[Freddy] You won't get many trick or treaters back in here, Juan.
[Juan] Definitely not.
[Freddy] Yeah, we're gonna have to chainsaw that.
There's more up there, too.
-[Juan] Hey, Freddy. -[Freddy] Yo!
Do you have oil for this thing?
It's not ideal, but...
-It'll do something. -[Freddy]...it'll lubricate it.
-Hopefully all that sugar will keep it, uh-- -[Freddy] Electrolytes.
[Juan] We may have to spend half a day going through
and logging and trying to clean up the road.
It's never ideal, it's never easy.
But if it was ideal and easy, everyone would do it, it wouldn't be worth nothing.
They're definitely off the beaten path, Freddy.
-[Freddy] Thanks for cutting all them trees. -[Juan] Yeah, no problem.
So, Fred, you were talking about these guys, what do they got going on up here?
[Freddy] Well, it sounds like these brothers are mining up on a bench.
They're losing quite a bit of their gold.
[Juan] You had mentioned that, uh, earlier on, they were getting some chunky gold.
[Freddy] It sounds like they're struggling.
[narrator] Freddy and Juan are 12 miles deep
into the back country of Northern British Columbia,
fighting their way to a 610-acre site in the Cassiar Region,
where in the 1930s, a miner pulled out
the 52-ounce Turnagain Nugget from nearby Alice Shea Creek.
Today, two brothers face a crisis moment in these historic hills
on their own quest for big gold.
-Well, hopefully this is the right mine, Juan. -[Juan] I hope so.
Hello, how was the drive in?
-[Freddy] Out in the middle of nowhere. -[Les] No trees on the trail?
[Juan] Yeah, a couple trees.
[Freddy] I've been on lots worse roads, but not a whole lot.
-[Juan] Really remote here. -Yeah.
-Nice to meet you, Keith. -[Freddy] Keith.
-Freddy. Les Paradis. -Les.
-[Freddy] Les and Keith.
Les, Keith.
[Les] Juan. Nice to meet you guys.
[Freddy] Well, it's good to put a face to the names.
-[Keith] Sure is. -Yeah.
How long have you guys been mining this area?
-Been in here, what? 12 years. -12 years total now, yeah.
Okay.
It's an adventure.
[Juan] So, what do you guys do during the winter?
-Work in the oil field. -[Juan] Oh, okay.
-Feast or famine industry. -[Keith] Always.
-Yeah. -Yeah.
-[Les] She can be hit and miss. -[Freddy] Yeah.
[narrator] For the past decade, 47-year-old Keith Paradis
and younger brother Les spent their summers hobby mining for nuggets
when they heard about this remote mine.
So, I'm originally from Bonnyville, Alberta.
21 hours is what it usually takes me to get here from home.
Got invited by a local call him The One Arm Bandit,
and he gave us a grand tour.
Bought ourselves a claim and, uh...
...well, here we are.
[Les] We came out panning out here and, uh,
kinda fell in love with the treasure hunt.
We're finding decent gold, so then it just kinda escalated from there.
Growing up you fight and whatever else,
but I guess as we got older, we just, uh, get along well.
[Keith]
Keith's more of the welder out here.
I'm more of the mechanic.
This isn't even the right size wrench.
[Keith] We work well together, especially when you're living
with somebody for four months out in the bush here.
You wanna bring it back a little bit more here?
It's a lot simpler just with the two of us.
We gotta work a little harder maybe, but it works for us.
-[Keith] Good. -There, like brand new.
[Les] All of our gold in the beginning was chunkier gold.
By year 3 or 4, we were starting to get profitable out here,
and it was fairly rich, but now the gold is different.
[narrator] With their operation custom-built for chunky gold,
they've failed to turn a profit the past four seasons,
putting them in dire financial risk.
Our biggest problem...
...we're chasing this pay.
No guarantees that we're in the right spot at the moment.
I know there's definitely gold there,
but now we're not seeing much.
[narrator] The brothers dream to strike it rich
and leave their jobs in the oil field.
You're basically just a number,
I think at the last company I worked at, I was number 199.
Right?
Here, I'm number one.
Worst part about the oil patch though, is you're gone all the time.
Typically, you're in some strange town or some camp somewhere,
you know, working 12 hours a day.
You miss the family life, you miss all the kids.
Pretty much everything, right?
Honestly, we can't keep going like this anymore.
It's just, you know, we're just bleeding money essentially.
[Keith] Really hoping that Freddy and Juan can get us straightened out.
If we can't get enough gold this year,
then I don't know where we're going to get the money from to mine next year.
So, how'd you guys do last year?
We actually didn't really mine a whole bunch last year.
We, uh, were having troubles catching that gold,
so we ended up just shutting down...
-[Freddy] Okay. -[Les]...and trying to regroup again.
[Les] The gold that we're catching right now,
We're not covering maintenance cost or anything like that, so...
[Freddy] Yeah. Can you show us some of it?
[Keith] This is what we're getting.
[Freddy] Yeah, that's pretty coarse.
It's got fines in it, though.
Mixed in there.
-Definitely having troubles catching that fine stuff. -[Freddy] Yeah.
