance pay through
Monster Red flat out for four days.
[Ryan] The material looks really good.
Hopefully, it's gonna deliver us close to 420 ounces.
You know, I'm pretty confident that we'll get a good clean out
on this, but will it be enough? I'm not sure.
If we can get our 1,800-ounce goal, Rick will give us a gold
bonus, so I'm gonna cross my fingers.
[Rick] We're out of pay. We gotta shut down.
That's it.
Shut it down.
With the Last Chance pay done, Rick calls time on the season.
[Rick] That's it.
Now we just got to hope that the gold's in the box.
We got to weigh it up and see where we end up.
After cleaning up the gold, Rick's crew gather in the only
bar in Keno for the make-or-break
final gold weigh of the season.
[Ryan] What a year.
[Bailey] A little stressful.
Yeah, this year was kind of a [bleep] around for us all year.
-Hello. -What's going on, Rick?
You guys are all here waiting on me?
-Yeah. -I got a present for you guys.
Oh!
Oh.
-You want a drink? -Where's my drink? Yeah.
-Oh, look at that. -[Rick] Thank you, sir.
Yeah, end of season.
We made it through another one, though.
-Cheers. -[all cheering]
Time to find out if they've banked enough gold to make
their bonus and secure their future,
or if it's time for Rick to sell up.
[Rick] I don't ever want to start a season like we did this year.
It's just this water licensing, it's just so tough.
We were lucky to find some ground this spring.
I mean, we got some gold out of it.
I think there's gold there.
It's definitely good for the future.
I don't know what you guys think about it,
but would you come back for Lightning Creek?
[Ryan] That's a...
I hate being that dude, but that's a tough one
for me to come back to.
If we don't have a water license for Duncan Creek,
I'm gonna be honest, man, I'm in limbo.
Yeah, for sure.
I don't know what it looks like yet,
to be honest with you.
We're just trying to survive this season at the moment.
Well, maybe we should see what we got, eh?
-Yeah. -Let's do it.
[Rick] I'm sure you're dying to know.
[bleep] right, we are.
To hit his 1,800-ounce goal, Rick needs the Last Chance Cut
to deliver 420 ounces.
[Rick] All right, moment of truth.
10, 20, 30,
50, 60, 70, 80,
90,100,
131.91.
Oh, but we got more.
All right, there's a hundred.
There's another hundred.
That means 431.91.
That's it.
On that last one-week cleanup.
Worth over $1,727,000.
1,811.56.
That's so close, it's ridiculous.
-[bleep] yeah! -[bleep].
-Yeah! -Yes!
[Ryan] Nice job, guys.
[Bailey] That Last Chance paid off.
-It paid the [bleep] off, it [bleep] paid off. -Awesome.
-[Ryan] 100%. Yeah.
Rick's final total
is worth over $7,246,000.
That's awesome, isn't it?
-Yeah. -[bleep] right.
Like, it looked bad this season for a while,
but we're set. We got everything we need.
And you guys get the bonus you deserve.
So there's a bonus in every one of these jars for you guys.
-Nice. -You guys earned it.
You guys earned it. You guys [bleep] earned it.
No, you earned it.
-Thank you. -[Rick] Thank you.
You worked damn hard for it.
There's not a season that we haven't been with you,
that we have not [bleep] hit our total now.
If there's a team to do it, it's us.
-Cheers. -Cheers, guys.
Thanks so much.
[Ryan] It was not an easy one.
It was hard-fought, a lot of bull[bleep], there's some
uncertainty, but for now, we hit 1,800 ounces, and we get
our gold bonus.
[Bailey] It was a hard season.
I did not think we were going to do it,
but we [bleep] did it.
I'm ready to keep getting gold, and I can't wait
till next year.
This was a close one.
We hit our goal. We beat it by 11 ounces.
That's insanely close.
This season was a fight. There's no doubt about that.
Right from the get-go, it just had disaster written
all over it.
This industry, man, it beats it out of you.
Tony and Parker offered me a lot of money for this ground.
I'm going to leave on my own terms, and if Parker and Tony
are still offering when that time comes, well, then
there we go.
But we get through this year, we can get through any year.
[Tony speaking]
[Dalten] I think it's getting cold, Tony.
Our balls are almost freezing off.
-Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. -We'd like to keep on going...
I think so.
It's closing time
across the Beets family empire.
[Mike] Last bucket, eh?
[Colby] Yep, last bucket of pay. We're finally done.
Yeah, so let's shut her down
and then we got a full clean up. -[Colby] Yep.
And as Tony shuts down...
[Tyson] Big Red, dead for the season.
Parker's crew also called time on the season.
[Tyson] We're done!
-Good job. -We did it.
[Parker] That's a hell of a pit to get done.
[Tyson] Yeah.
When we started it, I didn't think we'd get through it all.
I mean, the Golden Mile was literally a mile.
Let's get a cleanup done and see what's in it.
Whatever Tony's got, I want to get more.
It's time for a final gold weigh shootout to see who is
the Yukon's top dog --
mining mogul Parker Schnabel
or Klondike kingpin Tony Beets.
Both have four plants to weigh,
with Tony just 120 ounces in the lead.
[Minnie] Hi, guys.
[Tony speaking]
[Minnie] Hi, Monica.
Guys, this is our last gold weigh.
And then Kevin and Faith just pulled up.
Before Tony's gold hits the scales...
-Hey! -[Monica] Hello.
...he wants to see where his young pup has ended up.
Kevin owes his dad and landlord 10% royalties on all his gold.
Oh, not very [bleep] well.
-[all laughing] -Is that a surprise?
[Minnie] I know, that's the problem.
I think we're the same in that manner.
