[Cory] Yet another hot day here in North Carolina.
We figured we got two to three weeks
that if we don't start producing gold to put us in the green,
we're gonna have to very soon put this place up on the market.
This was never in my plan to come out here and actually run a mine.
I came here strictly as an assistant prospector.
The first owner of this mine when I came here,
was just a wonderful, wonderful man.
And it just so happened that he unfortunately got cancer.
And then we lost him.
When we found out we inherited the mine,
I had a momentary lapse of complete shock.
Then there was a few moments of "What are we going to do?"
And then the big one,
"Can we do what we can to try to make this viable?"
I wanted to upscale a little bit.
But we've had to build a wash plant from nothing
and put my retirement into it.
It's bleeding me dry very, very fast.
I'm feeling it.
It's feeling a little rough at the moment.
As a marine, we don't fail.
Small little failures are a way to teach you.
But this to me, is mission failure.
Without Freddy and Juan,
I don't think it's even a question. Without them, we're going down.
[Freddy] Let's make some gold, guys.
[narrator] Freddy Dodge...
There's no guarantees in gold, buddy.
[narrator] ...and Juan Ibarra...
All right, well, let's do it.
[narrator] ...have mastered the art of getting gold out of the ground...
[Juan] Look at that.
...in the most rugged places on earth.
[Juan over radio] I'm feeling a little sick, Freddy.
[narrator] Now they rescue struggling miners...
Ooh! That's not good.
[narrator] ...who've 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 engineered the impossible...
[man] Well, I've never heard of an under sluice before.
[narrator] ...deliver some hard truths.
This material you're digging now is totally worthless.
[narrator] And track down the gold.
That's what dreams are made of right there.
[narrator] But if they don't at least double the miners' gold recovery,
they won't take a dime in return.
That's ten times the amount of gold. That's awesome!
[Juan over radio] I think I'm gonna puke.
-Are you? -No.
-Get us back! -No, I'm just [bleep] with you.
[Juan speaking]
-First in flight-- -First in gold.
[Juan speaking]
[narrator] In 1799,
50 years before the Californian gold rush,
a 12-year-old boy found a 17-pound nugget,
sparking the North Carolina stampede.
Since then, over 1.2 million ounces of gold have been recovered
worth over $2 billion today.
Freddy and Juan are on the final hop
of their 2,000-mile journey to Hollister, North Carolina.
Their destination,
the historic 200-year-old Portis gold mine
and their first East Coast rescue.
[Juan speaking]
He's a ex-Marine.
Living on a pension.
He told me that, uh, that if he doesn't get things
turned around within a month, he's done.
It makes it all the more important that we get out here as quick as we can.
You know, I know it would have been nice to have our work trucks out here,
but there's still a lot we can do.
[Freddy] Yeah. But one day flying is better than six days driving.
[Freddy] Yeah, that's for sure.
[honking]
[narrator] For each rescue,
Freddy and Juan usually haul thousands of dollars' worth
of equipment to assist with their fixes.
But in order to help retired servicemen, Cory Carter, before he runs out of money,
they've flown with nothing.
[Freddy] See what we can do for this guy.
How's it going?
Hey, Freddy.
-Cory. -Nice to meet you, Cory.
-Mr. Juan. Cory. -Nice to meet you in person.
How are you guys doing?
We certainly appreciate you coming.
Desperately needed you gentlemen's help.
We're probably down to less than a month
before we're gonna have to give this place up.
So in that month, what do you have to recover?
My goal is an ounce a week.
That's what will get us by.
That's seven grand a month.
-Yep. -What are you getting right now?
-Roughly a gram a day. -[Freddy] So around $60 a day?
Yep.
[Juan] So how long have you been out here, Cory?
I've been here for three years.
-Yeah? -I spent 26 years in the Marine Corps.
And Steve, the previous owner, invited me out to be an assistant.
When Steve passed away, he left us this mine.
We do miss Steve. We miss Steve quite a lot.
Steve wanted his ashes to be scattered over the mine.
His dream primarily was to turn this into a functional gold mine.
So I would still want to fulfill the old man's dream.
So when he's looking down at us, he can still smile.
A lot of the correlation between the Marine Corps
and Steve's dream kind of relies on the basis
of what a Marine Corps mission would be.