Whether it's a sluice problem, or a water problem, or...
-Or not enough in the ground. -[Les] Yeah.
Well, what would you guys need out of this mountain
to be able to make this profitable for you?
-Uh, two ounces a day would. -[Freddy] Yeah.
So, you guys trying to set this up so this
is a little more stable for you, huh?
We could turn this into our full-time...
[Freddy] Your nest egg.
-Yup. -[Keith]...job and, uh...
...maybe stay at home during the winter.
-[Juan] There you go. -[Freddy] Mmm-hmm.
[Juan] We'd love to do a test run,
but before we do the test run, can we take a look at the mine and the plant?
Yeah, for sure. Take you for a tour.
-[Freddy] Let's go look at it. -Sounds like a plan.
[Juan] All right.
-So, there's your wash plant. -This is her.
[Keith] You know, we built that plant from scratch,
and every year, we've been doing modifications to it,
trying to make the improvements,
trying to capture as much gold as we can and, uh...,
...we still haven't been able to figure it out.
One thing in gold mining is when you see people
constantly changing their plant,
a lot of people get it in their heads that
they're losing a tremendous amount of gold.
Usually that's because of lack of gold in the ground.
So, this is your cut you're working in right now?
Yeah, this is the one, uh, we just opened up.
[Freddy] At first glance, this doesn't look good.
The material doesn't look good at all.
Yeah.
So, like, down there where you showed where you were
getting the bigger gold before,
you know, it's probably a side channel beside a glacier.
So, what you might have here is just little pieces here and there
-that are left over from that being reworked. -Yeah.
[narrator] If the side channel is exhausted,
the unconcentrated material they're running will not be economically viable.
I'm sure it probably has some gold in it.
But that doesn't look good.
Your upper layers don't, for sure.
That's all just glacial till.
We've kind of got into, you know, kind of
a different situation here than we're accustomed to.
The ground doesn't look good.
But we won't know till we run it.
-[Juan] Let's run the plant. -Run the plant.
[Juan] Well, we'll get fired up.
Okay, water's headed up the hill.
Coming back up.
[Keith] And the water up the plant.
K, Les, first bucket's going through.
[Les] Copy.
[narrator] Keith feeds their low-grade paydirt into pre-wash.
It enters the twin deck shaker,
where spray bars built out of two-inch pipe clean off the fine material...
...that drops through the two-inch and half-inch screens.
It then passes through a nugget trap...
...and into a distribution box...
...before it hits the trio of two-foot wide, 20-foot long sluice runs.
The bigger rocks come out the end of the shaker into the tailings pile,
which Les clears with his hoe.
We probably, uh, invested about half a million
of our own money, uh, into the property here.
And, uh, the way things are going, you know,
we haven't been able to stay in cost
If we can't, uh, start to capture more gold
and find some better paydirt, you know, we find have to look at selling the property.
This has been a part of my girls growing up, their whole life so far.
It would be heartbreaking to not be able to come up here anymore.
This is my other half, Nikki.
One of us is a gold digger.
You guess which one.
We have two daughters, Cersei, and Seneca, seven and eight years old.
My daughters have been here every summer since they've been born.
[child] Catching gold.
[Les] This actually has gold in it right here.
The gold miner's daughters.
[Freddy] The rocks are coming off dirty.
One thing I notice here is, see that back spray bar?
Yeah.
[Freddy] You see how it's putting that water in there?
[Juan] Yeah, it's right all in the center there.
You can kinda see it's kinda leaving a bunch of material on the side.
[Freddy] Yup.
I see he's got those side cannons
-trying to kinda help it down, but... -[Freddy] You know--
[Juan]...there's a bunch of materials sticking up there.
[Freddy] Yeah.
[Keith] These last, probably four years I guess,
since, uh, we ran out of the bigger gold, it's just costing us more...
...than what we're getting in returns.
And, uh, right now it's not paying its way.
[Juan] Take a look at that box, Fred.
[Freddy] How do those feel?
[Juan] Wind it over.
The tops are pretty rough too, Fred.
Feel 'em.
Those top nugget ripples are packing up.
[Keith] How's your paydirt looking, need me to come push some more up?
[Les]
[Juan] I'm gonna grab a little bit off the end of the sluice, Fred.
-Take a look at it. -[Freddy] I agree.
Find a place to pan it, huh.
Sounds good, I'll grab a panful.
See what's there, uh.
-[Freddy] I've got some gold in here, Juano. -Yeah?
Really small stuff, yeah, I've got...
...oh, a half a dozen colors.
-[Juan] Yeah. Yup. -See 'em up in the top here?
[Juan] If we found that in half a pan...
-[Freddy] Yup. -...there's far more being lost.
[Freddy] We took some samples coming off the end of their sluice runs there,
and we found gold in 'em.
That's enough gold that over time, it can really add up.
So, that's the stuff we wanna help them catch
so they can put that gold back in their pockets, not back in the ground.
Maybe we shut 'em down.
[narrator] With limited pay remaining,
Freddy calls time at the two hour mark.
Shut her down, Keith, last bucket.
