[tires screeching]
[Freddy] Yeah, we're done.
[Juan] We're just gonna get deeper.
[Freddy] Don't even know how close to the mine we are.
We're gonna have to get pulled out.
Hey, it's Freddy Dodge.
We're on the road coming into your mine here
and it's slicker than snot.
We slid off here and we're in a bad spot.
We're stuck.
Well, this sucks.
I've had better mornings.
[Juan] Well, I think we're pretty lucky
we didn't bring my truck down, too.
- [Freddy] Yeah. - [Juan] We'd have two trucks--
[Freddy] Get two trucks stuck.
[Freddy] Hopefully, he's got a big enough piece of equipment
- to get this truck out. - [Juan] Yeah.
[narrator] Freddy and Juan are 900 feet above
the historic town of Sumpter, Oregon,
bogged down en route to a struggling mine
operated by 38-year old Tyler Beers.
[Juan] He's here.
- Tyler. - Hey, Juan.
- [Freddy] How you doing? - Hey, Freddy. How's it going?
Not too bad, you guys got stuck.
- [Juan] Yeah. - [Freddy] Yeah.
- Freddy. - Tyler.
[Tyler] Nice to meet you.
[Juan] Nice to meet you, Tyler.
- Nice to meet you, Juan. - [Juan] Yeah.
[narrator] Tyler Beers, a concrete finisher
for most of the year,
has run his one acre mine in the late spring
for the last two years.
Saturday, April 23rd, Beers Mine number one.
The mud hole.
[narrator] The season is short
due to unpredictable snowmelt
being his only water source.
[Tyler speaking]
My dad brought me up here all the time as a little kid.
And I've been up here in Sumpter
in these Blue Mountains panning for gold ever since.
He's helping me this year and he loves it up here.
It's great to have the family, obviously.
[narrator] Tyler's dream is to quit the day job
and make his living from mining.
I don't wanna pour concrete anymore.
It means everything for me
to give this a shot
and to be successful at it.
It'd be a dream come true.
[narrator] Before Freddy can make that dream a reality...
[Freddy] Well, this little guy should get us out, huh?
[Juan] Yeah.
[Tyler] Well, we're gonna give a heck.
[narrator] ...he's got to get to the claim.
[Freddy] Well, let's pull her out.
[Tyler] [bleep] come on, baby.
Get her some gas. Let's go.
Come on. Give her some gizzy.
Come on.
[car engine revving]
[Juan] Fredrick.
Oh, whoa, whoa.
Once we get to the top of this hill,
it should be all right.
Let me try to go without the chain.
He's gonna try to get a running start at it.
[Freddy] Yee-haw.
[Tyler] Oh, yeah, he's got it.
[Juan] Perfect.
[horn honking]
Thank you, Tyler.
[narrator] Gold was first discovered
in this region in 1851.
And prospectors flooded in, creating a boom town.
By 1954,
shaft, dredge, and hydraulic operations
had extracted more than $200 million in gold
from the surrounding creeks and hills.
Now...
[Tyler] Hey, Freddy.
[narrator] ...young gun Tyler Beers
hopes to turn his failing mine into a money spinner.
[Freddy] So this is your mine, huh?
[Tyler] Yes. This is my mine.
My dad showed it to me about five years ago.
[Freddy] Okay.
[Tyler] I've been working since about 2018
- to get where we are today... - [Freddy] Right.
...with the trommel, the pond,
and the diggings obviously.
[Juan] So is this your cut right here?
[Tyler] This is the cut.
[Freddy] Yeah, you can kinda see where you're working there.
[Tyler] We're struggling.
Our yield's really low.
It's not really paying for...
- the diesel. - [Freddy] Mmm-hmm.
It's paying for the rental equipment, that's about it.
How much gold did you do last year?
[Tyler] Little bit under 12 ounces.
How long did you run?
- Five weeks. - [Freddy] Five weeks?
At the most. In the drought year.
So you have a limited window to get your gold.
Absolutely.
[Freddy] How much have we done this year?
We're about four and half ounces, I would say.
Yeah.
[Freddy] How long have you been running this year?
Four weeks.
[Freddy] Yeah, that's not good.
So in your opinion,
what's your biggest problem that you have?
[Tyler] The water, definitely.
In this area, we have snowmelt for water.
[Freddy] So when the snow's gone, your season's done.
[Tyler] Without the water, I can't even
begin to wash a rock to look for the gold, so...
- Exactly. - The water's...
it's priceless.
[Juan] So what does your gold look like out here?
Oh, look at that guy.
[Tyler] Some of its coarse, some of it's fine,
but the numbers just aren't adding up.
They really aren't.
[Freddy] One nugget doesn't do it.
No, just to run, I had to involve two investors
in the past two years
and I started this season seven ounces in debt.
- [Juan] Really? - [Freddy] Mmm-hmm.
So what's at stake here?
My wife brought the last of our savings up here
and I'm running on the last $2,000 my family has.