Steve gave me a mission three years ago.
And that mission's not complete.
So I just can't stop following it.
With his ashes being here,
selling this mine would now also feel like we're selling somebody's grave.
So, right now you're trying to finance it off of your retirement, right?
It's not really enough to allow you to subsidize a gold mine. So...
Have you got any of the gold you're catching?
Here's my best nugget.
[Freddy] Okay, that's a pretty nugget.
[Juan] Hey, you didn't catch that in your sluice, did you?
-Yep. Yep. -[Juan] You did?
[Cory] The Portis gold mine first became a gold mine in 1831.
I know that there's still gold here just because in the last three years
I haven't touched the ground with a shovel and not found gold.
So there's no reason to leave the gold in the ground if it's there.
Well, let's go see your plant.
-That works for me. -All right. We'll follow you.
-All right, gents. -[Freddy] And thank you for your service.
[Cory] I appreciate that. Thank you.
This is Carl.
-Carl? -Carl. How are you doing, sir?
Also a retired Marine.
-Pleased to meet you. -Nice to meet you, Carl.
Pleased to meet you, Freddy.
[Cory] When we discovered that we've only got about a month left,
he dropped everything just to come out and give me a hand.
Cory is one of the friends that I've known for over 30 years.
My Marine Corps friend.
I'm here because Cory needed some help.
The financial situation, doing things for the mine,
definitely stressing him out, I can tell.
So it's a challenge, definitely a challenge.
Freddy and Juan will be able to help immensely here.
One thing right off.
You're never feeding this with heavy equipment, are you?
No, no, I definitely can't.
[Juan] So how many of those do you move a day, Carl?
-[Carl] Oh, 40. 40 of them jokers. -[Juan] 40 of those a day.
No kidding.
So you're pulling them out by hand?
-You're bringing them over here. -Yes.
-And then you have to manually dump them into the hopper. -[Cory] Yep.
[Juan] Wow.
As far as equipment, what do you have out here for equipment?
[Cory] All we have is a backhoe from the mid-'80s.
[Juan] So what's going on with all the material in it?
[Cory] Steve took the front counterbalance weights off,
so I have to have something in the bucket
because every time I go into forward,
I'll actually bring the front end up off the ground.
[Freddy] That's not good.
[Cory] No, that kind of scares the crap out of me, honestly.
[Freddy] Well, let's run a test, guys.
-Start a timer, huh, Juan? -[Juan] Let's do it.
Starting it right now.
First bucket dropping.
[Freddy] First bucket, Juano.
The first five-gallon bucket.
Usually, it's an excavator bucket.
[narrator] Pay is loaded into a makeshift hopper...
which travels down the homemade trommel
into a small, under slung sluice
where Cory clears the oversized rock by hand.
[Freddy] You know, this is where the first gold rush
in the United States started, is this area.
It's cool to be standing here where it all began.
After this was California, then Colorado, Arizona, you know, all the gold rushes.
But it started right here.
When Freddy told me about what they had going on here,
honestly, I thought it would be okay coming out here, flying in
and just working out of the truck.
I really think we made the wrong call.
We should have brought our trucks.
But we're here now.
We're gonna have to do what we can.
[Cory] I'm hoping just to show Freddy and Juan
that there's enough gold in the ground, if everything is running good.
[Juan] They're in a tight spot here.
I don't know. I'm kind of at a loss right now.
I'm trying to figure out what we're gonna do to be able to make this work.
-Ruh-roh. -[Freddy] Uh-oh.
Careful, Careful.
I think it just locked in here, huh?
Blew out. We've got to shut her down.
[narrator] An hour into the first test,
the drive system fails and stops the trommel.
It was designed for a little concrete mixer.
You know it's designed to work intermittently.
[Freddy] It may not even make a two-hour run.
[Juan] We might not be able to tighten up that grub screw. We don't have our trucks.
We don't have a mobile welder to be able to just weld it.
Yep. Can't just poop a welder.
What should I do with it at this point?
Back it out? Push it in?
[Juan] No, just tighten it right there where it's at.
It's not long for the world, though.
No.
-Fire back. -[Freddy] Before you start it,
is this all the water you've got then?
[Cory] Yes, at the moment.