-Okay, the last bucket's going in. -[Les] Copy.
You know, these guys have been at it a long time
and they're actually both really smart guys,
-they know what they're doing. -[Freddy] They are.
The best bang for their buck's gonna be helping them get on some decent ground.
If we don't go out and look, we don't know.
-[Freddy] Nothing ventured, nothing gained. -[Juan] That's right.
[Freddy] I don't know if we can fix it, Juan.
[Juan] My concern is that the mine is so remote.
We're gonna have a hard time getting material in there.
So, what we're gonna have to do is, uh, repurpose what they have onsite
to be able to get this plant catch more gold.
Because what they have right now up there, it's not gonna cut it.
[Freddy] Not seeing much in it, but that doesn't mean anything.
If it's, if it's buried in the carpet, we aren't gonna see it.
[Juan] It's not looking good.
[narrator] In Northern British Columbia
on the Paradis brothers' remote mountain mine,
Freddy and Juan examine the result of the short, two-hour run.
Well, first impressions?
From watching it run, the good news
is we do have a few ideas already, so...
-[Les] Perfect. -[Freddy] Exactly.
-[Les] Every little bit helps. -[Freddy] Yup.
-That's the goal, is catch as much gold as you can. -[Keith] Yup.
Every piece that gets away is a piece that's not in your bank.
-[Les] Yup. -That's correct, yup.
Well, the plant's simple. They've tried this and they've tried that,
and nothing seemed to work for 'em
to catch the gold in the ground.
They've got all coarse gold ripples up top.
They're all spaced the same.
So, sure, they're gonna catch any nuggets that's going through there,
but we wanna catch the gold that's not getting caught now.
And put it in their pockets.
I guess, clean her up, guys, and...
...we'll watch you do that.
A little dirty.
Definitely some gold in there.
-Get ya? -[Keith] You got me.
[Freddy] Well, we'll leave you at it.
[Juan] Hey, guys.
[Freddy] What do you think?
[Les] Well, got her dried up.
Let's see where we're at.
[narrator] To hit their daily goal of two ounces,
this two-hour run needs to deliver .4 of an ounce.
[Les] Closing my eyes.
[Freddy] .20.
-It's a little lean. -It's a little, little horrible.
Yeah.
[Keith] I'm pretty discouraged.
Put a lot of effort into getting that out and not getting a return...
...it's pretty disheartening.
If gold was everywhere, it wouldn't be worth anything.
-So... -[Keith] Unfortunately, that's not near what we need.
We actually went down and panned some of the tailing coming off your sluice,
-and we did find some gold. -[Freddy] Yeah.
Small stuff, but you're always gonna be losing some gold.
-Mmm-hmm. -[Les and Juan] Yeah.
But the less you lose, the more money's in your pocket.
That's exactly, yeah.
We need something to help fund out future here, so...
-[Juan] Yeah, there you go. -[Freddy] Yup.
That particular clean up right there isn't viable for you guys, you know?
The equipment, even though it's just two of you.
It's really not gonna cut it.
-[Les] Well, exactly, yeah. -[Freddy] Yeah.
[Keith] It's not even enough to, to cover the diesel
that we ran on the generator to process it, so...
You know, things, things need to change.
[Les] If Freddy and Juan can't help,
we can't continue on mining where we are like that.
We'll have to sell or move on or do something else.
[narrator] With the Paradis claim
more than half a day away from the nearest parts store,
Freddy and Juan put their backwoods mining ingenuity to the test.
[Freddy] They got a little bit of a scavenger pile here, some pipe, some hose.
There's more stuff over here, Fred, let's take a look at this.
-There you go, boss man. -Ah, go ahead.
-[Juan] You know me, I like shopping, Fred. -Are you shopping?
There's all kinds of neat stuff in here.
[Juan] All kinds of goodies, Freddy.
[Freddy] It isn't what we want.
But it's what we got.
[Juan] Yeah, unfortunately that's how mining is sometimes.
-[Freddy] Yup. -[Juan] Between everything he's got
and the few things we got, we might be able to make something work, huh.
[Freddy] Yes, Juano.
-[Juan] Well, here we go. -[Freddy] The world's biggest frying pan.
[Juan] Look at that sucker.
[Freddy] You could be an egg-cooking son of a gun.
Just think of the omelette we could make with that thing, Fred.
-Chorizo con Huevos, ooh. -Mmm-hmm.
-Huevos Rancheros. -[Juan] There we go.
[Freddy] Yeah, my Spanish may suck, but I got lots of the foods down.
Yeah, I don't think the frying pan's gonna help us a lot.
You don't realize how far you are,
until you get out into a place like this,
where, you know, really if I gotta go to the hardware store,
it's gonna be a 12-hour roundtrip,
and, uh, that's just not feasible.
We don't have the time to do that,
so we're gonna use as much of the material that they have here on site.
[narrator] Useful salvage material identified,
the next step is a plan.
[Freddy] What do you think, Juan?
[Juan] Well, I'm really thinking we need to focus on that sluice box, Fred.
What do you think? Modify those top Hungarian riffles for sure.
-[Juan] Yeah -[Freddy] They're spaced too narrow.