I'm drowning up here.
Family came to visit us.
We missed our daddy.
[narrator] Tyler's wife, Chelsea,
with their two kids, Addison and Andy,
make a 300-mile round trip each week to visit.
[Tyler] I'm here chasing my dream
and I'm very blessed to have Chelsea, my wife.
You can't do this
and have a family without a good partner and she is.
She's an amazing partner.
Holy crap, where did you get that?
Holy, moly.
Good job, Mom.
Great job.
His goal is to be a gold miner.
He's talked about it since I met him,
so that's why we support him.
[Tyler] What's the hard part about me being up here?
Going to bedtime and you're not tucking me in.
[Tyler] I miss that, too.
Me being away from home is killing them right now.
But it's in hopes of a better life.
- Hi. - Do you think I'll make it?
- Yeah. - No.
- Hey. - Andy.
Hey. [laughs]
Well, I'm sure there's a lot of people
that would agree with Andy.
[Freddy] What's your goal this year for ounces?
I really need to get 25 ounces.
I do.
We are four weeks into the mining season,
- four and a half ounces. - [Freddy] You only have four?
And I'm hoping you guys can help enlighten me
on your true opinion on what needs to happen here.
Well, let's look at your plant.
- Let's start there. - [Tyler] Okay.
I wanna introduce you guys to my dad.
- [Freddy] Okay. - [Juan] Awesome.
[Juan] You think maybe you can dry some of this up
for us tomorrow?
[Tyler] Hey, Dad, Freddy and Juan are here.
- [Juan] What's your name? - I'm Kevin.
[Juan] Kevin? Nice to meet you, Kevin.
Freddy.
[Kevin] Juan, Freddy, nice to meet you.
So how long have you known about this place?
[Kevin] About 20 years.
Three years ago,
I got a hold of Tyler and says,
"You got the gold bug a little bit."
I says, "I got a place I wanna show you."
So he set up this high banker.
Him and his buddy shoveled in some dirt for a while
and there's 40, 50 pieces of gold there
after about 45 minutes.
And his eyes glazed over and... [laughs]
- [Tyler] Gold fever. - Here we are.
- [Tyler] Here we are. - [Juan] Okay.
- [Freddy] Oh, it's your fault. - It's his fault.
[Kevin] Yeah.
- [laughter] - [Kevin] It's all my fault.
Sometimes, gold will trick you.
- [Juan] Yeah. - [Kevin] It does.
Now do you feel responsible a little bit for him being here?
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
It's very important that it works out
because he's put so much into it
and I showed it to him.
And, feel some responsibility for that.
Yeah, there... There's gotta be something here.
And we have come across it,
just not near enough of it.
You guys work good together?
- [Kevin] Yeah. - Yeah.
- [Kevin] Yeah. - [Freddy] That's good.
[Tyler] We've had a history of not working well together.
14 to 23.
We don't talk a lot about those years.
[Freddy and Juan laughing]
[Kevin] There's some pain in there, but...
This is Old Yeller.
It's not nice to call your dad that, man.
[Kevin] We won't talk about that.
It's a 1929 Lapierre.
You could see some of the big rocks we throw at it.
- [Freddy] Yeah. - [Tyler] It'll gobble and--
[Freddy] She looks stout though.
[Kevin] Yeah.
It seems to be tough for as old as it is.
All right. Well, let's do it, huh?
[Freddy] Fire it up.
Let's make some gold.
- [Juan] Let's do it. - [Kevin] Okay.
You ready?
Think so.
Let's send some water.
All right. Here goes another day.
[engine whirring]
[narrator] Freddy will run a four-hour test
to simulate half a working day,
enough time to see how efficient Tyler's plant runs
and where he might be losing gold.
Old Yeller does run pretty good for a hundred years old.
Here we go.
[Juan] There she goes, Fred.
- First bucket. - Yeah.
[narrator] The centerpiece of the Beers operation,
a 1929 Lapierre trommel, Old Yeller.
Tyler feeds the gold-bearing material
through the 17-foot barrel
where water washes gold off the rocks
into a 12-foot sluice.
[Juan] Wanna poke around a little bit, Fred?
[Freddy] Yeah.
We are all in.
I've got my life savings into this, my family's savings.
If I don't make this work out,
my family won't be able to make the mortgage payment
next month.
Thank God my dad's up here to help me.
He's a good hand.
[Kevin] Twenty-five ounces, that would get him clear,
make his investors happy, he's happy.
I think it's here.
I really do.
- [Juan] Oh. - [Freddy] Yeah, I feel it.
[Juan] Yeah, they're packed.
[Freddy] Packed solid.
No bueno.
We know we can help him here.
[Juan] Well, let's keep on looking around, huh?
[Freddy] Let's go look at their ponds.
That doesn't look good.
The clean water is getting mixed instantly
with the dirty water.
[Juan] You're absolutely right, Freddy.
The second it comes into the pond, it gets dirty.
[Freddy] Yup.
