This is the biggest casino there is.
You have no idea if there's anything beneath the surface or not.
You're just hoping there is.
I've watched enough guys on TV
cleaning enough rocks to go, "I'll get this. I got this."
Yeah, I was wrong.
We're 400,000 US dollars into this,
we need to see gold.
I got more in my teeth than we found last season.
So you spend $1,000 in fuel digging hole,
nothing in the hole.
It was... it was so bad.
Way tougher, way tougher than any of us expected.
You can't stay mining up here, and, you know,
pour money down into the hole for nothing.
We're new to this, and we're rookies.
We're not quite getting it.
If we don't get 100 ounces this year,
that's it, it's over. The dream ends.
Let's make some gold, guys!
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...
Look at that.
...in the most rugged places on earth.
I'm feeling a little sick, Freddy.
Now they rescue struggling miners...
Ooh. That's not good.
...who've risked it all to be rich...
Whoa, whoa, whoa! Shut it down!
...but are about to lose everything.
Eyeballs.
To revive these failing mines,
Freddy and Juan engineered the impossible.
Well, I've never heard of an under sluice before.
Deliver some hard truths.
This material you're digging now is totally worthless.
And track down the gold.
That's what dreams are made of right there.
But if they don't at least double the miners' gold recovery,
they won't take a dime in return.
It's ten times the amount of gold. That's awesome.
Hey, Juan, I sure hope this is the right road.
Yeah, he was saying it was down the logging road, right?
So I'm imagining this is it.
Do they have much experience mining, Freddy, that you know of?
I don't think they have much experience mining at all.
They started getting set up last year,
and, uh, they just started to run a little bit.
I think we may be in a tough situation here.
Dang it. Okay.
We'll learn more shortly.
In the central interior of British Columbia,
Freddy and Juan are answering a call for help from the Naver Creek mine.
Located in an area with rich gold potential,
during the Fraser River Gold Rush of 1858,
around 30,000 gold miners converged on the area.
In only a nine-year period, they produced gold worth over $3 trillion
in today's money.
How we doing, gentlemen? How's it going?
You're a familiar face.
- Jay. - Jay, nice to meet you.
- Freddy. - Trevor.
Pleasure.
- Trevor? - Yes.
Trevor and Jay.
Hi, I'm Sacha.
- Nice to meet you, Sacha. - Very nice to meet you.
Hey, Sacha. Juan.
- Hi, Freddy. I'm Mark. - Mark.
Mark, Sacha, Trevor.
Well, it's great you guys are here. Welcome to Canada.
We need you.
Help.
I'm not a psychiatrist. Just so you know.
Damn, what we need.
What did your season look like last year, as far as gold totals?
Last year was a bust.
Oh, really?
It was a bad bust. We found about 3/4 of an ounce.
I mean, digging through 30 feet of clay to try to get to bedrock.
It was just... it was nasty.
So last year was bust, this year, how are you doing so far?
We just got set up here.
We've been running for about a week.
Wow. Okay.
This is what we got out of there.
Sixth of an ounce.
Sixth of an ounce, yeah.
And I'll guarantee you, we lost half of it.
Oh, yeah, guaranteed.
That's it, huh?
So, so far, everything you've found is about that size then?
Yeah. Not a lot of finds in it, huh?
As far as financially, what do you guys have tied up in this?
From claims, machinery, maintenance, odds and ends
that we've had to put together,
total $400,000 US.
And nobody's getting a paycheck unless we see some gold.
I started gold mining with a friend one summer,
and I got the bug.
You've seen it on TV.
It looks adventurous.
It looks fun. It looks like it can be done.
So you give it a shot.
Last year we pulled together a couple of good buddies.
I asked Jay and Trevor and we said, "Let's do the adventure."
We did not get very much though, not even an ounce.
So it's a really tough year.
I wanted to give it up. I really wanted to give up.
Last year, Mark Skakun
met local gold enthusiast and claim owner, John Olsen.
It's been a hobby of mine for many years,
and these claims took me quite a while to acquire.
I saw an opportunity and I grabbed hold of it.
But it soon overtook me and it became too big for me.
I know there's better gold on here because I've found better gold here.
Some are fairly chunky.