Where's your makeup water coming up from right now?
When I absolutely have to have it filled,
we pump it directly out of my water well.
He's about ten feet deep in the center.
-This is? -Yeah.
[Freddy] It's still not much water.
-[Cory] No? Yep. -[Freddy] It's a puddle.
-Okay. -[Cory] We've got one area that we think is a spring.
It just never dries. Doesn't matter how hot it's getting.
One thing he's lacking here. He's got ground.
But he's lacking in water. That's non-sustainable.
[Juan] Let's fire her back up.
[Freddy] Yeah.
[Juan] This is going to be a tough one, Freddy.
-[Freddy] The water. -[Juan] The water, the plant, all of it.
Yeah, and that's dangerous.
I'm worried, Freddy. I'm really worried about this.
Last bucket.
-Last bucket. -Last bucket started.
[Freddy] Just shut her down, guys.
[Cory] All right.
[narrator] This sweaty two-hour test will determine
how much gold Cory retrieves from a half a yard of pay dirt.
Forty buckets.
There's plenty to do by hand in this heat.
I'm exhausted just watching you guys, though.
[Freddy] Well, while you guys are cleaning this up,
Juan and myself will go put our heads together...
-All right. -...and try to figure out how we can help you.
Awesome. Appreciate it.
-See you in a bit. -All right.
Thank you, Juan.
Thank you.
[Juan] It's tough to watch.
There's 100 ways to skin a cat.
And that plant shouldn't be one of them.
No, it's not one of them at all.
Yeah, it's a situation where you're putting
a hell of a lot of work in, but you're going to go broke fast.
[Juan] Yeah.
For us to be able to make a lasting change here
or something that's actually going to be beneficial to them,
we're gonna have to bring some equipment in because
with what they have here on the ground
and what we're able to do by hand, it's not gonna be enough.
Yeah.
[Freddy] Well, Juano, first East Coast gold.
[narrator] Deep in the sticky Tar Heel State of North Carolina...
[Juan] How are we doing this morning, gentlemen?
-[Freddy] Good morning, guys. -[Cory] Morning, gents.
[Carl] Good morning. Just fine, thank you.
[narrator] ...Freddy and Juan attempt to help ex-Marine Cory Carter
find his feet on an inherited mine.
One thing's for sure. That was a whole lot of work for you guys.
You don't need to go to the gym with the plant you got.
-That's for damn sure. -[Juan laughing]
Save a little money that way, right?
[Cory] Yeah.
[Freddy] Let's weigh it.
A little over half a gram.
Yep.
[Juan] For the little that you ran, it's not bad.
It's not sustainable either.
If we try to do that multiple days in a row,
the body is just not going to let us.
The one unfortunate thing is, I don't think that's the right plant for you.
[Freddy] You can never make your goal with that plant by hand.
[narrator] To hit his ounce a week goal,
Cory would have to mine for 16 hours a day
loading 320 buckets by hand in 70% humidity.
I think there's something we can do for you guys.
We're not exactly sure, we're gonna go back and put our heads together
-and figure out what. -See you in a bit.
[Carl] All right.
[Freddy] These guys, if they are not the top of the list,
they are damn near there as far as needing help the most.
We grabbed our luggage, got on an airplane and flew out here,
so we'll do what we can.
Hopefully, it helps them out.
[Cory] Without Freddy and Juan,
making this place viable is just not going to happen.
Both Steve's dreams will die and mine will die, too.
[Freddy] Well, we'll draw something up, huh, Juan?
[Juan] Yep. Sounds like a plan.
Have to buy a notebook?
Ours are in the truck.
We have nothing with us. Not even a pad of paper.
Nothing.
Well, you know as well as I do that trommel they've got, it's not gonna cut it.
No, we could spend a week on that plant and rebuild it,
but it's still half a yard every two hours.
-It's not what they need. -Exactly. It's a hobby.
Yeah, he's going to need a real plant.
I think I've got one that'd probably be the right size for him as well
in a machine shop nearby.
It's going to need some work.
We'd have to put a little bit of a hopper on it.
[Freddy] Yeah.
His tractor's got that counterweight in the front end.
Got the loader bucket on it.
We'll have to add some more weight to that.
[Juan] They have that little spring.