[narrator] Clean water is vital
to effectively wash rocks.
If dirty water is being put through the plant,
fine gold can be carried away with the sedimentation.
We should try to get some of that makeup water
down to the main pond down below.
Hey, Pa. Bring me some more pay dirt, would you?
[horn honks]
Ow, you son of a bitch.
[laughing]
[Freddy] What do you think, Juan-o, on that spray bar?
[Juan] Man, we've have that problem
with a lot of plants, Freddy.
It's just... It's not set up right.
[Freddy] The material's up on the side.
The water's on the bottom.
- [Juan] Yeah, it does nothing. - [Freddy] Yup.
Kinda like taking a shower
but not standing under the showerhead.
- Yeah. - You ain't gonna get clean.
[Juan] What do you think, Freddy?
- Should we take a pan at that and take a look at it? - [Freddy] Yeah.
Juan-o.
- [Juan] Thank you, sir. - [Freddy] Welcome.
Watch your fingers.
Yeah. There's a lot of material there.
[Juan] There's a lot of material.
There's probably, what, 15%, 20% of the material
that should be going down the sluice
isn't ever never making it there.
[Juan] Yeah.
[narrator] With this much fine material
coming out the end of the trommel,
Tyler could be losing 20% of his gold.
[Freddy] I'd say we pan the pay.
[Juan] See what it looks like, huh?
[Freddy] Because it doesn't look like pay to me anyway.
[Juan] No.
[Freddy] See if there's any round rocks at all
while you're panning it, Juan.
Even little ones.
[Juan] Not a speck, Fred.
[Freddy] Nothing. Yup.
They're putting material through the plant
that doesn't have much gold in it.
And this is proof right here.
Here we are, four hours, Freddy.
Last bucket.
The four-hour test run's over, Pa.
I need you at the pump.
[Juan] Well, should we go take a look, Fred?
[Freddy] Yeah. Let's have a look, Juan-o.
[Juan] Couple little flakes in there.
Well, guys, clean it up.
Let's get it on the scale.
Okay. Let's do it.
[Freddy] My biggest worry is I looked
at the material they're running
and it doesn't look good.
The plant itself, it needs some work,
but if there's no gold in the material
they're putting in it,
all that is for naught.
- [Tyler] It's coming. - [Kevin] Oh, yeah.
[narrator] Test run complete,
Freddy and Juan prepare for the first gold weigh
with rookie Oregon miner, Tyler Beers.
[Freddy] Pour it in there, Juan-o.
[Juan] I'm hoping it's heavy.
[Freddy] Well, moment of truth, guys.
[Tyler] Yup.
[Freddy] 0.13.
[Kevin] You sure you got it all?
[Freddy] Yes. He got it all, 0.13.
[Juan] Uh-oh.
That's not good, guys.
It's pathetic.
You know there's $250 worth of gold there, right?
Right.
So about $60 an hour, call it.
That doesn't cover the fuel for that machine, or that machine.
[Freddy] There's $250 worth of gold there.
Probably cost you four times that to make it.
[narrator] Each mining day costs Tyler
close to $1,000 in fuel and materials.
And then after you said, you know, you're working on
the last of your savings right now,
there's no use throwing your savings away.
Right now, you're spending a dollar to make a dime.
Every hour you run,
you're taking money away from your family.
[Juan] Yup.
[Freddy] We started panning your pay.
We never found a color in it.
It's more of a dirt mine right now
is what you're running.
Juan and myself are in a pretty tough spot here.
We rolled in here thinking
that water was gonna be the problem.
Water's not the problem.
You could have the Mississippi river through there,
but if there's no gold,
there's no gold.
So what we need to do is,
you know, put our detective eyes on
and go looking around here.
We can fix your water problem.
We can help you catch more gold.
But if there's no gold left there,
it doesn't matter what repairs we do.
It's all for naught.
So, number one, we're gonna go on a prospecting mission.
If not, you guys will be bankrupt fast.
We're already there.
It'll rip your heart out
when you start thinking about your family
and the success that you're not having on site.
It'll get you.
[narrator] Tools gathered...
[Juan] That's a cute shovel, Freddy.
[narrator] ...Freddy and Juan launch
their most challenging rescue mission yet.
But on the bright side...
- That is a cute shovel. - Yeah.
Yeah.
See it folds down.
That's actually a full-size shovel for you.
For me, it'd be a spoon, but...
Smart-ass.
- Well, should we get to it? - [Freddy] Yeah.
- I'm gonna-- - You gonna do
- a little prospecting? - I'll go with Tyler.
- Okay. - And...
- Yeah. - we'll start
trying to find some pay.
[Juan] All right. See you down there in a bit.
All right. Thanks, Juan.
[narrator] With just four days to save the mine,
Freddy must give Tyler
a crash course in prospecting.
[Freddy] So now it's time to do some investigation.
[narrator] The area shows evidence
of historical mining.
First step,
Freddy needs to know how well it was mined.