I had to make a decision, so I got the other folks involved
and we're trying to make this work and make it worthwhile.
Meeting with John, being good friends with him,
and then seeing his property having a chance to help him,
and we're all sharing the gold, what we find.
When John purchased the claim five years ago,
it came with several mining relics
and a broken wash plant.
Located on 1,600 acres of dense, wooded terrain,
Mark recently moved the operation to a more accessible area.
There's actually dirt going through a trommel.
It's being washed.
We're actually seeing gold in a pan.
Like, this is light-years ahead of last year.
What's your season goal this year?
We'll have the goal of 100 ounces.
This is the turning point
whether we just tuck our tail between our legs.
We don't want that. You know?
That's why we're here, it's to help.
Ah, and you know what, we need it.
There's only one way to find out.
Let's do a test run.
Okay, let's do this.
They're just barely starting out,
and they've got less than half an ounce of gold to a goal of 100 ounces.
It's a lot. It's a massive undertaking.
To be honest, I just don't know if that's even possible right now.
Fire it up. Fire it up.
Freddy and Juan will conduct a test run
to identify problems
and measure how much gold Mark's wash plant can catch in four hours.
There it is, Freddy, first bucket.
Let's get some paydirt into there.
Trevor and Mark haul pay from a cut 600 yards from the wash plant.
We'll take full loads here because we're now starting to move.
The pay is loaded into a hopper
and drops into an 8-foot rotating trommel.
A spray bar blasts the dirt,
washing the small material and gold
through the screen and down into the sluice box,
where gold should be caught in the mess.
I know there's a lot of people
that only dream about living their lives this way,
and here we are, playing the big sandbox.
It's fantastic.
We've got to get the 100 ounces this year,
or we're not gonna have another season.
I don't want to come back empty-handed. Not this time.
From a distance, I don't like the look of the material
they're running out of that pit.
It's kind of a glacial till.
Not much gold in it.
This little plant is not made for what they want to do.
No, this is to drag around behind to pick up the test ground left.
Not to mine. Not to try to make a living off of.
The bucket is bigger than the plant, Juan.
Yeah.
It's, kind of, missing.
Look at all that fine material that's getting spit out on the ground.
They're rookies to mining. You can tell there's a lot of inexperience.
That sluice's running like crap.
Not near enough water. Not enough water.
Crooked. Yep.
That's why we weren't seeing much fine gold in that jar.
- Yeah. - Yeah.
The poorly-configured sluice box is uneven
and doesn't have enough water to properly wash the rocks,
causing material to build up on one side.
Piling up at the top.
Both of which will cause gold to be lost.
It's a mess, Juan.
Yeah. I don't even know where to start, Fred.
There's just so much going on here.
The plant has quite a few problems.
These guys, they lack experience.
Is that their pump?
Small pump, huh? Yeah.
Lot of... and a lot of line
going down through there.
And half their water is going on the ground, not down the sluice box.
They've hardly got any material through it.
They're probably doing five yards an hour.
It's like watching paint dry right now, though.
Juan...
- Yeah. - We're just here over four hours.
- Yeah, call it, Freddy. - Yeah.
Last bucket!
Copy that.
That's it, shut it down.
There's some gold in it.
Let's pull the mats and see what's in them.
Let's pull the mats. Let's do it.
You know, the plant in itself is an issue.
You know? Everything.
In order to make this plant viable,
we're gonna have to take it all apart.
- Everything. - It's still not going to do the amount of yardage
- they'd need though. - No.
Well, that's not a production plant.
This is definitely a test plant.
Yeah. - Ten yards an hour max.
And that's not where they need to be.
Exactly, Juan.
These are probably the most inexperienced miners we've ever helped.
Their goal of 100 ounces is unobtainable...
the way they're running now.
Well, it didn't look like very much gold, did it?
It didn't, Freddy.
Well, we're gonna see what it is.
At the Naver Creek mine in British Columbia...
This is my son, Dustin.
Dustin? Nice to meet you, Dustin.
- Nice to meet you. - Nice to meet you, Dustin.
Nice to meet you, too.
John. Fred.
Sacha's son, Dustin, and claim owner, John joined the crew
to see the results from the four-hour test.
Well, I guess there's only one thing to do now
at the moment, is weigh it up, huh?