Hopefully we can get that opened up and get some of that water,
that way, we can take advantage of that free water.
Well, let's go talk to Cory and see if he wants to do it.
All right, well, let's go.
[narrator] To increase Cory's production
and bring his operation into the 21st century,
Freddy and Juan will add a lead counterweight
to the front of the unwieldy backhoe
so it can be used to dig and load pay.
The basic wash plant will be replaced with a purpose-built trommel
new hopper and sluice run.
And they'll aim to increase the water supply to the new plant.
-[Freddy] Well, guys... -How are we doing, gentlemen?
-[Cory] We're alive. -Yeah.
In order for you to be able to reach your goal,
that plant's not the plant to get you there.
[Freddy] It's not going to get you an ounce a week.
To be able to get to the point you need to be,
you've got to have the heavy equipment.
Sure. Yeah.
[Freddy] The backhoe, you know,
it doesn't have the counterweights on the front of it.
So we need to rig something up.
And we're also gonna try to upgrade your water system.
Perfect.
[Freddy] We've still got a lot of work to do,
but at the same time, we've got to find some better ground.
So, it's time to go prospecting and see what's out there.
[Juan] I got a plant from the East Coast.
[Freddy] And it'll do five to seven yards an hour, probably, Juan?
Yeah, depending on the material.
Fantastic. That would really change the game.
But with the plant, transport and everything else,
what we would like to see is seven ounces of gold or $14,000.
You know, I know t's a big number,
you know, I know finances are kind of tight.
I... That's a big risk for us off the front.
However...
Sometimes you got to take the risk to find the reward.
And if it's you guys leading in, I'm in.
-All right. -[Freddy] All right.
-[Cory] Juan. -[Juan] Sounds great.
Definitely. Outstanding. Thank you.
Well, we'll go start ordering stuff.
All right.
[Cory] The 14 grand, it still obviously scares me.
But I can't express or even put into words
the feeling that it means that
they're gonna provide us with a machine that can help us get the gold
that we actually need to not only take care of the mine,
but also start the process to be a permanent miner.
Well, I think Cory is nervous...
because it's a lot of money for him, right?
But at the same time, you know, nothing ventured, nothing gained type situation.
These guys need help.
They're hobby miners right now.
So let's take him from a hobby miner...
to a real miner.
Yeah. If you want to give me a hand,
-we can get some stuff cut. -[Carl] That we can do.
[Juan] Awesome.
[narrator] While Juan begins prepping the steel...
How's it going, Cory?
[narrator] ...keen to help recoup Cory's Marine pension pot.
While we're waiting on that trommel,
let's go and do some panning.
Okay.
[narrator] Freddy wants to identify the best ground on the 20-acre claim.
[Cory] There's still some areas of this property that I've been told are virgin.
But I can't look at it and tell you.
[Freddy] This mine is just all jumbled up.
There's piles and holes all over.
So here's another pile.
It's a different looking material than that over there.
You got red clay on top, then you'll go into a eight or ten-inch
almost pure sand,
and then you'll go into more of a grayish-type clay.
But it's not natural. It's piled up here by somebody.
Why? I don't know.
Someone went through a lot of work with these piles though.
I don't understand them.
So what did Steve tell you about the history of this mine?
Other than 1831,
when it was first found, by John Portis and a prospector
who was coming back from out West.
And the gentleman lit his cigar,
and noticed the chinking had flakes in it.
Sure as heck, it was gold.
[narrator] When a one and a quarter inch gold vein was discovered
on the Portis farmland in 1831,
it sparked a stampede of prospectors,
who became rich from the hard rock and plaster deposits.
For the next 100 years,
gold was retrieved by hand and hydraulicking,
which produced mounds of different colored pay dirt
that now make it hard to read where the high grade pay still remains.
Here, put some of the gray in my pan
and then put some of the red in the bucket.
So what got you into wanting to go gold mining?
[Cory] All right, so when I was six,
we were out at the Black Hills.
I don't remember what river it was.
Dad and I were panning and we found a nice little chunk of pyrite.
So I was hooked at that, and it wasn't even gold.
I would love to find enough gold
to just be considered successful by my loved ones.
I don't care if anyone else thinks I'm successful,
as long as they feel successful, then I'm fine.