[Freddy] These creeks look like
they've been hit flippin' hard.
Not a little, hard,
by the old timers.
[narrator] Starting in 1851,
Oregon's first wave of old-timer miners
were snipers,
picking off the easiest and biggest gold
as they passed through the state.
Then in the 1860's,
a more methodical style of gold rusher took over,
taking time to strip the ground
and leave nothing behind.
Later in the 1870s, a high volume of miners
fought to secure the harder to reach areas,
spending time clearing trees and intensively cleaning out
all the creeks they could find.
So let's put our detective hats on here, Tyler.
[Tyler] Yeah.
[Freddy] See now this is getting interesting here.
[narrator] Discovering the date
this ground was mined is critical
to determine if Tyler should retreat
or battle it out.
Where does tree from?
About 50 linear feet at the most.
- So right out of your cut? - Right, in the center of it.
So, I'm gonna try to age this tree
using these rings as a reference or a guide
to let us know when this was mined,
'cause they would have tore every tree out of it.
Twenty-four, twenty-five,
twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight...
[narrator] If the tree is less than 150 years old,
Tyler's ground may be worthless.
A hundred and thirty-nine, hundred and forty.
This tree is 140 years old.
That tells me that this was mined out
in the 1860's, 1870's.
- [Tyler] Most likely, yeah. - And there was probably
thousands of people in here at the time
looking for gold.
But this was all done by hand.
The old timers didn't have pumps.
They didn't have heavy equipment.
- But you do now. - Okay.
When Freddy showed me the age of the tree,
I had no idea that they were up here
in the 1860's at all.
We got to start over.
We got to start prospecting again.
And I need to find some color up here
or else there is no future for me or my family up here.
[narrator] With a sliver of hope,
Freddy goes deeper into the cut
to see where Tyler pulls his pay.
[Freddy] So, here's material you were running,
like this bank material here.
- [Tyler] Right. - So what this is,
this is all just slip material.
So picture this draw before it was mined, right?
It was a nice little creek bed.
- You see these rocks... - Yeah.
...running, see how angular they are.
Right?
These never got concentrated in the bottom of that stream.
Your odd round rocks you're seeing,
that's the remnants of where the gold would have been.
The rich material of the old timers
would have taken out of here,
it would have almost all been rounded material.
But you can see all these angular rocks in here, right?
This is slip rock that slowly slid off the hill
over tremendous amounts of time,
but it's never been concentrated
to make a good payable deposit.
This material you're digging now is totally worthless.
Worthless? I don't know if I like that, but...
- Okay. - ...there's no damn gold in it,
- right? - Yeah.
Okay. I won't say worthless.
I don't know if it's worthless.
I spent thousands of dollars digging, you know what I mean?
I got money in even if there ain't gold in it.
[Freddy] That's what I'm saying.
When Freddy tells you that the ground is worthless
and you have, you know,
a couple of years to get where we are today,
it's very disheartening.
Stings a little bit.
It sucks completely.
[Freddy] So basically what gold these guys are getting
are just scraps that were left over
and not a lot of scraps at that.
But hopefully, we can find some other material
that the old timers missed.
Never say never and never give up.
Hi. How are you guys?
[Addison speaking]
How was school?
- [Addison speaking] - Good.
Freddy was on site today.
[Chelsea speaking]
It didn't go very good.
Freddy had bad news for us.
Basically, that whole area we've been digging is,
Freddy's words, worthless.
[Chelsea speaking]
He says that's what the old timers left behind.
And I'm just getting scraps
and basically just stop digging.
It's a waste of time.
[Chelsea speaking]
[Addison speaking]
Winners don't give up, right?
[Addison] Mm-hmm.
Well, I love and I miss you, guys,
but I do need to get to work,
and I need to find better gold.
Love you, too.
[chuckles]
[Tyler] We're hemorrhaging money
to be up here chasing our dreams.
Chelsea is very supporting of me.
I love her to death and she loves me to death.
Or else you wouldn't be seeing that demeanor.
I mean, you can tell when I call her, it's...
She's got just as much hope as I do.
We got to get on the gold though.
Or else, this is gonna be our last mining season
'cause my family can't keep going through this.
It's always good to have a local that you can go to.
[narrator] To understand Tyler's ground better,
Freddy's tracked down a local expert
who's mined these gulches for the last 50 years.
We're only here for a week,
but Walt's been here for decades.
So we'll go and see what he has to say.
- Knock, knock. - [Walt] Come on in, Fred.
- Walt, I assume. - Yeah.
Good to see you, Fred.
[Freddy] Well, I came over.
I'd like to pick your brain a little bit
about the history of the area.
From looking at the tree rings in there,
there was people in there in 1860's
where he's mining now.
The old timers, when they had water...
Mmm-hmm.
...hit all of these gulches up here,
- clear down the lake. - [Freddy] Yeah. Okay.
They worked it pretty hard
because the water lasted longer there.
Right.