Let's see what we came up with.
Every speck counts.
With approximately 100 days in the mining season...
In this situation, it really does.
Yep.
...this four-hour test
must deliver at least 0.4 ounces
to hit their one ounce a day goal.
0.02. Not good, guys.
No. Not good at all.
It's painful.
That doesn't even pay for the fuel that you used on your plant.
You said your goal was 100 ounces this year? - Yeah.
Yeah. So that means you gotta get an ounce a day.
That's nowhere near it.
No.
0.02 was extremely disappointing.
A lot of hard work and effort went into that, and it's a reality check.
What we're going to do is we're going to come up with a game plan.
Hmm.
What's that about?
Do you have another plant in here then?
I have no idea whether this thing works.
None of us have ever seen it run.
It's pretty rough.
Well, let's go chat about it and see what we can come up with, Fred.
Okay. We'll see you guys after a bit.
All right. Thank you.
Thanks, guys.
Well, that wasn't very impressive.
- 0.02. - Yeah.
We could fix that small plant, but it's not like putting lipstick
on a pig for your eyes because they can't run enough material.
- It's way undermatched. - That's right.
We're only here so many days.
Do we have the time to fix this bigger plant?
There's no discharge chute.
But the hopper, the feed hopper, that's...
The grizzlies are missing.
You know, ideally, if we could see it run
for, you know, a day or for just a couple of hours
to figure out what the problems are--
There's no saying it'd run. It's in pieces.
It's completely unknown.
You know, it might have a bad gearbox, may have bad rollers.
We don't know until we actually get in there and run it.
You know, it's a gamble, Freddy.
What we've got here is a puzzle that might not have all the pieces.
Yeah.
- Without it, they don't have a chance. - No, they don't.
We're gonna have to help them out with that bigger plant
because, honestly, there's just no other way.
You know, running six, seven, eight yards an hour
is not going to cut it for these guys at all.
Let's go put some rough numbers together, huh?
Let's do it.
For the first time ever, Freddy and Juan
will completely refurbish a plant that hasn't run in years.
Their aim, quadruple the amount of pay that can be processed.
To feed the plant,
they will attach the hopper, install new grizzly bars
and plumb in a pre-wash system.
To power the trommel,
they will replace the old electric motor
with an entirely new gas-powered engine.
Finally, the old sluice box will be modified with higher sides
and given a new riffle and carpet set up to catch both course
and fine gold.
The goal, 100 ounces in the remaining three months of the season.
Well, that's a lot of money, Juan.
Well, let's see what they say.
How we doing?
Good! - Doing good.
Yeah? Okay.
Getting organized?
Well, we, kind of, came up with some numbers.
We wanted to see what you guys think.
If you guys have any chance of being able to get the ounce-a-day goal,
you're going to have to go to that bigger plant. Yeah.
But in order for that to happen, there's quite a bit we've got to do.
A lot of cost involved in it.
With motors,
pumps, the steel,
you know, we've got a rough estimate
of about $14,000, just in material.
Wow, that's a bunch.
But reality is, without that bigger plant running,
you have no chance of being able to reach your goal.
Well, on top of that, guys, we're going to have to bring
other people in on this one to help us because there's no way
we can get it done in the amount of time.
So on top of the 14,000 in materials, six ounces of gold
at the end of the season you pass.
Wow.
Because right now, you need an ounce a day to survive, right?
And you think this mine can produce that?
Gold's got to be in the ground, of course,
but I'll find some better ground to run.
- You can't keep running that stuff. - No. Clearly.
Without you guys, we're stuck.
Hold on a second.
I really need you to back up for a second. Okay.
So let me see if I got this understanding.
There's... Right from the from the front,
right from the grizzly right to the back end,
there's a whole rework that has to be done.
- A lot of stuff. - Yeah.
14,000, plus six ounces of gold.
I'll tell you what, we usually want to double the amount of gold,
but in this situation, double of very little is still very little.
If we don't get you 20 times the amount of gold
in that first cleanup, which was not a lot, right?
Yep. - Then you don't pay us for labor.
Still pay for the material.
So 20 times more gold from what we had
on our first test run, that's nearly half an ounce.
Yep. - So it will get you to that half an ounce in four hours.
