It's a tough way to make a living, sure,
but I just love being out here.
No traffic, there's no people to deal with.
Just a matter of finding the gold so you can make it worthwhile.
But we're pretty much out of money.
I owe my partner $500,000.
The gold's just not there.
Right now, I'm rapidly panicking.
We're trying to find a new spot to mine.
That's just devastating.
[John]His stress levels are high.
I mean, I know him. I raised him right?
It's like, I can see it in his face.
He's got a financial partner that wants to see results.
And his family's relying on him to succeed.
We really need Freddy and Juan to come in here.
We have major problems with that wash plant.
Hopper jams up, like, five times an hour everyday.
And if they could solve any of these issues for us, it could make the difference.
Let's make some gold, guys.
[narrator] Freddy Dodge...
There's no guarantees in gold, buddy.
...and Juan Ibarra...
All right, well, let's do it, huh?
...have mastered the art of getting gold
out of the ground.
[Juan] Look at that.
[narrator] In the most rugged places on earth.
[Juan] I'm feeling a little sick Freddy.
[narrator] Now they rescue struggling miners...
[Juan] Ooh, that's not good.
[narrator]...who risked it all to be rich.
Whoa, whoa, whoa! Shut it down!
[narrator] But are about to lose everything.
Eyeballs.
[narrator]To revive these failing mines,
Freddy and Juan engineer the impossible.
I've never heard of an under sluice before.
[narrator]Deliver some hard truths...
This material you're digging,
now it's totally worthless.
...and track down the gold.
That's what dreams are made of, right there.
[narrator] But if they don't at least double the miner's gold recovery,
they won't take a dime in return.
It's like ten times the amount of gold. That's awesome.
[narrator] Freddy and Juan are in the foothills of the Cariboo mountain range
in British Columbia, answering an SOS
from miner Anthony Moth.
-How's it going, guys? -Hey, guys.
-How're you doing? -Good. I'm Anthony.
-I'm Juan. -Juan, nice to meet you.
-Freddy. -Freddy, good to meet ya.
-Hey, guys. -That's my dad, John.
-John, pleasure, sir. -John.
-Good to meet you, John. -Good to meet you.
So are you here for the whole summer?
Yeah, just here to kinda help Anthony out a little bit.
I'm free labor, so I'm not too bad with a machine.
[laughing]
I've had some problems in the past
and I just give my dad a text or a call and he usually comes right up.
Did it again this year.
Yeah, I live in southern Vancouver island.
Yeah, it's good to have him around.
Since I moved away, I don't get to see him as much now, so.
Yeah.
Well, I hope he doesn't have to fire you if you're working for free.
[all laughing]
[narrator] Two years ago, Anthony ditched his day job in construction
and moved to the Cariboo region with his wife Liya
and young son Theo.
Here, he bought a 900 acre gold claim
to pursue a passion he developed in his 20s.
I love going out panning, just finding a few colors with my dog.
So I built my own washplant and started mining.
I learnt a lot, found some gold.
And when I thought that I could actually make money doing my dream,
I just had to go for it.
We started a whole new life.
But it's very difficult.
We have constant breakdowns, and the gold just keeps disappearing on us here.
And, you know, we can only continue
for another few weeks before we run out of our money.
So I gotta make this work 'cause otherwise,
I don't know what we'll do.
How long have you guys been mining out here?
Uh, I came out here last year.
We bought the claim in June and I got my trommel all set up
and we started mining in July.
And we're hoping this year's gonna be the year,
but it's just not going good.
Last year we did 120 oz.
We had a whole bunch of ground,
so we went in there and it's just gone.
And nothing got left there. It appears like
it's all fine silts and stuff.
-We'll have to look at it. -Yeah.
Big claim here. There could be some better ground, I don't know.
So what's your goal for this year then?
Uh, at least 300 minimum.
We're kinda shooting for four ounces a day.
So how much gold have you got so far this season?
We've been here for just about six weeks now.
We pulled out 35 oz.
You're just having problems with pay,
or running, or...
We have constant breakdowns.
He's getting to be a good mechanic.
-Yeah. -Constantly fixing stuff.
[all laughing]
How're you financing all this?