Do you got any gold you can show me from the area?
Here's some coarse stuff.
That was the big stuff from where I was mining
at Parkerville.
[Freddy] You had some nice little nuggets in there.
Nothing any bigger than that.
Them old timers, they mined it hard.
- But they weren't... - Okay.
...what you would call totally effective.
There's no doubt in my mind
that there's pockets all over here.
Yeah.
[Walt] There's stuff left out there, you know?
Like high benches.
And there's more gold out there
on these high benches than you can shake a stick at.
Well, we'll see what we see
and hopefully we can help Tyler out.
Sir, it's been an absolute pleasure.
Thank you very much
for letting me pick your brain.
You're more than welcome.
[Freddy] I really appreciate the time.
- And you take care, Walt. - You, too, Fred.
[Freddy] Thank you very much.
That kind of confirms what I thought as well,
that creek's gutted.
The old timers hit it hard.
But the most important thing we can do for them
is try to find them pay,
try to find them pay that the old timers missed.
And if they didn't miss any, you know,
it goes without saying, they're in a tough spot.
Now it's turned into more of a treasure hunt.
♪
[Juan] What we wanna do is we wanna cut
this spray bar and angle the jets
so they're actually hitting the material.
[narrator] In the hope that Freddy's search for gold
will pay off,
Juan begins modifications to the trommel
to improve its recovery.
I see a new flopper.
[Juan] Yup, she's almost there.
[narrator] Freddy and Juan identified
the spray bar was set at the wrong angle.
[Freddy] Kinda like taking a shower
but not standing under the showerhead.
[Juan] Yeah.
[narrator] Completely missing the rocks.
[Juan] Oh, there you go.
Got her now. That's it.
[narrator] Juan's plan,
rotate the spray bar 45 degrees off the vertical
to ensure water effectively washes the rocks.
You're gonna run a trommel and equipment,
it's got to pay.
And so far, it hasn't.
Right here, you'll see these two holes,
go ahead and drill those out
and then we'll go to the next size up, go to 3/8.
[Kevin] Tyler, he's spending money to be here.
I'm helping my son here and hopefully get him
on the right track.
All right.
[Juan] You know, we come into situations sometimes
where it doesn't require a ton of fixes,
you know, something as small as adjusting the spray bar.
It's gonna make a huge difference in their recovery,
but all that is secondary.
First and foremost,
we got to make sure that we find
a spot that's worth mining.
So, it's got to be exciting for you to be able to spend
the summer out here with your son, huh?
Yeah, it is.
You wanna get that tightened up.
I didn't realize
he was such a slave driver.
[Juan] Yeah, I get it, you know?
I worked with my dad, and it was the same way.
You know, they're great guys, and they're a father-son team.
So, you know, to me,
that hits close to home. I love that.
You know, my father and I,
we worked together quite a bit.
So I like seeing that.
He thinks he knows everything when he's 13, 14 years old.
Any father probably knows that story.
But took him a while,
he wasn't a quick learner by any means, but...
[Juan] You got to be proud of him now, though.
- You know, he's out here. - Yeah. Kid tries.
Yeah, he's trying like heck.
He does good in all aspects.
Tighten that up a little more we'll be good.
[Kevin] Tyler and I got a very good relationship
and I'm really proud of him
because of that ethic
working as hard as he does all the time,
you know, making a living for his family.
He's the one under all the pressure.
I got to keep it in mind, I'm here to help him.
- Okay. I think we got him. - That looks good.
I'm happy with that angle on it.
All right, well, let's just tighten up this top one,
and then it's ready to go.
[Freddy] Let's go up here and look around a little bit.
[Tyler] All right.
[narrator] Running down his next lead,
Freddy and Tyler hunt for richer ground
above the claim.
[Freddy] The most important thing we can do
for this family now
is find some gold on their claims.
And if we can't, we're in real trouble.
We've never been in a spot like this before.
Up here, a few hundred yards, there's...
It could be an old bench that got left up there.
- [Tyler] Right. - There's a flat spot up there
where that stream
before it started cutting down over here,
but hopefully left the gravels there on bedrock
from that time period millions of years ago.
But there's no way to tell without digging it.
Let's do it.
[narrator] A bench deposit forms
when gold settles in a riverbed.
Later, the creek moves on to cut a new path,
which ends up deeper than the bench
had laid down before,
leaving behind concentrated gold.
We're coming up right over there.
Sometime in the past, that would have been
the bottom of the creek.
You see that flat bench up there?
[Tyler] Wow.
We need to get your trackhoe up here
and dig a trench across here.
Sounds good.
If there's nothing there, we bury the trench.
If there's gold bearing gravels in there,
we sluice the heck out of it.
[Tyler] Okay.
[Tyler] Everything Freddy's taught me about the ground
that I've been digging's real valuable.
He's a master class. In learning that from Freddy,
I'll always have that, and never forget.
[Freddy] That's it.
Start here and we'll run a trench right across there.