[narrator] Freddy pans the gray material.
While Cory looks for gold in the red dirt.
[Freddy] See, there's a decent one.
[Cory] Oh, sure. Yep. Very visible.
[Freddy] Mmm-hmm.
Gold in here.
-[Freddy] Yep. -[Cory] About 6, $6 or $7 colors.
When I first walked around here, I'm like, what the heck happened here?
But after seeing what I see today...
the gray stuff, those are tailings.
So now their tailings are good enough to run,
and the red stuff, virgin ground that's good enough to run,
even though it wasn't good enough for them.
I'd run all this.
[narrator] With both types of pay dirt presenting gold,
Cory's best hope is to run as much volume as possible
to claw back his pension investment.
-It's good seeing gold in the pan. -[Cory] Yeah.
That's the oldest mine workings, minus one, that I've ever looked at.
It's just the hardest thing I've ever had to read.
Anyway, I think I got it figured out on the final test.
We're gonna run a mix of both and see what's there.
-[Freddy] You must be Eric. -Yes, I am.
I'm Freddy. I talked to you on the phone about lead.
Buried back in here, huh?
[narrator] In the sweltering heat
of North Carolina's Franklin County,
Freddy sources some lead wheel weights
to act as a counterbalance for Cory's backhoe.
[Freddy] This will work.
Like you say, beggars can't be choosers, so...
[Freddy] Well, thank you very much, sir.
I'll go get my truck.
Well, I got some lead, Cory.
-[Cory] Oh, nice, Freddy. -[Freddy] It's wheel weights, but it's lead.
They're heavy.
[horn tooting]
[Juan] It sounds like our truck and our trailer.
I hear it squeaking.
[narrator] After a 24-hour journey,
the secondhand wash plant arrives.
[Cory] Holy cow.
[Freddy] No, that's the trommel.
-[Juan] Hey, buddy. -[Freddy] Good to see you.
-Safe travels? -[Juan] Trav, what's going on, buddy?
Let's take a look at this.
Sturdiness looks a whole lot more
than the sturdiness I got so holy cow.
It's a small plant, but it's built well.
-It'll keep on turning. -Nice.
Which is a good thing and a bad thing.
If you look inside of it,
a rock got caught in there on the spray bar
and actually ripped the spray bar down.
So we're going to build a new spray bar for it.
-Let's unload a trailer. -[Juan] All right.
[narrator] Missing his truck and burn table,
Juan's borrowed an electric excavator and a welder
to assist in the build.
[Cory] Seeing the trommel that's actually that professionally built,
I think Steve would feel incredibly excited.
And I don't doubt right now he's looking down here just applauding.
[narrator] While Juan begins fixing up the trommel,
Freddy's first task of the day,
determine if Cory's water source
will be enough to run the upgraded plant.
[Freddy] He's lacking in water.
And right now, he's running a wash plant off his house well,
off a garden hose.
So, that's non-sustainable.
And I'm no spring expert.
We'll just have to go look at it and see.
That's all I can do.
Horsefly.
[Cory] This is the spot I'm watching.
Through all of the summers we've been here,
that one spot has never dried out.
Well, I think we come and dig a trench across here.
And then whatever water is here
can run into these other holes.
[Cory] Yeah, that would work.
[Freddy] We'll be gentle here.
[narrator] A natural spring provides a constant source of water from underground.
But if Freddy collapses the borehole,
it could shut the supply off permanently.
[Cory] It obviously makes me nervous,
but this is yet another one of those things
that, uh, if it works, the risk is worth the reward.
[Freddy] Well, here goes nothing. Let's pop the cork.
[Cory] Yeah, let's see what she's got.
I see water flowing so far.
If it continues at this rate,
I would say every other day we'd be able to top off.
Oh, a couple of gallons a minute is all, but it adds up, right?
[Cory] Yeah.
[Freddy] If it is a real spring, we'll know in the morning.
And hopefully he doesn't have to run his house well anymore.
-[Juan] Ooh, it's gonna rip. -Yup. Okay.
[narrator] Across the claim, Juan begins a bush fix
on the bent spray bar for the trommel.
[Juan] If we can get that bow out of it,
it will make sure that the water sprays
is a little more concentrated on the screening area.