I got my business partner. Uh, he's investing in me here.
Is he here now?
He's not right now, no. He's got a business to run back home.
Right now, I owe $500,000
just on his side of things.
And then I've got over $100,000 invested.
All we've been doing here is just breaking even.
My partner's just kinda letting it ride for the next couple of weeks
to see what we pull outta here,
but we're not paying off any of that debt.
Well, with fuel prices what they are,
-steel prices. -Yeah.
You know, parts, food.
I got the mortgage on my house
and then I got wages. We got a couple of guys here.
-We're paying them-- -Yeah.
Exactly.
Just doesn't end.
It's a lot of money to make up.
I'm not 100% aware of all the debt.
You know, I didn't think there was as much debt,
as what I'm hearing about now.
That weighs on a person, you know?
I mean, stress is a bad thing in life.
I don't like seeing him in debt.
A big money loss, that's really gonna put a hurt on Anthony.
There's no question they need the help up here.
Well, do you got any gold you can show us?
Yeah, I got a little gold I can show ya.
[Freddy] That's beautiful gold.
-[Juan] Nice chunky stuff too. -[Freddy] Yeah.
You're not catching a lot of the fines or do you think they're not here?
I've just been told there's not much fine here.
-Most of it has been coarse. -[Freddy] Yeah.
Well, there is some fine though.
And hopefully we can increase
the amount of that you're getting.
Yeah, that'd be great.
We'll just need to look at the plant now
-and watch it run, huh? -Yeah.
We typically do a four hour test run.
Then what we do is we come up with a game plan.
Then after that, we'll shut the plant down
and start working on it.
I mean, how much downtime are you thinking though?
We don't know until you run and we watch ya.
Okay. Well, yeah. We gotta try and keep that down to a minimum there.
We're spending money everyday here, so.
Every time we shut down, it's...
Well, let's look at it. We'll minimize the downtime
the best we can.
-Right. -If you guys wanna do it.
Okay.
Well, let's have a look at it then.
-Ready Juano? -Let's do it.
-[Freddy] Lead the way, guys. -Let's go.
[narrator] After gold was first discovered in this province
in 1861, fortune seekers from across the world
poured into the Cariboo.
Over the next ten years, they recovered three million ounces of gold,
worth today, almost $6 billion.
Advances in mining methods means a new generation are flocking to the area
in search of gold, the pioneers missed.
All right, let's go to work.
Firing it up.
[engine starts]
[Freddy] First bucket Juan.
Starts our four hour job.
[narrator] Anthony feeds pay to the 1,800 gallon hopper.
The grizzly bars prevent large rocks from falling in.
Pay dirt travels along the conveyer
and through the prewash where it's broken down
using high pressure water jets.
Next, the 20 foot trommel fitted with spray bars
washes gold and fine material down into Anthony's sluice
where the gold should settle in the riffles.
He says the grizzly's not working either.
Right now they're using the excavator bucket
to push the rocks off and it's really not ideal.
Supposed to be hydraulics dumping grizzly,
but we just can't get them to dump properly.
It just keeps holding all these rocks on it.
Already the hopper is terrible, Freddy.
[Juan] Right now, it's absolutely clogged up.
Out of that bucket, 30% of it went back into the ground right there.
[narrator] Just ten minutes into the test,
Freddy and Juan identify a major chokepoint in the wash plant.
[Freddy] So Anthony's dad is gonna have to track all the way around here
and then scoop that all back up.
Once I fill the hopper, I just gotta wait here for it to empty out.
If it was working properly, I'd probably have a good ten minutes to go
and do some other jobs, but it's having some issues of its own.
Anthony is such a hard worker.
I wouldn't mind spending a bit more time with Anthony
in running the equipment and it would be nice to be a part of that
and see the results.
At my age, you start to realize, time's short.
I ended up with blood cancer.
And yeah, it kinda wakes you up a little bit.
You start realizing, I better start doing
the type of things I wanna do.
You just have to find a way to keep going.
I mean, there's no quit. There's no quit in my family.
Oy.
I got another problem now. I got hopper jam up.
[John] That's not very good, eh?