Okay.
[Freddy] Cut me a little ramp there to get down in.
You got it.
[Freddy] That'll work, Tyler.
Freddy, exactly what are you looking for?
Partially rounded gravels.
See? We got some rocks in here, Tyler...
- Yeah, I'm looking. - ...that are partially rounded.
- [Tyler] Okay. - Right?
So this rock here was in that stream.
Hopefully that's a bench
the old timers couldn't get to.
They didn't have pumps.
They didn't have heavy equipment.
So that's our hope now.
You know, there's always a glimmer of hope.
[Freddy] Fire in the hole!
[narrator] Later that afternoon,
Freddy and Tyler finish a bulk test
on the promising bench.
[Freddy] Well, let's have a look.
[narrator] If it contains gold,
Tyler's operation has hope.
[Freddy] Nothing.
Tyler and myself looked around a lot of places today.
There was one bench that I was hopeful
that there was old gravels left up there.
Nothing.
So now we're back to square one.
We'd have it here or here.
[Tyler] This site has drained me.
I just don't know. I don't know.
Pretty sure this is my last season.
This doesn't look good.
This is bad.
What do you think we should do?
[narrator] After three days of prospecting,
Freddy is running out of options.
[Freddy] There's got to be gold in here
that the old timers missed.
They hydraulicked it.
They hydraulicked this.
Pretty sure.
That's why there's so much material missing.
The most efficient thing the old timers had
during this time period was hydraulic mining.
It's a huge water cannon
that just washes the material.
[narrator] Drawing from further up the creek,
the old timers would use a water cannon
to blast huge amounts of pay dirt downstream
into primitive sluice boxes
where the gold would collect.
If this was hydraulic like I think it was,
there's a chance they might have left
quite a bit of gold in this bedrock.
You can see this fractured bedrock over here.
- See the cracks in it? - [Tyler] Yeah.
Well, those pieces of gold, they're coming down.
They hit that crack and they fall in.
The old timers didn't get it, right?
Because they were trying to pry this
with pry bars and all kinds of stuff.
The old timers thought this is freaking tough diggin'.
- [Tyler] Okay. - [Freddy] Maybe they left enough.
[Tyler] Let's see.
[narrator] Freddy believes the gold
that didn't make it into the old timers' sluices
got trapped in the fractured bedrock.
[Freddy] This is plan B.
I hope we don't have to find a plan C
because I don't know that there'd be one.
Give her hell, bud.
[Tyler] I hope and pray that we can find
some serious gold.
I need to turn this thing around.
I need to get my debts paid.
Perfect.
Let's see what's in it.
- Well, fingers crossed, man. - Yeah.
Look at that.
[Tyler] Heck yeah.
[Freddy] There it is. Holy cow.
Eleven, twelve, thirteen,
fourteen, fifteen colors
and some of them pretty flippin' nice.
[Tyler] That's phenomenal, Freddy.
[Freddy] So that's in the bedrock
that the old timers couldn't clean up.
They left a lot of gold lying there, didn't they?
Well, they didn't have a trackhoe.
- [laughs] - They had bars and picks.
This excites me.
I'm hopeful.
Thank you.
Well, we need to start stockpiling this.
- We're wasting time. - [Freddy] Thank you, sir.
It looks really good. That was a nice pan.
If he's excited about it, then I'm giddy.
Freddy found a good spot.
I'm very hopeful that
that goal of 25 ounces,
and hopefully to pay back my investors,
is in reach now.
[excavator's engine revving]
[Tyler] From what I can tell, they left a lot of gold
behind in the bedrock.
So, we're gonna harvest it.
Gosh, I'd like to pull a half ounce out of here every day
and turn it into a profitable number.
[Juan] Let's measure these riffles real quick.
Okay.
[narrator] Inspired by Freddy's 15-color pan...
Twenty one and a quarter.
[narrator] ...and the prospect of some gold-rich pay dirt...
Forty, forty-eight.
[narrator] ...Juan and Kevin
start a major overhaul of the sluice system.
[Juan] What we're gonna do is we're gonna make a little bit of a change.
If you did feel it before when it was running,
the top box was completely packed.
You can't even get your finger in it.
- [Kevin] We noticed that. - [Juan] So what we wanna do
is by getting... eliminating those riffles
where they have the under riffles,
and the top riffles,
and then also adding a little more pitch.
It's gonna help clean those out
so they actually work properly.
[Kevin] They'll tumble better, huh?
[Juan] They're completely packed up.
That gold just skips right across the top of it.
Just bounces along 'em.
Makes a lot of sense.
[Juan] See the different colored carpets go in here.
So what we're doing here,
by having the second layer of carpet,
what it's gonna do, it's gonna allow that material.
If it does work its way through the miner's moss,
it'll still get trapped underneath.
- Okay. - So it's just giving you
a second layer of a protection.
[Freddy] Let me finish cutting this up.
And then we can start working on the adjustment on them.