-You felt them. -Yeah, yeah, I think so.
You know, if we can get in there and actually space 'em a little wider.
-[Freddy] Exactly. -[Juan] That little spray bar they have...
-Mmm-hmm. -[Juan]...it's not even hitting the material
up here on the side.
[Freddy] Well, it's spraying, just like you said, Juan, straight down.
[Juan] If your stream is not hitting the material, it's not washing it.
[Freddy] It's not getting washed. Yeah.
[Juan] But if we don't get 'em on gold, it does nothing for 'em.
[Freddy] We gotta find 'em some more pay.
The rocks are smaller and less gold.
So, we need to find 'em some old deep channel again.
So, as far as labor, stay, and food and everything else,
I, I think an ounce for the two of us.
An ounce of gold a piece then?
I dunno. Why don't we do this, Fred?
I'd feel a heck of a whole lot better
charging them an ounce a piece if we can go help them find better ground.
Well...
Let's go chat with these guys, uh.
-Let's go from there. -[Freddy] Go from there.
[Juan] Sounds good.
[narrator] Freddy and Juan have identified
three key issues with the wash plant.
First, water from the back spray bar
doesn't hit all the material they're feeding into the box,
leaving valuable pay on the sides.
Juan will build a new spray bar the width of the box
to wash all paydirt down evenly.
Second, the top riffles are only set up to catch coarse gold
and are spaced too tight.
Juan and Freddy will modify the riffles,
changing the spacing to trap different kinds of gold
and prevent them from packing up.
Finally, to adapt the sluices to catch fine gold,
they will cover a secondary nugget trap called a boil box
and fit expanded metal riffles and custom carpets.
But Freddy's biggest challenge will be finding
gold-rich ground to run through the plant.
[Freddy] How's it going, guys?
-[Les] Good. -[Keith] Good.
The big thing that we're thinking of doing
is actually re-configuring your sluice box, that top one.
-Yeah. -[Juan] And, uh, you guys got it
set up pretty good right now, but we're gonna re-configure
your nugget riffles to actually make 'em have different spacing.
[Freddy] Right now, everything's the same...
-Yeah. -...all the way down.
-No changes. -Every piece of gold, it's the same environment
all the way down.
We wanna change that up, and by changing the riffle styles,
it'll change the velocities as well.
-Will it? -You've got all the material that's really need here.
Except the under carpets. And we've got some of that carpet with us.
[Juan] You know, there's a lot to be repurposed out here.
And really, you know, the amount of material that we need,
we talked about it, it's probably about
$200 of material. It, it's not much.
-[Freddy] The carpets and other little things. -[Juan] 'Cause you have almost
-everything we need. -Yeah.
Two, three hundred bucks in material is all it'll gonna be.
-Oh. -But on top of that, you know, Freddy and I talked about it,
if we don't have any decent pay to go through this plan,
-then it's nothing. -[Freddy] Doesn't matter, yeah.
-[Juan] So... -I can come in, and I'm all fresh,
-I've never seen it before, so everything's new to me... -Yeah.
-[Freddy]...on this property. -That's one thing that we've often talked about,
a fresh set of eyes out here.
So, an ounce a piece at the end of the season,
and roughly three hundred bucks in material.
-Yeah. -Well, that sounds like a good plan to us, so...
-[Freddy] Okay. -[Juan] Perfect, let's do it.
-[Freddy] Okay, well... -I'm good with it.
We'll go start getting material, lined up, rounded up.
-Thanks, Freddy. -Perfect.
Thanks, guys.
Freddy mentioned that that he would, wanted to help
prospect a little bit to find some more paydirt.
So, that's gonna help, uh, immensely.
Freddy going prospecting with us could make the biggest difference here.
[Freddy] This is not a nice road at all.
[narrator] In the Cassiar Mountains, Northern B.C...
-[Les] Yeah, so this is No Name Creek here. -[Freddy] Okay.
So, this is coming between Haskin Mountain and kind of the hill we're on.
[narrator] ...Freddy is on a treasure hunt,
scouring the Paradis brothers' 610-acre property
in a do-or-die hunt for good ground.
[Freddy] Well, that's hard to see.
There's a lot of stuff going on in here.
There's been a lot of people in here
over, you know, a hundred and some years.
But you don't know what it means, right?
Did they go in there and did they dig there
and say, "No, not enough gold?"
Did they just quit and decide to stop goldmining?
Who knows?
Almost looks like somebody played around over there.
You wanna look where they did lots of work
because you'd have a gold rush, you'd have thousands of people show up.
They came possibly thousands of miles to get there.
-They'd stake a claim... -[Les] Yeah.
[Freddy]...and then they did all that work to get there,
-so they're gonna dig a hole somewhere. -[Les] Exactly, yeah.
-[Freddy] It's just so hard to read it. -[Les] It is.
Right now, I don't know a hell of a lot more than I knew this morning.
We can come in, we can help a miner,
we can help their plant recover more gold,
but this one's a little tougher situation in here.
Well, let's take a look at what you got.
-[Keith] Okay. We'll see what we got here. -[Juan] Yeah.