[Juan] Look at that, Fred.
Hopper jams up, like, five times an hour everyday, probably.
That's not good.
That hopper's the biggest problem I see so far.
And out again.
That's terrible.
That hopper's absolutely a chokepoint
-that we have to work on. -Yeah.
[narrator] At the Moth mine in British Columbia,
it's 45 minutes into the four hour test run
and Anthony faces the third hopper blockage.
We gotta get through these breakdowns and hit our goal
or, you know, this isn't gonna be sustainable.
I got a wife and a baby at home
and, you know, they're depending on me
and I'm depending on the gold.
This has definitely put some stress on our relationship.
Everybody needs to make money and our family's no different.
[John]Anthony's equipment breaking down all the time.
That's so frustrating.
And, you know, I can see the stress
and there's a lot of people relying on him.
I'm hoping to see him really succeed at this
because he's got the bug for the gold.
There are gonna be a ton of stuff
that we're gonna have to do here.
The spray bar's completely missing the material.
It's not even hitting the material.
[Freddy] Yeah.
[narrator] Unwashed paydirt means gold doesn't separate
from the rocks before being discarded as tailings.
What do you think, Freddy?
Packing up down here.
I mean, he can get away with it for now
'cause he's got coarser gold versus fine gold going on.
I'll grab some of the pay.
[narrator] If the sluice runs are packing up,
the fine gold will have nowhere to settle
and will be washed into the tailings pond.
I wanna see how much fine gold's in it
before it goes to the plant.
The gold he showed me, there wasn't a lot of fine gold in there.
So I wanna do some test pans here.
Juan.
I got four pieces.
Yeah. There they are.
They are super fine, Juan.
Freddy, that's not good. Look right here.
Holy sheesh.
-That's a lot. -Yeah, that's a lot of gold.
So that's super fine gold, this is super fine gold.
So they probably have more fine gold
-than what they think they have. -Yeah.
[narrator] The discovery is a double blow.
Anthony is losing good gold from both the trommel and the sluice.
[Anthony] That's bad.
[Juan] That could be last bucket right there, Freddy.
Last bucket.
Okay, we're gonna shut her down.
We'll go down and take a look at the box, see what it looks like.
[engine turns off]
[suspenseful music playing]
Seeing any gold there?
There's a bit in there, but it doesn't look great.
Yeah.
You guys wanna keep on cleaning this up?
We'll get it cleaned up and see you at the scale.
[Juan] All right, sounds good.
-Thank you, sir. -Yeah, thank you.
See you in the morning.
We can't keep doing this. I mean, we're just
kinda paying the bills. It's just not gonna work.
This season's our do or die season.
I hope Freddy and Juan can help us out.
How's it going, guys?
Hey, how's it going?
Yeah, we're ready.
[Juan] Let's do it.
[narrator] With gold cleaned from yesterday's test run,
this weigh will determine just how bad
the Moth mine recovery is.
Moment of truth, guys.
[narrator] Anthony needs 20 oz per week to pay his investor
and keep the mine in business.
The four hour test must produce at least two ounces.
0.72 oz.
That's bad.
That's definitely not gonna cut it right there, so.
This is just an example of what we've been facing every day this year.
It's gonna take something different here
to make this work 'cause we're just not doing it right now.
I know what we can do to the plant,
you know, it's gonna help, but it may not be enough.
I think we need to start thinking about ground as well.
You know, ground's gonna be a big part of it.
Yeah. We got a lot of ground here.
We haven't explored much of it yet.
I just gotta keep my guys running here though.
I can't afford to stop.
If we can build and you can keep running,
that's the we'll do it.
Let's get back to the truck and figure out what we're gonna do.
We'll come back to talk to you guys.
Thanks, guys.
[Freddy] There's a lot to do here, Juan.
Well, that hopper, it's a mess.
I think we can come inside of here
and put a beam all the way across.
Then the whole feeder will be usable.
[Juan] Inside the drum, I wanna make that
spray bar adjustable.
Get a little better clean out of it.
-[Freddy] So they got the sluices coming out, right? - [Juan] Mm-hmm.
Right now, their set up for some fine gold.