So that gets you-- In 10-hour day,
you're roughly doing an ounce of gold a day.
Yeah. Right.
- I'm good with that. - Okay.
- All right, deal. - All right.
Awesome. Yep.
- Thank you. - It means everything. Thank you.
So we're gonna call in some workers of ours
to come and give us a hand.
But we're still gonna need your guys to help.
You tell us what we need to do, and we'll be getting it done.
We'll go start planning stuff.
Yeah, we gotta make some phone calls. Let's do it.
All right. Sounds good, guys. See you in a bit.
Thank you. - All right.
If we can get to that 20 times of what our cleanup was,
this will actually start to pay for itself.
But that's a great deal. It's a fantastic deal.
The issue is the time constraint that we have.
You know, we're gonna have to do a lot of work here,
so we need to get on the phone right away and call Travis and Alex.
Have them start heading this way.
Whoa!
The first step for Freddy and Juan's complete mine makeover...
It's a pretty heavy steel, Juan.
...unload the 30-foot trommel
so that they can assess the work ahead.
This plant's been sitting in the field
for the last 20, 30 years, so no one's seen it run.
Well, we're going to try to revive it.
We're going to get it on the ground.
Start getting all the measurements and figure out what exactly
we need to make this thing run.
Come closer this way.
That's good right there!
Right there, Trevor.
He's gonna pull out!
Great to see that thing on the ground, I tell you.
One step closer. It's exciting.
Hey, Trevor, let's have a look in your pit here.
While prep continues on the trommel, Freddy wants to get eyes
on the paydirt they've been running.
I mean, the amount of gold that was in that cleanup for four hours was miserable.
I mean, we're trying to get down to bedrock in here.
Well, there's just something in here that doesn't look good to me.
The rocks aren't really shingled really well, right?
Shingled rocks are smooth and round
as a result of being constantly rolled in running water.
Their presence indicates the location of ancient riverbeds,
where they act like riffles in a sluice box, collecting gold.
This hasn't had any erosion on it.
It never gets re-sluiced by nature, right?
This is just an exercise in futility, really.
I wouldn't play with this anymore.
Let's leave this alone and let's find you some better gold.
Let's do it.
I don't like the look of the material
they're running out of that pit.
No matter what we do to their plant,
if there's not enough gold, there's not enough gold.
Mark, how you doing, buddy?
Pretty good. Pretty good.
At the Naver Creek mine in British Columbia...
Give you a hand on anything?
...Juan's first challenge on the wash plant renovation,
install the new engine.
- We pulled off that electric motor. - Yep.
We're gonna go with the gas 20 hp V-twin motor.
So it's gonna be a little different design than what you guys had before.
It's gonna be hopefully, a little more reliable.
The new gas-powered engine
will be connected to the gearbox
by an adjustable belt.
Juan must build a custom mounting plate to hold it in place.
So what I'm going to do is I'm actually gonna put the motor
- right where the old motor used to be. - Okay.
It's kind of guarded underneath that hopper.
But what I'm doing is I'm building a new base plate for the motors.
You're doing your own washers and you're doing your own shims.
Yeah, that's everything. Yeah, we'll send it over to the table.
And now let's cut it.
We'll just hit start on the machine.
Nice.
So there we are.
Part number one.
Juan's computer-aided design table
precisely cuts the 10 base plate components in under six minutes,
saving hours of manual labor.
Well, that's it.
We'll pull them all out and I'll have you help me get them cleaned up.
Sure. I'll start putting it together.
Seems like everyone's got a little bit of money into it,
but it sounds like you've got a little bit more than everyone else, huh?
Everything from all the machinery, the fuel,
any repairs,
- everything came out of my wallet. - Oh, really?
So this is your money on the line, huh?
Yeah, it is.
There's no extra check coming in,
but we've put a little bit away,
so we'll survive while we're out here and cover costs.
We need to see gold.
The new wash plant could run up to four times the amount of pay,
giving Mark a fighting chance at making his money back.
It's got great bones, you know, she's a little older.
But I think with what we've got, it's a good start.
Oh, yeah, if you want to get that going, I'll keep on plugging along.
- We've got a lot to do, so. - Not a problem.
Thanks for your help, Mark.
Mark has $400,000 invested into this operation, and that's a lot of money.