[narrator] Gambling that Freddy will find a new gold-rich pay streak...
[Juan] You don't have any more flat bar over there, do you?
[narrator] ...Juan and Keith raid the bone yard
for materials they can repurpose
as part of the new riffle system.
[Keith] I've got two of those...
They're a little light, but...
...we're gonna use as much of the material here on site
to get this build done.
We've got some parts. Let's go to work, huh?
[Keith] Let's go put her together!
How wide do you wanna go on this one?
Do you wanna go with a wide one?
[narrator] Salvaged parts back on site,
Juan revamps the riffle system to catch both coarse and fine gold.
[Juan] So we start here, two...
...on back to three.
Two and a half, two.
Thank you, sir.
These are the spacers. It's real simple.
They're just little, uh,
square blocks we put in there,
but we're actually using those to space the riffles,
so that way they're perfectly even
on... on both riffle sets that we build.
And what we're doing, it's... it's not the same exact size.
It varies from four inches all the way down to two.
So there's a bunch of different changes in there.
[narrator] Juan configures each riffle individually,
altering the space and angle to give gold
every opportunity of settling in the mats.
Certain pieces of gold that may not like that change
-may like this one. -Yeah.
Within this riffle, we have probably nine changes...
-...in one riffle. -Yeah.
I figure if I do a good enough job,
maybe Juan will take me with him!
[Juan chuckling]
[Juan] I'd have you any day of the week, Keith.
Pretty damn good.
Ah...
Except I gotta... I gotta compete with that beard
and that beautiful mane of hair.
-I can't do that, bud. -Well...
...we can't all both have the good looks.
[both laughing]
[Juan] I'm happy with it.
I'mma see how they fit.
They fall right in, see?
That's way easier than the way we had it before!
[Juan] Well, that looks good!
[narrator] Juan will also weld shut a section called a boil box,
designed to catch nuggets using a punch plate.
He can then fill the rest of the sluice
with fine gold catching riffles.
Definitely a tight fit, huh?
[Keith] Yes!
[Juan] If we can cap that boil box off,
really all we're doing is extending
the cleaning surface that we have for more riffles.
[Keith] Yeah, if we can get that capped off...
That... that opens up the whole boxing.
[Juan] Very good. There we go.
That should do the trick!
[Keith] I think so.
[Juan] How many kids you got, Keith?
[Keith] I got four kids.
Two boys from a previous, and then my two daughters
with uh... with my wife now.
-[Juan] Two boys, two girls, huh? -[Keith] Yeah.
[Juan] That's exactly what I got.
-You wanna get 'em a little more involved, though? -[Keith] Oh, yeah.
That would be ideal in the end here.
If we get this thing...
...set up properly, and get the boys here.
-Helpin' out and... -Yeah.
One's a heavy duty mechanic, one's a truck driver,
-so I mean... -Oh, that's perfect then. Yeah!
-They'll fit right in! -Yeah!
[both laughing]
-That's a... you need that out here! -[Keith] Yes!
Down the road, I know, uh...
Brayden has probably spent more time here than...
...than his older brother, Taylor.
He really enjoys it.
They both enjoy this place too, and...
I see them both coming back here.
At one point down the road...
...there's definitely a place where the boys could end up again.
Problem is there's only two guys.
[chuckling]
There's only so much you can do in a season, too.
-Right? So... -[Juan] That's where you need to get your boys involved.
-[Keith] And uh... -You know, your boys are old enough now. They...
-They come out here and give you guys a hand, and... -[Keith] Yup.
[Juan] And kind of make it a family operation.
There we are.
Just weld it out.
Nice. That's it!
[Freddy] I wish I could see into the ground.
[narrator] Half a mile from the wash plant...
-So up here's where the ditches are? -[Les] Yeah.
You can really see the ditches from here.
[narrator] Detective Dodge hunts for a gully
where gold may be concentrated.
[Freddy] You said there's like seven miles of ditches on the property, huh?
[Les] Seven miles of hand-dug ditches
-is what we've been told. -[Freddy] Holy hell.
Imagine digging through this, these big rocks
-and stuff with a shovel. -[Les chuckling] Man...
[narrator] When old timers didn't have the water needed
to mine gold,
they dug ditches.
Sometimes many miles in a lane
to direct water to where it was needed.
Well, the ditches are kind of like an indicator for you, then, up here.
So it adds a good clue that the old-timers found the gold.
They weren't gonna ditch it to where the gold wasn't.
-Definitely. -[Freddy] So follow their ditches.
Well, get the drone up, huh?
[Les] Yeah, send her up.
If I wreck it, it'll be the third drone I've crashed.
[chuckling]
[narrator] Following clues left by the old-timers,
Freddy hopes a bird's eye view of the landscape
will identify the channel they were chasing.
There we go.
-So this is the channel across here. -[Les] Right.
There is a channel running straight across.
Okay. And that's this channel right here, then?
-[Les] Right here, yeah. -[Freddy] Okay.
I didn't know this valley was here.
If a glacier had came through here and reconcentrated that material...
...it might be something really good to look at.
-You can see a big glacier was in here. -[Les] Yup.