I think the bottom of that box, we set up specifically
for that small super fine gold.
Yeah, I like that.
What do you think about repairing his hydraulic grizzly house?
I think that's the last one we do.
-Okay. -We got time. We'll do it.
I know they wanna keep running while we're here.
-It's not gonna be possible. -It's impossible.
I can't be inside of there when they're dumping rocks in there.
That may be a no go for him.
Who knows? They may tell us that they can't do it then.
We'll find out I guess.
[narrator]With a clogged hopper
forcing thousands of dollars worth of gold rich material
over the sides,
Freddy and Juan plan a creative fix
to remove the plate from the base
and replace it with a beam for a more even feed
to correct the gold lost from unwashed rocks in the trommel.
Juan will add a one of a kind adjustable high pressure spray bar,
then they will add their signature riffle system
to the sluice box, to catch more fine gold.
But the big challenge will be getting them on better ground.
With limited time, Freddy will take Anthony on a precision prospecting
scout of his 900 acre claim.
Hey, guys.
How's it going?
We came up with a laundry list of things we wanna do.
-Yeah. -That hopper's just a massive chokepoint.
We wanna cut that bottom plate that you guys welded in there.
We wanna pull that out,
-put a bar across the middle of it. -Okay.
It'll take a lot of the weight off your belt
-and help your feed be a lot more even on it. -Yeah.
And then Juan wants to work on your spray bar.
Okay.
'Cause you're not getting as good a wash
-as you could get. -Yeah.
And I wanna put fine gold riffles
after seeing that fine gold.
Sure, you may not have a lot,
-but let's catch more of what you have. -Sure.
But I know you really wish to try to keep the plant running.
I don't think that's gonna happen.
-Yeah. -It'd be impossible to get in that hopper
and work on it to be inside the trommel.
How many days are we talking here?
Probably five.
It's gonna hurt.
[narrator]A five day shut down will cost the operation
more than $15,000.
The repairs are gonna be worth way more than the sacrifice.
But there's a lot of material that's gonna go into it.
-$4,800 of material alone. -Yeah.
And what we would like to see for our labor is 2 oz a piece.
-That's just kind of break even for us. -Right.
But if we don't double the recovery,
free.
-Yeah. -Pay the material and that's it.
We still gotta pay our guys, no matter what, right?
I got a business partner and he's the one paying these bills, so.
I'm gonna have to talk to him, my partner
and find out if we can shut down for that long,
[Freddy] Well, we'll see what happens.
[Anthony] Okay.
Let us know.
Anthony, from the sounds of it,
his investor really wants him to keep on running.
But if they'll be able to shut the plant down,
it's gonna be for the better of the plant
and the mine site.
But I'm just hoping that their investor sees the value in that as well.
[Juan]If we increase it 25%, that's still not enough.
I think you really need to take a look around
-and go help him with the ground. - [Freddy] Yeah.
[narrator] At the Moth mine in British Columbia...
-Hey, guys. -Hey.
...before Freddy and Juan can begin the rescue,
they need the okay to shut the operation down.
What'd your investor say?
Well, you know, we're in a pretty bad spot right now, so.
It's a lot of time, a lot of money, but...
I think we're gonna go for it.
But he's agreed to a maximum of three days.
You know, honestly, that's gonna be tough.
But it is what it is.
-Deal then. -Right on.
-We'll get started. -Okay.
We'll need your help, so.
We got a lot of things to get done here
and not a lot of time to do 'em.
-Sounds like a plan. Let's get to work. -Okay.
-All right. -Sounds great.
Well, let's go look around.
[narrator]With just three days to get Anthony on the gold,
first order of business for Freddy,
hunt the 900 acres site to find better pay.
This ground's really spotty, I think,
and, you know, the glaciers did stuff here,
the old timers did stuff.
It's a hard situation to read.
[Anthony] Yeah, definitely.
[Freddy] When you mine, usually you wanna start at the bottom.
Your best gold's gonna be down there.
There's one thing on this earth
that's free for us.
And that's gravity.
Yeah.
Let's take a look around these big evergreens over here.
[narrator] A mile away from the washplant
Freddy spots an older patch of trees in a valley
which could indicate virgin ground.