-Right there? -[Alex] Yeah.
That's probably good.
Straight as an arrow.
-It's brand-new. -[Juan] Yeah.
You have to get a micrometer to find the bend now.
Did you guys put a new spray bar in there?
Thing looks mint.
[narrator] Next, work begins on the counterweight
for the off-balance backhoe.
It's just going to be a box to actually put stuff in or--
It's a box that we can pour all the lead into.
[Carl] Oh, the lead. Oh, okay.
[narrator] With only basic tools,
lead from car wheel weights
provide the metal for the job.
I'm getting all the contaminants
that are not lead out of this.
So when Freddy goes to melt it,
it doesn't explode on his face, you know.
[Freddy] Once it melts down, we'll add more to it.
[bleep] hot, boy.
I don't know if that was a very smart idea of me or not
to make that lead counterweight because it's hot out,
and I just created a lot more heat doing it.
But, um, it'll work. Lead's heavy.
[Cory] We're putting 150 pounds already on the front.
I don't think I'll be popping as many wheelies,
unless I try.
Which I don't do.
[Juan] Make sure she starts.
Wow.
[Freddy] These are good guys.
Just talking to them, a good sense of humor,
and they're hard-working guys.
Juan and myself, we're just gonna break even on it.
But at the same time, these guys need help.
[narrator] Overnight, the lead counterweight has cooled
and can now be welded to the front
of Cory's backhoe to keep it steady.
[Alex] Measure it so we can get a perfect center.
[Juan] Center's right here.
He's going to have a five-yard-an-hour plant.
But in order to feed that five-yard-an-hour plant,
he's gonna have to have that backhoe running
so he can get materials and feed the plant as well.
So it's gonna be a real crucial piece of equipment from now on.
There it is.
We're in.
-Does it fire up pretty easy? -[Cory] Oh, yeah.
-Yeah. -[Juan] Okay. Perfect.
We'll all watch.
Well, she's no speed demon, but, uh, it's moving.
[Cory] I'm not popping any wheelies anymore,
so that's always a good thing.
[Freddy] There's not a lot of water here, but there's some.
[narrator] By the cut, it's the moment of truth for Freddy's spring fix.
Well, it's got some depth to it.
Who are you going to try to get to help you when Carl leaves, Cory?
At the moment, it's gonna primarily be me.
But after talking to our son
and the abilities you've given us
to be able to get him out here permanently,
-that part of the plan will probably start moving upwards. -[Freddy] Okay.
[Cory] Brandon followed me into the Marine Corps.
He's got a beautiful family,
a wife and three just gorgeous little babies.
He has expressed a high desire to come out here and mine.
However, he just can't until he knows that
it's profitable enough for him to also take care of his family.
Having him to mine alongside me, um,
I think, honestly, is probably every father's dream,
to have something that you can do with your kids.
So that would be just amazing.
[pump whirring]
[Freddy] Here we go. Pump's running.
Here's our water.
[Juan] How was that, Fred?
[Freddy] What I did is a little pond there, like eight foot maybe.
I trenched from it to the other ponds downstream that are deep,
like, ten foot deep.
He may do 1,000 gallons a day, 500 gallons a day.
-[Juan] It's gonna help him. -[Freddy] You know, it's not much of a spring,
but it's make-up water, where he doesn't have to use his well.
[Juan] So what we're gonna do here is we're gonna actually make a hopper.
Doing anything right now in this humidity, it's absolutely, uh--
It's a task, it's a chore.
Unfortunately, we're running out of time.
If we just had your truck, we'd have all the tools we need.
[narrator] But without his plasma table,
he'll have to make the hopper the old-fashioned way.
[Juan bleep] Come on. Come on, baby.
You guys weren't here when Cory was talking about this.
Cory is out here honoring his friend's memory...
-[Alex] Mmm-hmm. -...by making his dream work.
And Carl actually came out here to help Cory, you know, with his dream.
So it's buddies helping buddies.
[Alex] Yeah. Awesome.
Yup.
Kind of like you turds.
You guys help us out all the time.
So, that's what friends are for, right?
Well, just about done with the hopper.
We'll be that much closer to doing our test run.
[Juan] How are we doing, gentlemen?
Hey there, Juan.