[Freddy] That might be something cool.
There is a distinctive channel all the way across
this hill that leads up to a valley over here.
When the ice was in here,
probably had it dammed up on both sides,
looking at it on that drone.
And water would've came across this hill
and maybe reconcentrated some of the sluice material up here.
Kind of nature's sluice box up on top of the hill.
[narrator] Freddy's theory?
A glacier laden with nuggets snatched from veins in the mountain
forced its way down the valley.
A second glacier collided with the first,
slowing down, and eventually melting.
The melt water reconcentrated the gold bearing material
into an ancient channel,
which should be a gold-rich pay streak.
Half a mile...
...from where the Paradis brothers are mining.
[Les] Nice.
[both chuckling]
Still in one piece!
[Freddy] Well, I've got one idea.
I'll talk to Juan about it, see what he says and...
...maybe we'll have a look at it.
Well, we only have a limited amount of time here.
[Les] Looking around with Freddy and having a look at this channel
and seeing him get excited is exciting for me, right?
And uh, you know, it brings the confidence up a little bit
that it might be a really good spot to go prospect.
Get back in here and see what goes on.
[narrator] Only a day before the final test run.
I'll continue prospect and if you wanna keep...
Yeah, I'll keep on working on that plant, yup.
[Freddy] Spray bars and all that stuff.
We gotta help 'em with their gold recovery, but...
...unless they have gold to recover, that means nothing.
Well, I know there's gold here.
-It's just a matter of finding where it's got reconcentrated. -[Juan] Yeah.
-Yeah. -[Freddy] We can get the track going...
-Yeah. -[Freddy] Get in there and punch some holes.
If we can find some color, I'll be happy.
Let's get in there and see what we can't do.
[Les] I'll work my way in there and move some trees
out of the way a little bit.
[narrator] Freddy's narrowed down the hunt for a new pay streak
to an area half a mile up the mountain,
from where the brothers are currently mining.
[Freddy] I like this spot right here.
-Let's do it. Let's see what lives here. -[Les] Okay.
Well, we'll just punch a hole here.
You know, it's a good looking spot.
We've got a hill here.
It's a lower area here, so if water did run through here at one time
to reconcentrate material, this is a nice lookin' spot for it.
Definitely got potential,
whether or not it's got gold or not.
We won't know for a bit.
[narrator] Freddy looks for rounded river rocks.
If the water ran through here,
it would've concentrated the gold into a gold-rich pay streak.
[Freddy] It's not good.
This is all just glacial sand.
Right here, I mean, there's probably a little
bit of gold in it, but not very much.
Down about, what? Five, six feet?
We're starting to get into more gravelly stuff.
Starting to get into some bigger rocks, huh?
Yeah, that one was pretty well-rounded.
That bucket's looking better, huh?
Probably getting closer here.
That looks like bedrock down there, maybe.
Swing her over to the side here, would you Les?
Have a look at some of it.
I like this.
Yeah, it looks like a...
...a decomposed bedrock there, Les.
I'm gonna grab some of this material
in the bucket.
We can go pan it.
Let's see if there's any color in it.
Let's go right here, huh?
-Moment of truth. -[Freddy] Yeah.
Fingers crossed.
There's some heavies in it.
That's a good sign.
So we got 13...
...15 colors.
So that's better than a swift kick in the butt.
That's something, right?
Yeah.
Phenomenal.
[Freddy] It's 30 mesh gold.
It's very catchable, though, that size.
Well...
-That's a good sign, if nothing. -Yup.
I'm happy with it.
-Yeah. -Yeah, me as well.
-Anytime you find gold... -No, that's right.
[Freddy] Found something. Let's do another pan.
[Les] It feels great. Check her out!
The proof's in the pudding, right?
There was gold in every pan.
They've gotten better gold. We can run a second test here.
They've got a lot of material to run in the future.
The hole we're digging, you know,
could potentially be the future of the mine.
We found some color in there.
It's pretty exciting.
-[Keith] Over here, Juan? -[Juan] Yeah, that's perfect. Right there.
[narrator] With one day left,
and a vital new pay streak identified...
Juan and Keith race the sun to finish a critical final fix
to the wash plant.
[Juan] Really, we're running out of time.
So we just gotta keep on working.
We're close, though. We're close.
We gotta get this done.
[Keith] Get one on there.
-[Juan] Backside right here? -[Keith] Yeah.
Close enough. Weld this side.
This is hopefully gonna give us a more even feed...
...which gives us a better opportunity of catching
some of this fine gold down at the bottom.
Just a tad bit more.
That...
That's good.
[Keith] Is it good?
[Juan] Keith's got this hole all cut out.
We're ready to get this spray bar up top,
get all lined up and get it welded in.
Thank you, sir.
[Keith] There we are.
[Juan] Right there.
That's pretty good.
[Keith] Put your visor up.
[Keith] Yeah, I think we're good, Juan.
From what I'm seeing now, we're gonna water all the way across this box.
So no matter where the dirts hit,
water should be, uh, helping push that dirt out.
Beautiful job!
[Juan] Perfect!
I'm happy with that.