It's looks like an older forest.
It does, yeah. I don't think it's been disturbed.
But what's the reason for that?
The old timers didn't get here, or...
-Right. Or there's nothing there. -Exactly.
'Cause once upon a time, there's probably 10,000 prospectors
-in this country. -Right.
-Hmm. -It's hard to read it.
If it hasn't been mined, especially with all the trees on here,
but if you find an old river channel
that the glaciers didn't eat up in here,
then who knows? You know, the sky's the limit, possibly.
Okay.
We'll go down here and have a look at this.
There could be something hiding in here.
This all looks really promising.
Could be a channel, and if it's an undisturbed reworked channel,
it could be really good.
-Well, get a couple of pans, take it up the hill? -Yeah.
-Go have a look at it, huh? -Yeah, sounds good.
Yeah, I got some color.
-You do, eh? -Yeah.
-That's right on the top. -Right.
Of that pay layer.
I got some color too there, Freddy.
Yeah, you do. That's a nice one.
I'd take some buckets down there
and see what's in it. You got that little test plant or whatever it is?
A little shaker screening plant, yeah.
You have to run it through there and see what you get.
Yeah.
Yeah, these pans right here,
-for being on top, it's a damn nice color. -Mm-hmm.
If there's that kind of gold on the top,
what kind of gold's living at the bottom?
Hope to find out.
The color we just seen in the pan there,
you know, that's the kind of thing that makes you smile.
I'd like for him to get a Tracko down there,
dig as deep as he can, get a bucket of it
and see what's in it.
I'm gonna do a last cut.
[narrator]Back at his cut trailer...
One last weld.
...Juan assembles a new spray bar for the washplant.
We just flange this, we were gonna flange a part of the plant
so that way when we join 'em back together,
we have a little bit of adjustment in 'em,
gonna allow the material to get properly washed
and the material that has gold
will be able to get recovered.
Well those are pretty good looking welds.
Yeah, we'll take it back up to the washplant,
get it installed.
Sounds good.
So how you like being out here with your son?
-Oh, I think it's great. -Yeah?
Yeah. I'm lucky if I can see him once or twice a year.
Are you planning on doing that more often, or...
Yeah. It's kinda tough 'cause I had a little bit of a health scare there,
so I told Anthony we gotta start spending some time together
'cause I'm not gonna be around forever, that's for sure.
I've always been proud of Anthony.
He's always been an honest, hardworking young man.
He's just applied himself at everything he does.
He's a great fabricator.
He runs the crew nicely.
He's not a mean type of guy.
He's a real good dad, a real good husband.
And he really cares.
He's definitely a mini-me.
But he's bigger than me now. [laughs]
Anthony and John are a great father-son team
and hopefully, it's gonna be a profitable situation
where John's gonna be able to be out here more
and help his son and, you know,
more importantly than the gold,
be able to spend time together as a family.
And, you know, at the end of the day,
that's kind of what's important in life.
[baby cooing]
All right, I'll get in here. John, if you wanna poke the bolts.
-Let's get the top ones in first. -Okay, Juan.
Climbing her up.
It's tightening up a bit there.
Now we're making some head way there.
[Juan] Let's put another one in on top.
Right there.
Perfect.
Much better angle.
-Well, good job. -Thank you, sir.
This is gonna give you a pretty good idea though.
Yeah.
[narrator] Freddy and Anthony have run the newly sourced paydirt
through a small scale test plant.
There's a nice flake.
And some fines too.
-Some nice flakes in there, huh? -Mm-hmm.
-And lots of really fine colors in here, too. -Yeah, there is.
-I like that. -Yeah.
-It's a good looking pan. -Nice. [chuckles]
You know, we won't be able to run any of it this week while we're here.
There's no way we could get that opened up
-to run half a day right now. -No.
-I mean, there's no road to it, nothing. -Yeah.
But that's inspiring there.
I think we're gonna have to do some more exploring there.
Yeah.
That forest, she's thick.
I think seismic testing
is probably the best way to play this game here.
Okay.
Bringing a seismic crew in here and see what the bedrock does.
-The hope is there's some deep channels there. -Yeah. Yep.