- All righty. - [machine revving]
How's she going, Juan?
It's coming along, Freddy. I'm just putting
- these riffles back together. - Looks good.
I'll start lowering the sluice that I wanted.
[Juan] Yeah.
All hands on deck right now to get this done.
We've got, you know, just a limited amount of time.
We only have one day left.
[narrator] After stockpiling the new pay,
Tyler joins Kevin for the final critical fix.
Accessing clean water.
Freddy wants to bring our fresh water
from up here so we're bringing a pipe
from up here where the fresh spring runoff
is coming clear down to the last pond
that we're actually pumping out of
so that the water that we're using
for processing is cleaner.
[Tyler] It potentially means
cleaner water running through the wash plant,
more fluid type water working our gravels
and more gold recovery, more gold in our pocket.
I hear water flowing.
There she is.
Look at that.
Now, we've got clean water
where we need it.
Juan-o, watch yourself.
- If this son of a gun dropped. - [narrator] At the wash plant,
Freddy and Juan make final adjustments
to the pitch of the sluice box.
[Juan] Tad bit more.
[speaking in foreign language]
[Freddy speaking in foreign language]
- Perfect. - [Juan] Perfect. [whistles]
How do you say easy in Spanish?
[speaking in foreign language]
Well, here it is.
Box is ready to go, Freddy.
The way the old timers mined this,
they were gonna lose some gold, right?
- Yeah. - Now let's just pray
they lost enough.
Only one way to find out, Fred.
It's right.
[Freddy speaking]
Well, you know, it's been kind of a weird week for sure.
Yeah.
[Juan] Honestly, you know,
Freddy feels a lot of weight on his shoulders.
When we come into a place and do a mine rescue,
he's put a lot of time and a lot of thought into it.
[narrator] Even after a tough week...
- Oh, thank you. - Holy moly.
Look at that. I got you something special, Freddy.
[narrator] ...Juan knows how to turn
Freddy's frown upside down.
What'd you order me?
[Juan] I got you Mickey Mouse pancakes.
- Mickey Mouse pancakes. - [Juan] You know.
- Thanks, Juan. - [laughter]
[Juan] Looks good, though. He's cute.
[Freddy] My pancake's looking at me.
Thank you for the mouse pancake. [laughs]
Well, let's eat and hit the road.
[Juan] Let's do it, huh?
- Good morning, guys. - Good morning.
Hey, how are we doing today?
- [Freddy] Doing all right. - [Tyler] Good morning.
You guys ready to run some material?
[narrator] After a hard week hunting for gold
and retrofitting the wash plant,
today is the moment of truth
for the Beers Mine.
[Tyler] Oh, I'm excited.
I guarantee you, with what we did to the plant,
it'll increase the recovery by far.
With the spray bar,
the riffles, and then also making that a little steeper
and really, your makeup water now, you know.
We ought to be able to run a little longer. Yeah.
- Good. - [Freddy] Increasing the amount of recovery
from that first run, though, won't matter a whole lot.
We got to get more gold.
- Well, let's fire it up. - [Tyler] Thanks, Freddy.
[Freddy] Let's run a wash plant.
Give her some juice, Pa.
[water pump revving]
Let's run this dirt drill through Old Yeller,
and let's show you guys some damn gold, huh?
[narrator] They'll run a four-hour test
to see if Freddy and Juan's fixes have worked.
Here we go.
[narrator] And if the new pay dirt Freddy has identified
is as rich as his 15-colored test pan suggests.
[Juan] I'm excited to see the first group of material
go through, see what it looks like.
[Freddy] Here goes.
First bucket, Juan-o.
Moment of truth huh, Freddy?
Yup, let's start a timer.
- All right. - Let's do a four-hour run.
[narrator] Over the last week,
Freddy and Juan have re-angled
the spray bar
to ensure water
washes gold off the rocks,
lowered the sluices
and installed custom mats and riffles
to capture fine gold,
and diverted snowmelt
into their feeder pond
so that the water they pump up
to the trommel is clean.
But Freddy's toughest challenge
was finding pay.
[Freddy] I've never been in a situation like this.
The old timers were in here hydraulicking it
with water cannons, right?
So a lot of stuff tried getting away from them, right?
Let's just hope it was enough in these creeks.
Here we go, golden nugget.
Come on, baby.
This material's a lot different
than what we've been running before.
[narrator] The new pay Tyler's running
contains fractured bedrock.
[Tyler] This stuff's really rocky.
Hoo-hoo, it's rocky.
[narrator] But if Freddy's right,
it's the bedrock that contains the gold
the old timers couldn't reach.
[Tyler] Stuff is jamming me up.
Maybe I'm feeding it a little too fast.
Poor old girl.
Gonna beat this rock here,
stuff a little slow.
Come on, baby.
That spray bar, Freddy, is working good.
- Yup. - [Juan] It's pointing where it needs to be.
[Freddy] They had 20% of the material
that should have been going through the sluice
was going out in these poor tailings.