[Juan] Yeah, we're all ready to take it down to the site
where we're going to set it up.
Well, this is very, very nice.
I mean, I think Cory will be able to really get rolling
on, uh, producing some gold.
[narrator] To complete the fixes before the final test,
the plant is lifted to its new home.
I'm very excited to see the trommel,
knowing it's going down there,
getting ready for an actual run.
-[Freddy] Set it over here. -[Juan] Yeah.
[Freddy] Come this way a little, Juan.
[Juan] Well, good work, everyone.
We, uh... We got it put together.
If you want to use your backhoe
to start digging your pay out.
Tomorrow, we'll be back in the morning, and we'll do a test run.
-[Cory] Sounds good. -See how much gold we get.
[Juan] I think that's, uh...
That's probably enough material.
What do you say, uh, we feed the plant with the excavator since it's here?
-Yeah, that'd be great. -Yeah?
-Yeah. -Let's do it.
[narrator] The second test run will determine
if Cory can upgrade his operation
from hobby to full-time miner.
-Hey, Freddy. -Yeah.
Do you want to do the first couple of buckets?
Show them how it's done.
-You got it. -[Juan] All right.
Next run you run, you can actually feed it with your backhoe.
Or when you get a new mini ex,
-you'll be able to feed it with the mini ex. -[Cory] Yeah.
[Juan] Yeah.
[Juan] Starting the timer now.
-First bucket. -[Juan] First bucket.
[Cory] Yeah, look at her go.
This is nuts.
I'm ecstatic.
Steve is probably dancing around on his little cloud,
seeing something like this be able to run.
I have no worries at this point about keeping this place.
As these things come through here,
I'm already thinking flakes and fine sitting in the sluice.
So I'm all good.
Already in this run, we've already done a yard and a half.
[Cory] Oh, yeah, and we've already long bypassed what we first did.
We're on track to do about five yards for the hour.
Yeah, sweet.
[narrator] The new hopper and trommel
mean they can now feed the plant with heavy equipment,
giving Cory a tenfold increase on his yardage.
Hey, remember these things from the test run?
Here's what I think of them now.
[Carl] This thing is awesome.
At the end of the day,
I'll be just a little wet maybe,
but definitely not sweating.
How's the sluice look?
[Juan] Running a little heavy.
[Cory] Want me to turn it down a little bit?
No, you can turn it up a little bit actually.
[narrator] The newly-straightened spray bar
and the extra water from the spring
allows Cory to increase the pressure
in order to clean the rocks more efficiently.
[Juan] The problem is that red stuff,
it sticks to everything, right?
[Cory] It sticks to everything, yeah.
The little bit of gold that we're losing
makes up by the volume that we're running.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
-[narrator] Next... -Just slow and easy.
...Cory gets to grips on how to load the trommel under Freddy's supervision.
[Cory] There's a lot of learning curve
to get my head around what's going on.
I've never had to stockpile pay before.
I've never had to feed a plant,
not with a piece of equipment.
I think we're good.
Last bucket.
You know what today is, Cory?
Start of a new adventure?
No. Today is the day you went from a hobby miner to a real miner.
Yeah. Good deal. I like it.
-[Juan] Shut off the water. -[Freddy] Yeah.
You want to shut the trommel off?
On all of my previous runs, I've never seen gold in the mat.
[Juan] A little tiny picker right there.
[Cory] Oh, sweet.
[Carl] I can actually see that one. Wow.
If he'd come out of here with a pile of gold, I'd be dancing.
I'd be happy for him.
[Freddy] He wants to make it work
for his friend that gave him the mine.
And I understand that completely so...
You know, when you have somebody, uh, pull on your heartstrings like that,
you do what you can to help them out.
[metal detector beeping]
[Freddy] What'd you find? Anything?
-[Cory] Whatever this is. -[Freddy] A bullet.
It's old.
It's been there a long time, the corrosion on it.
[Cory] Mmm-hmm.
-[Freddy] 50-caliber muzzleloader, 45 caliber. -[Cory] Yeah.
That brings us back an era or two.
We had a settlement right up here at the top of the hill.
First freed slave settlement
-in North Carolina was right up there. -[Freddy] Mmm.
This could be 200 years old.