[narrator] Seismic testing is a process that uses
sensors to measure naturally occurring vibrations in the earth.
It can determine how deep a potential pay layer
goes to bedrock which will help Anthony decide
if there's enough viable ground
to open a new cut.
Well, I'm gonna get to work.
-That sounds great to me. -See you in a bit.
-Yeah. -Good work.
How's it going there?
-Uh, not too bad, but not very good, really. -Oh, yeah?
[narrator] In south-east British Columbia...
Gold's just disappeared on us here,
so we're hoping you can kinda help find us something.
...miner Anthony Moth joins geophysicist Nicholas Gust
to seismic test a potentially gold rich area
on the 900 acre claim.
If the survey shows a deep channel,
it could identify months of mineable ground for Anthony.
So this is one of our seismic sensors.
So these are passive seismic instrument.
-So yeah, it's non-intrusive. -Yeah, perfect.
What we do is plant these into the ground
and then wait 20 minutes, go to the next one,
-wait 20 minutes and go ahead. -Yeah.
if it's there, we'll find it.
-I like the sounds of that. -Yeah.
So you're gonna have a report for us at the end?
Yeah, I'll have it soon for ya.
-Yeah, right on. -Right on.
-Great. -Thank you.
Thank you.
[narrator] To identify potential pay channels,
Nicholas will test an area spanning 335 acres.
Data from this activity is analyzed and generated
into a topographical map of Anthony's site.
The map will identify the shape and varying depths
of bedrock and any ancient pay channels,
which may contain rich deposits of gold.
We're very hopeful in the seismic producing
some good result that if this ground doesn't
pull through for us and we can't find better pay,
we might be done here.
All I got are cuts and pieces out of that hopper.
[narrator] It's the third and final day of fixes
and Freddy is racing to finish the washplant's biggest chokepoint.
So we got a plate inside of that hopper.
You know, they thought that's what they needed,
but I kinda designed in my head
a lifting system to take some of the weight off the belt.
No time like the present.
[narrator] Anthony's hopper clogs with pay.
To fix, Freddy will remove the plate from the base
and replace it with a load bar
to distribute material more evenly.
[Anthony] I think we're good, Fred.
-Got her? -Yeah.
This is kinda screwing you, so we're gonna cut this out
and then I'm gonna put tubes crossed in here,
and that'll hold some of that material
-off the belt. -Yeah.
Well, I'll keep cutting her out here.
Want me to jump in with ya?
Yeah, hop in if you would.
Coming out.
Hit it.
-Proud. -Right on.
Freddy and Juan, I mean, they're great guys.
They're very helpful. So hopefully they can be the reason why
we turn this around this year.
I'm hoping in the future, here to make enough money
that I could produce a job here for my dad.
The dream all along here was to get my dad up here
and be working together. Think that'd be amazing.
Time is definitely limited.
I hope I can have him around more often.
Eyeballs.
Hey, Anthony.
Yeah, it's looking good.
So you see what it does,
it'll hold a lot of that weight
that's in the center here off that belt
to take the weight off that belt.
She's stitched on there plenty good.
Yeah, it looks nice.
I got about six more stitch welds here.
Gotta hurry and get it done.
Right on. Well, I'm gonna leave you to it then.
We don't have a whole lot of time to waste,
so we gotta get these pieces in
and get ready for our last run.
[narrator]Juan rushes to finish Anthony's hydraulic grizzlies.
Right now they're using the excavator bucket
to push the rocks off.
And what that was doing was putting a lot of pressure on these hinges
and actually ripped them off the top of the grizzly.
And all the tabs are broken off,
so you can't lift it up or close it.
What we're gonna do is, we're gonna line up all the tabs,
re-weld everything so that we can put it back on the hinge
and be able to hook the hydraulics back to it.
Oh, yeah, she's good. She's stout.
I got it all welded back together now.
That way we can do our final test run.
Now we don't have to worry about the grizzlies
breaking off the hopper and ending up here on the ground.
That's looking good though, eh?
Oh, it's looking really good.
[narrator] Two hours to go until the final test run,
Anthony and John are finishing the sluices.