You're actually admitting you're
a little bit the same as your father?
Oh, there's definitely parts where we're alike.
[Faith] Don't know.
That's why we brought our jars here.
[Kevin] Fingers crossed.
Kevin has three weeks of running to weigh.
He needs nearly 800 ounces,
over double his best ever gold haul,
to hit his 2,000-ounce goal.
[Kevin] So, let's see what we've got.
[Kevin] Shut up.
[Faith] 10, 20, 40,
60, 70, 90, 100,
120, 150, 180, 189...
200, 220, 230,
250, 260, 270, 300,
330, 350, 376...
376.16.
[Minnie] So how much was your total now?
It was 1,591.
Are you going to be able to mine next year?
[Kevin] I mean, it's a good thing the gold price is this high.
Starting next season will be a little stressful.
Uh, yeah, we get to come back next year.
-Yay! -[all cheering]
Wait, are you sure you're happy about that?
Kevin finishes over 400 ounces below target,
but with record gold prices,
his 1,591-ounce haul
is still worth over 6.3 million dollars.
I'm personally happy to hear that you guys are coming back
next year.
[Kevin] Thank you, thank you.
We should probably weigh up some stuff.
Now for the main event...
[Minnie] So, Parker had a good season.
First up, Find-A-Lot's gold from the Corner Cut,
where it's averaging 250 ounces a week.
140, 170, 200,
202.18.
[Minnie] That's it?
Sluice-A-Lot ran Tony's new Early Bird Cut extension that
earlier in the season delivered 300 ounces a week.
210, 230, 240, 250,
266.96.
[Minnie] That's right.
That works.
So that was all the Indian River stuff?
Tony's Indian River haul brings his total
to 10,681 ounces,
stretching his lead over Parker
by nearly 600 ounces.
You should do the Hill stuff now?
As the king prepares his next gold pour,
ten miles away...
[Tyson] Yo, yo.
...the mining mogul is getting ready to fight back.
Do you realize collectively we have sluiced over 10,000
hours this year? -[Tatiana] Yeah, we were busy.
I was just doing the numbers, we sluiced 2 million yards.
-Whoa. -[Brennan] [bleep].
[Parker] I'd be surprised if Tony beats us.
[Tatiana] Yep.
OK, should we weigh some gold?
All right, let's do it.
This is Roxanne.
First up, wash plant Roxanne, with the last of the gold
from Ken and Stuart's,
which last week delivered 134 ounces.
[Brennan] 60, 80...
And...
94.90.
-Not bad, eh? -[Parker] Yeah.
[Doumitt] The lone soul Bob.
Next, wash plant Bob with the final Bridge Cut gold,
averaging 140 ounces a week.
[Tyson] 40,
70,
90...
103.75.
-[Doumitt] Yeah. -[Brennan] Not bad, eh? Not bad.
-[Doumitt] Triple digits. -[Brennan] Yeah.
Parker's total is up to 10,288, clawing Tony's lead
down to less than 400 ounces, with the Golden Mile
still to weigh.
But the king is now ready to tally up his final two plants.
-Start with Harald, Michael? -[Mike] Yep.
Harald has been running Hester Cut pay.
Last week, it brought in 130 ounces.
[Monica] Let's go.
20, 30, 40, 50, 60,
70, 80, 90,
100, 110, 120, 130...
132.12.
All right, so we've got our last one.
Are you ready to be jealous?
[Kevin] I'm gonna be annoyed, aren't I?
One.
Last up, Mike's trommel.
-Two. - The monster plant's been
running Paradise Hill's white channel pay,
averaging 320 ounces a week.
[Monica] Ready?
[Mike] 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70,
80, 90, 100, 110... -Oh, [bleep].
[Mike] 120, 130, 140, 150,
170, 180, 190, 200, 210, 240,
250, 260, 270,
280, 3, 320,
350, 370, 380, 390, 410,
417.36.
Hot damn!
That's amazing!
[Minnie] Our biggest season ever.
The Beets finish with a colossal season total
of 11,231 ounces,
worth a massive $45 million.
[all laughing]
[indistinct chatter]
That was a good season, my friend.
[Minnie] Things fell in place.
Yeah.
Not me. I want to have a holiday first.
Tony walks away with a record-shattering season
total, more than 940 ounces ahead of Parker.
Now, the young buck needs a monster score
from his last two plants.
[Tyson] All righty, let's see how the Golden Mile finished off.
Parker is combining his Golden Goose and Big Red wash plants
into one final double pour.
Together, they ran the end of the Golden Mile,
the richest cut Parker's mined this season.
[Tyson] 130, 180,
220, 240...
Keeps coming, eh?
260, 300...
307.95.
[Parker] So where'd we end up?
This week, 506.6.
Our season total, 10,596.45 ounces.
I'm just gonna say 10,600.
I'm sure there's three extra ounces in that safe somewhere.
[Doumitt] Yeah. Well done, gentlemen.
-Well done. -That's awesome.
[Parker] Ten six.
Parker finishes 630 ounces behind Tony,
the now undisputed King of the Klondike.
But his 10,600 ounces is still Parker's biggest ever season
haul, worth $42 million.
[Parker] We had a really good season.
You know, this last week, I think,
probably could have pulled a little more gold out if
we didn't have as many problems as we did.
But overall, you know,
super solid year.
[Doumitt] Parker is such a smart miner.
As I look back through the years from
a snot-nosed kid at 38 ounces for his first season to
10,000 ounces now,
it's amazing, just totally amazing.
[Parker] We'll be back next year and we'll hopefully
do even more.
And I'm ready to hunt
for the next big project, right?
Like,
the elephant gun is loaded, and we need to find
where to go next.