If I was a piece of gold, I'd rather be with my friends
- in the sluice box. - [Juan] Yeah.
[Freddy] Not out by yourself
in the tailings pile out there.
Where am I?
[Juan] The water coming out of that spray bar, Freddy,
- looks a lot cleaner. - Yes.
[Juan] Now, we got that makeup water
right next to the intake.
[Freddy] All that water that was coming in
is going in that pipe now.
[Juan] So that's gonna help with the scrubbing.
And that fine, fine gold recovery.
Those pieces of gold you can barely see,
that cleaner water is gonna help recover those.
Take a look at that.
That's a hell of a lot cleaner than it was before.
This is now and before.
Look at the difference in that.
It's a hell of a lot better than it was.
[Juan] That just tells us that the sluice box
is at the right angle. We got the water flow
where it needs to be.
- [Freddy] Running good, bud. - [Juan] Yeah.
Tyler...
that's four hours.
- Okay. - [Freddy] One more bucket.
[Tyler] Last bucket.
Come on, gold nugget.
[Freddy] Last bucket for today
and let's hope it's not the last for good.
Yeah.
See some gold, baby.
You wanna shut her down, Pa?
After making the changes that Freddy and Juan did,
I'm excited about the future.
This is only the beginning.
Even if I'm not mining here my whole life,
I'm gonna be a gold miner.
- [Freddy] Well... Yeah. - [Juan] Let's take a look at it.
See what you got up there?
There's gold there, Freddy.
[Freddy] Yup. Lots of it right there.
[Tyler] And up here.
Really, every riffle has a little bit of gold in it.
Yeah. Well, there's gold in the box, guys.
- Yeah, it looks great, Freddy. - Juan-o.
- [Kevin] Yeah. - Good job, Juan.
- You guys did good. - We don't know how much,
but there's gold in the box, that's for dang sure.
All the gold accumulation in the sluice box,
it's only gonna inspire me.
- [Juan] Well, I like it. - Well, let's get it cleaned up.
[Tyler] Okay. Sounds good. Thanks, Freddy.
[Freddy] You're welcome.
[Juan] Well, here they are, Freddy.
[narrator] To make this mine viable...
[Freddy] Moment of truth.
[narrator] ...Tyler needs at least .44 ounces.
- That's a beanie. - Here you go, Fred, I'll let you do the honors.
There's a hat in it.
Actually looks pretty good.
- Yeah, it does. - Wow.
[narrator] The first four-hour test
produced less than $250
with just 0.13 ounces of gold.
You guys ready to weigh us up?
[Tyler] Yup, I am.
- [Freddy] Well-- - [Juan] Dang, look at that.
[Freddy] We're already ahead of where you were last time.
There's a half ounce.
Half an ounce. Wow.
[Freddy] We just went past three quarters.
[Juan] That looks really good.
That looks really good, guys.
[Freddy] Well,
0.77.
- [laughter] - [Freddy] 0.77.
That's amazing.
[laughter]
[narrator] 0.77 ounces,
an increase of nearly 600%.
[Juan] I'm happy to see you smiling now.
[narrator] A full day would produce 1.54 ounces.
If the gold and snowmelt hold up
in the next month, Tyler could mine
$65,000 worth of gold.
Thanks, Fred.
- You're welcome. - Thanks a million.
That's gonna save my season.
[narrator] Enough to pay back investors
and provide an income for his family.
[Freddy] You've gone from, what,
$200 a day in four hours to...
1,300 bucks in four hours.
[laughing]
That's phenomenal.
That's the best we've ever done.
- Finally smiling. - I know. I know.
It's been a great opportunity to learn.
These lessons, they're something
I'll always have and never forget.
I'm not quitting. I'm not giving up,
I'm gonna mine the heck out of this thing
and get all the gold I can.
Thanks, Fred,
- Juan. - No problem.
[Tyler] Turned it... Completely turned it around.
[Juan] Tyler and Kevin now, they actually
have an opportunity to make a living.
You know, before they were not even paying the bills,
but now with what we were able to find them
and with the plant being fixed properly,
they have a chance. They have a real shot at this.
No wasting time. I got to get my ass to mining.
[Juan] You gotta get to work, huh?
Well, we really got to get on the road, too, so...
The biggest help that we helped these guys with
was turning them into prospector miners.
Now, they've got a vision.
Now, they've got a goal.
Now, they understand the lay of their land.
And the sky's the limit for these guys.
- [Tyler] Travel safe, Freddy. - [Freddy] Thanks.
Well, lead the way.
[Kevin] The learning experience is
incomprehensible what they taught us.
Tyler, I'm really proud of him.
We're gonna put some long days in
and do a lot of catching up.
He's got something to look forward to now.
[Tyler] Sincerely, Freddy and Juan, thank you.
Looks like it's gonna be successful.
I'll be able to reach my goals
and spend some gold on my family.
[truck horn honks]
And I'm excited to do that.
God bless you.