These guys have done a ton of work here,
so hopefully it works out here.
Well, I think it's gonna work.
I mean, they've done really good work.
And the ground that Freddy showed us there,
I think that's looking better too.
Yeah, hopefully, we can find a lot of gold, eh?
Yeah.
Make some money after all, eh?
You bet.
It's been great having my dad here.
I'd love to have him here more in the future.
It's been tough, you know, going months at a time without seeing him,
especially when you first hear that your dad's got cancer,
like, it's the scary word, right?
You don't know how much time they've got.
So I'm counting on the gold and it's guys like Freddy and Juan
who can make a real difference.
[Freddy] Guys, ready to do a test run?
[Juan] Let's do it.
Firing it up!
[engine starts]
Let's do first bucket, Fred.
Is that your timer?
There it is, first bucket.
[narrator]With the time run out on Anthony's deadline,
and no results back from the seismic test,
the second four hour run begins on pay from the current cut.
Even a small increase
with prove the fixes work.
You know, it's always kind of nerve wracking a little bit, Fred.
We fire up a plant that we've done this much work to.
-But we'll see what happens. -Play it by ear?
Yep.
It seems to be running pretty good, Freddy.
Grizzlies are working good.
[narrator]Juan re-welded the hinges on the hydraulic grizzlies,
allowing them to open and close.
Take a look at the spray bars.
[Freddy] Look how clean it is.
[Juan] Yeah. Jet's concentrated exactly where it needs to be.
Yeah, looks good.
[narrator]The spray bar wasn't washing the material properly.
So Juan made it adjustable to better clean the pay dirt.
Material's always getting hit.
-You get a better wash now. -Yep.
That looks good.
[Anthony] I'm seeing some stuff that I really like.
I think they're gonna solve a lot of our problems,
but I wanna make sure I can make this successful
and then all will be happy and all will have work to move forward here.
For me, this is quite an adventure.
I mean, I've been enjoying spending time with Anthony
and I'm looking forward to, maybe coming up here
and doing this some more.
And these fixes should definitely
improve his production,
get him the pay that he needs
to pay back some of that debt.
Well, the feeder's doing its job, Juan.
Feeder's doing good, Freddy.
[narrator] In the first test, Anthony had to unclog the hopper multiple times.
Freddy added a load bearing bar
for a more even feed.
And finally, replace the sluice box
with new riffles to catch more fine gold.
Anthony, last bucket!
[Juan] There it is, Freddy. Last bucket.
Well, let's clean it up, huh?
Ultimately, Anthony needs all the gold he can get.
He's got a lot of responsibility.
He's got a family, he's got employees here,
he's got his investors.
It's a good test run, but sometimes it comes down to the ground.
We'll see what it looks like tomorrow morning
when we put it on the scale.
Nice to get away real quick.
[Freddy] Yep.
Freddy can teach a man to fish,
but you can't guarantee he's gonna catch any fish, huh?
-That's right. -[Juan laughs]
Or at least the tasty one.
I'm probably the world's worst fisherman.
-[Freddy] Oh. -[Juan] Caught a bush.
[laughing]
-How'd you do that? -[Juan chuckles]
[grunts]
Look at the size of this thing, Fred.
Look at the size of-- [grunting]
[narrator] Coming up...
Whoo!
[laughing]
That's unbelievable.
-Hey, Freddy. -How's it going?
It's going all right.
I was just talking with Nick there
and I got the results here. Thought you could have a look at it.
Sure.
[narrator] In south-east British Columbia,
at the Moth mine, as the crew prepares
for the final weigh, the results from the seismic test are in.
This is our depth, the bedrock.
Yeah, that's what it looks like, yeah.
-It's deep there, huh? -Yeah. Yeah.
Eighty feet.
So it's six feet deeper than the rest of it.
And it's the same down here, it's even deeper.
-Yeah. -So that's good chance
it might be a channel in there.
And it's definite, bed rock coming up here,
bedrock coming up there.
-Right. Yeah. -And deeper here.
[narrator] With good gold already on the surface,
a deep channel could mean a motherlode
for Anthony's mining future.
That's exciting though, if that's a channel there.