We wanna make sure that the sprayers are spraying the same way.
Make sure that that flow of water's
concentrated down that, uh, wash box,
and is pushing that material down to the screen.
[Keith] It looks really good.
-Thanks, Juan! -[Juan] No problem.
This rescue is a little different.
You know, there were so many things that we had to do.
Uh, we had to do plant repairs,
but then on top of that, we had to help the guys
try to locate some decent ground.
I'm hoping with what Freddy was able to do,
and the changes we made to the plant,
it's really gonna help these guys out.
But we won't know until we actually watch it run.
There's a lot riding on this final test here.
You know, if the numbers aren't there...
...I'm not sure how me and Les are gonna be able to continue
with where we're sitting at the moment.
[Juan] I just got a frantic radio call from Freddy.
It's a big day at the mine site today,
so he wants to pick out the right outfit to wear.
So I'm gonna give him a hand and see what we can't come up with.
Well, what do you think, Juan?
I'm... I'm conflicted.
Let me look at that one, Fred.
Let's get 'em out in the light.
-[Freddy] What about this one? -[Juan] Let me see that.
Let's see another one.
All right, that might not be the one.
I don't know. You got one more in there?
-Oh, I got a bunch more, yeah. -[Juan] Yeah.
No, I think this is the one right here, Freddy.
-I like that one. -[Freddy] Is that the one?
-This one right here? -It's just gorgeous. Perfect.
-Okay. -[Juan] That's the one to wear.
Okay. What about pants?
Should I wear these jeans or should I wear these jeans?
[Juan] Let me see. Let me look at these.
Those are a bit too clean, I think.
[Juan] No, I'd wear those.
-Those are the ones. -[Freddy] These good?
-[Juan] Those are the ones, yeah. -Okay.
You know, I picked out my shirt this morning,
I pulled all my shirts out and took a look at 'em.
And honestly, the way I picked it out
was the one that smelled the best.
-Smelled the best? Yeah. -[chuckling] This one smells all right!
Yeah, the sniff test in the morning!
-This is the one I'm wearing! -Ah! Not today!
[both laughing]
All right, buddy.
-See you, Fred. -Thanks, Juano!
[Freddy] What do you think, guys?
[narrator] Before they do the final run
and test all of their fixes...
So let's have a walkthrough and talk about the riffles
and stuff Juan built.
[narrator] Freddy takes a closer look at the improvements
Juan has made to the sluice runs.
We can kind of see,
you know, what Juan did here.
We talked about it.
-We decided to put your coarse riffles low. -[Keith] Yeah.
That'll let that material come off of there
and spread more and actually pick up a bit more velocity on the lighter riffles...
-[Keith] Okay. -[Freddy] ...before it hits the coarse riffles.
[Keith] Yeah, get a chance for everything to fan out a little bit, and...
-Yeah. -Instead of being all... all the same exact riffle
like we had on the last ones.
There's... There's quite a few more changes.
-[Les] Yeah. -[Juan] More chances for that gold to get caught.
That's gonna stop it from backing up on us.
-Or, it'll at least help it if it's backing up. -[Freddy] It'll help, yeah.
It'll help greatly.
[Les] It won't all back up.
And that one piece of gold that doesn't like the other situations
may like that one.
Especially with the fine gold.
[Keith] Having Juan and Freddy out here...
Two great people to get some knowledge from.
You know, they've had a lot of experience
in this fine gold recovery, and uh, yeah.
I was able to ask...
...a lot of questions on things that I've had.
You know, been trying to find answers for,
and, uh, they were able to answer those for me.
You guys ready to rock and roll?
-[Les] We're ready to fire it up. -[Keith] Yes, yes.
[Freddy] Let's make some gold.
[Les] This second test here...
A little concerned, um, how it's gonna turn out, you know?
Hoping these changes capture some more of that fine gold,
and if there's no gold in this test,
it's, uh, back to the drawing board again.
See if it's...
...viable to continue operations out here.
Let's do it.
[narrator] After a week of making major upgrades
to the wash plant...
...and a three day prospect for better ground...
...Freddy and Juan will run a two hour test.
[device powering on]
All right, we got water headed north up the hill!
[Keith] Copy!
Hey Les, they got water at the pump!
[Juan] We're pretty excited about it.
We're gonna go ahead and get the equipment fired up,
and we're gonna start running the plant.
We're gonna get some gold in the box.
Hey Les, first bucket's going in!
First bucket, Fred!
-Start timing it! -[Juan] Nice.
[narrator] Keith and Les Paradis
need this test to deliver over .4 of an ounce
to keep them on track for their two ounce a day target.
[Keith] Well, those few spray bars seem to be doing the trick, Les!
We're getting a nice even feed into those shakers.
[Juan] Yo, those feel better.
A lot better.
-Yeah, Juano... looks good. -[Juan] Thanks, buddy.
[Juan] Look at that.
-Perfectly clean. -That's clean!
[Juan] That's clean.
[Freddy] Yeah, you can eat off of it, Juan.
[Juan] It's perfect.
Can't beat that.
-You got more water now. -Do we?
Since you put that spray bar in the back.