[Cory] Yeah, that could be a little older.
[Freddy] Yeah. It could be Civil War era.
That's pretty cool. I'd keep that bullet.
-I'd hold them. -Oh, yeah, that'll go up on the mantel.
[Freddy] Piece of history.
Didn't think I'd be here today, huh?
[narrator] Interested to see how Freddy and Juan's fixes have helped his dad...
[Cory] I'm glad you made it, buddy.
...Cory's son, Brandon, has traveled the 668 miles to be at the gold weigh.
[Brandon] My dad means the world to me.
He is a major part of who I am today.
My dad is very focused
on something that he wants done.
If he wants it done, he will work to achieve what it is that he wants.
-Good morning. -[Cory] This is our boy.
-Brandon. -Brandon, Freddy.
-Nice to meet you. -Brandon, Juan. Nice to meet you.
We invited him down for the weigh
because obviously one thing that we want to eventually come up with
is for him to be able to move out here with his family
and mine with us.
-Nice. -Okay. You've been out here before then?
Once, a long time ago.
Um, he actually showed me my very first pan
and got significantly less than that.
-Just a couple of small flakes. -[Juan and Freddy] Yeah.
Well, let's weigh this up and see what we've got.
One gram. 1.8.
[Juan] Nice.
Three.
-4.25. -[Freddy] 4.25 it is.
[Cory] Yeah.
[narrator] A potential 1.68 ounces a week, worth over $3,000.
[Cory] That's the most we've ever poured in a day.
Well, Juan, that's nearly eight times.
It's good increase, Freddy. I'm happy with that.
[Cory] Nice.
[narrator] That's almost double Cory's ounce a week goal.
[Juan] Well, guys, I'm excited about that.
That's a... that's a pretty decent cleanup.
You know, and it really was a whole lot less work.
[Cory] Yeah, a lot less, yes.
To run the material we ran today for this,
that would have taken me and Carl six days to push that through.
Honestly, that backhoe is not long for this world, but it will get you there.
-Yup. -[Juan] You know, if it'll get you through
another couple of months, you know, that's all you need.
Yup.
Rent a little excavator and, you know,
then you just keep on growing.
-Have fun, make some money. -Yeah.
[Juan] You're gonna have to do a lot more prospecting.
Figure out which material is best.
That was a combination of the gray material and the red material.
I'm just gonna punch all kinds of volume
from all different places out here.
-[Juan] You know, really, the sky's the limit. -[Freddy] Yeah.
Well, guys, uh, we hate to run,
but it was great coming out here
and meeting you guys and working with you.
And we greatly appreciate you guys coming,
'cause I wouldn't have been able to advance it like this
without some professional assistance.
-Pleasure. -We enjoyed it.
Thank you very much. Yes, thank you very much.
-Thank you, sir. -Appreciate you both.
[Freddy] Well, this fix has been a bit different, huh?
[Juan] Yeah, we showed up with nothing.
I know with what we did here,
-it's going to help him. -He's got a future.
-[Juan] Yeah, he's got a future. -[Freddy] Exactly.
[Brandon] Wow.
[Cory] Being able to keep this operation afloat
has been a very serious worry on me.
And just from this last week,
I'm no longer worried about it.
It's going to take some hard work.
But as far as the confidence that they've given me
that this is going to work and stay it's all in now.
If Steve was here right now,
I think he'd be really happy about seeing what's happening here.
Hey, Freddy and Juan, just wanted to give you a quick update.
The water supply has been running well.
Everything is going really good and strong there.
We're doing a lot of testing, like you told us to do.
Different materials, kind of keeping track of what's coming out.
But so far, we haven't found less
than what we ran on that final run.
The best part about it is Brandon's gonna join us out here,
and we'll have a father-son mining team rolling out.
And we've just added our little mini ex, that we've named Speedy.
[Carl] The mini ex is definitely making things way easier on the back.
That is pretty darn efficient.
Oh, my [bleep]!
It's in every riffle. Look at the pickers in there.
And we're just going to do our little preliminary weigh here.
1.04 grams for just half an hour.
[Carl] Nice. Less work, more gold.
A huge amount of appreciation
-going out to Freddy and Juan... -Yeah. Oh, yeah.
...for these improvements.
Future looks really good now.