-Mm-hmm. -Yeah.
-Who knows what's down there. -The old timers might've missed it.
Yeah.
Hopefully, that is a channel in there
or reworked one. And it hasn't been disturbed by the old timers.
If it's good, it could be really good.
Moment of truth, Freddy.
Yep.
[narrator]It's time to weigh the gold from the second test run.
-Hi, gentlemen. -Hey, guys.
Hey, how's it going?
-Well, let's weigh it up. -Let's have a look at it.
-You ready? -Yeah.
[narrator] The first test produced 0.72 oz.
For Anthony to start turning a profit,
the final test must deliver at least 2 oz.
-0.74 oz. -Uff.
-It's not great. -No.
[narrator] An increase of 2.7% from the first test.
But $2,500 short of their target.
Well, it's not the result. I wanted to see but--
-We know the plant's running better. -Yeah.
-So it's a pay issue right now. -Yeah.
-Bad ground. -Yeah.
I know that doesn't feel like a win.
It doesn't feel like a win at all,
but just look at the amount of fines in that, Fred.
You know, we never had that amount of fines in the first run.
Nowhere near that.
So that tells me that, you know, the sluices,
you know, the fine gold riffles are catching the fine gold
and on top of that we're actually getting proper clean on it.
-Yeah. -You know, we're just not on good ground right now,
but with these fixes and when we get on, I think, you know,
we know we're gonna catch it.
-Yep. Gold's where you find it, right? -Yeah, exactly.
The final gold weigh, it feels like we got kicked in the teeth.
And we're not gonna get paid.
You know, it was a little bit of a gamble,
but honestly, one thing is for sure.
In my heart, when he gets on that better ground,
I know that what we did here for Anthony and his family,
um, in the long run, it's gonna help him out tremendously.
But do us a favor. When you start getting some of that better material
in the plant, let us know how it does.
Yeah, will do.
Thanks, Freddy.
Pleasure.
John, thank you, sir.
We find some, we'll let you know.
Yeah.
Thanks again, guys.
Thank you.
It was worth having these guys come here.
They fixed a few major issues we were having.
The plant's running better and I'm hoping that
we hit some good ground that'll pay my partner back
and I can get my dad back up here.
[Freddy] I was looking for a big win.
But like we always say, we can't put gold in the ground, right?
-Well? -Let's head out.
I'll follow you out.
Hey, Freddy, hey, Juan, how's it going, guys?
Just wanted to give you guys an update here.
We've moved down and started running that stuff
that Freddy and I tested.
That's the spot that we walked down there
and we did those couple of pans.
We've stripped a bunch of it, we built a road in.
And it's unbelievable, I mean,
it's better than anything we could've hoped for.
Check that out.
Holy...
That's a lot of gold.
[laughing]
I'm feeling unreal. I feel so excited.
I mean, this is some of the best ground I've ever seen
and it was just right here the whole time.
We just had to find it.
Oh, look at the fine gold.
Check that out.
Those are deep. Those are like a half inch deep.
Careful not to spill that one.
That's a pan of gold, eh? Holy...
For today here, we just did a four hour run.
Looks all right to me.
Well, it's gonna go higher.
Over ten.
Holy.
Oh!
Whoo! [laughing]
We got 13.5 oz in four hours, including the biggest nuggets we've ever got off this claim.
We've had a 20 oz day, we've had a lot of 7 oz days.
That's unreal.
Freddy and Juan, I just wanna thank you guys.
With your guys fixes, everything that we've been fighting
is now running smoothly.
I got my business partner off my back.
I think he can see now that this was all worth it in the end.
So what more could you ask for?
[laughing]
That's unbelievable.
Now that we got all these fixes done
and we're on this amazing gold,
I think my dad can come up here
and be a part of this with me.
And, uh,
you know, he could watch his grandson grow up here,
mining on the claim with all of us,
which is what we've been kind of wanting all along.
It's so amazing that Anthony's doing really well.
I'm very proud.
I'm very excited to get back up there.
I mean, I'm really looking forward to it.
You more than just changed our plant here.
You changed our whole operation
and you changed our future.
Again, really appreciate you guys coming here.
Thank you, guys.