[Les] Oh, okay.
[Freddy] You probably have...
...ten percent more water going through than you had before.
[Les] Looks good.
It's running, and his new spray bars are working good.
It's washing it out nice and even he said, so...
-The bottom riffles are working good. -Yup.
[Juan] The plant is running great.
So as long as there's gold in the ground,
I guarantee that this... this cleanup's gonna be better than the last one.
That spot we just went and dug?
-Yeah? -[Freddy] It was prospected.
-It's got gold in it. -[Juan] Yeah?
I'm excited to see what the box looks like, Fred.
Yeah, I am too.
Well, the sluices are running better than they were before.
That's for sure.
Pretty much an apples to apples test here.
Now, uh... now the proof will be in the pudding.
Get the gold on the scale and see what it does.
Hey, Keith. You got a copy?
Go ahead, Freddy.
Yeah, let's make this next bucket your last bucket.
Yeah, you betcha.
I'll grab one more, call it my last one
and uh, we'll turn it off.
Can you see some?
[Keith] I think we got a piece right here.
[Les] Yeah.
[Freddy] Yeah, I got gold here.
[Keith] We know we're getting good action on these riffles right here.
[Juan] Oh, look at that trough, Fred.
-[Freddy] Ah. -[Juan] There's a bunch of fine gold in there.
-[Freddy] Is there? -[Juan] Yup.
-[Freddy] Good. -[Juan] Bunch of fine gold.
[Freddy] You see it in there?
It's in the carpet where
-we want it, too. Yeah. -[Les] It's right in the carpet, yeah.
[Freddy] That's where we want it.
So it definitely looks like a big improvement.
Well, there's only one way to find out, huh?
Get it cleaned up and get it on the scale.
-[Keith] Yup, let's do it. -[Les] That sounds good.
[Freddy] Got her all dried up, huh, guys?
[Juan] Got her all done.
[narrator] Their first test produced .2 of an ounce.
-[Juan] Moment of truth, huh? -[Freddy] Moment of truth, Juano.
[narrator] To hit their two ounce a day target,
and become viable,
the brothers need at least double the first run.
-[Freddy] Well, that looks better. -[Juan] Looks nice.
-[Freddy] Lots fine gold in there. -[Juan] Holy... look at that.
There's a ton of fine gold.
[Keith] We've never seen fines like that before.
Well... that's a good sign!
-[Keith] Yeah, mmm-hmm. -[Les] It is a good sign!
-It's quite impressive. -[Les] Yeah.
-[Juan] Let's weigh it up. -Let's weigh it up!
Yeah, let's do it.
[Freddy] Well...
There's .20 right there, guys.
In there, and we got a lot left in the pan.
.55.
-[Juan] Ahem. -Thanks.
[Juan] That's pretty damn good.
-Over 100 percent? Yeah. -[Freddy] Over 100 percent, guys.
-[Keith] That's a huge improvement. -[Les] Huge improvement!
[narrator] A full ten hour day would produce
2.75 ounces, which could mean the Paradis brothers
turning a profit for the first time in years.
More than enough for a career change
from oil to gold.
Most of that fine gold caught in there is a...
-Yeah, the... -The riffle systems...
-...is the changes. -...we put in there.
-Yeah. -[Les] Well, definitely.
We haven't seen fines like that before.
-It was a... -Well, it's a dang good problem to have, huh?
-15... -[Les] It is!
[all laughing]
[Les] Yeah, catching the fine gold makes a huge difference.
It makes it more viable to be able to do this full time,
and be able to work for ourselves.
Hopefully, be able to take the winters off.
-Can't say thank you enough for the, uh... -[Juan] Oh, no.
-...your advice for changes, so... -[Juan] That's awesome.
Thank you, and honestly, we're extremely excited about that,
because at the end of the day, the proof is in the pudding.
-Look at all that fine gold. -[Freddy] Yup, yup.
Well, you definitely didn't disappoint, so...
-Yeah. -[all chuckling]
It's been a pleasure... been a pleasure having you guys.
-We learned a lot from you guys. -My pleasure.
-Pleasure. -Thanks a lot.
-Wish we could spend the whole summer with you guys. -Appreciate it.
-Yeah, ditto. -Thank you.
-Let's load her up and go, huh? -Yeah, let's get on the road.
On the fine gold for sure, we've made a major increase.
Mining this mine better pay.
We're gonna get 'em the most gold in the future.
These guys want to mine full time.
They love it out in the bush, they love it out at their mine.
And they love digging for gold.
-Take care, guys! -[Les] Yeah.
-[Freddy] Great guys to work with, Juan. -[Juan] Oh, man.
It was awesome, Fred.
[Freddy] Well, Juano...
[Juan] On to the next one, Fred.
Let's go.
[Keith] With Freddy and Juan coming out,
and finding some new ground...
...and with these improvements,
we can bring the family up and spend our summers together
and just enjoy life.
[Les] I just wanna thank Freddy and Juan for everything they've done.
It means the world to me.
It's something we want to keep doing.
We wanna keep working this mine, right?
We... We don't have to shut it down
and be able to continue mining out there.