I'm hoping that we can get their plants set up,
get them on some better material,
so that way they can turn that around.
And this can be a viable operation, not just a dream.
Well, let's have a look at your maps, John.
The material we ran the first test run, it's no good.
So now the pressure is on me.
Hopefully, I can find some better material.
Where are we at right now, John?
This is the whole area that we're in
and where we are mining is just down in here.
On the hunt for better ground,
Freddy looks over old maps of the area with claim owner John Olsen.
- So that's the stuff they ran right here. - Right there.
- Right here? - Yeah.
Okay.
That's no good.
Is this a creek here? Yes, it is.
- That's a little neighbor. - Okay.
Where the plants are set up. Where the plants are set up.
The old creek bed for a little neighbor creek
comes along and meanders down through this valley.
I've panned all the way down into the creek here.
There was gold found there, and some of it can be, you know, fairly chunky.
You know, looking at the map, there should be better gold there.
Oh, yes.
So I'd like to go down here because it's more of a creek bottom.
But there's only one way to find out.
- That's right. - Let's dig a hole in it.
- I think that's a good plan. - Thank you very much, sir.
Thank you, Fred.
So once the river was here and now the river is here.
So if that's the case, if that's the case,
then there could be a virgin layer of gold-bearing material
left there.
It may be 10 feet thick, maybe a foot.
The only way to find out is to go down there and dig a hole.
- The creek would have been up here, right? - Yep.
With the information from John's map,
Freddy recruits Trevor
on a hunt for the ancient creek channel near the small wash plant.
I can see right now this has got a really rounded rock in it,
so that's a good sign.
So through erosion, they get rounded out, and glaciers.
Rounded rocks could indicate an old stream once flowed here,
leaving behind gold concentrated in the gravel.
Let's punch a hole here and just see what it looks like.
All right, let's get in the machine. Let's get this done.
Trevor, take one more scoop there.
One more? Okay.
One of the biggest things we can do here, besides working on the plant,
is to teach these guys how to prospect,
what material to look for in the future.
Without doing that, then they're never gonna make their 100 ounce gold.
Trever, you want to hop out with me and let's have a look at this.
Yeah, you betcha.
Well, that's not that far down the bedrock, Freddy. That's kind of exciting.
My hope here is it's an ancient old bench channel up here
- or an old river bench creek bench. - Yeah.
And then it would have concentrated the gold.
I think it's an old stream bed.
You know, the stream's cut its way to where it's at now, right?
Yeah.
But at one time, the stream bed was up here.
And then erosion happens. Picture the Grand Canyon.
- Yeah. - Right? We're eroded a mile deep now.
Well, same with these canyons.
So, as that erodes down, it can leave those upper benches.
And you may have some other benches this way to some old ones.
A bench deposit forms when gold settles in a river bank.
As the creek cuts a new path, it leaves behind an area of concentrated gold.
How important is it to make this mine operational?
I mean, it's about making money. It's about a lifestyle.
You know, even going back right now
wouldn't really make much of a difference if I was back in the city.
It's no work there anyway, so.
I work in the film industry in the Transport Division.
I haven't worked this year.
Due to the writer's strike going on, the whole industry is down.
Ninety percent of the people are laid off right now.
It's bad, you know. That kinda screws up your life.
I don't want any of that ever again.
Gold mining. It's hard.
It is hard on the body.
But it is so easy on the mind.
For me, this is paradise.
- That's a neat way of life. - It is.
- It's incredible. - You can't keep throwing money at something,
if it's not making money,
- Look at that. That guy. - Look at that.
- That guy. - Yeah?
That guy. Well, there's gold there. That's for dang sure.
That's some good gold there.
- I like it. - Yeah. I like it, too.
My thoughts are we dig our pond there for the bigger plant.
- So you have more water. - Yep.
Then we sluice up. We're killing two birds with one stone.
The gold bearing bench is next to the old wash plant pond.
Freddy's plan, dig out the pay and stockpiling,
then fill up the cut with water
to create a settling pond system
to provide clean water for the larger wash plant.
I'm learning a lot from him.
He's an amazing teacher.
His wealth of knowledge is incredible.
You can tell he's been doing this a long time.
These guys are only here for a few more days. It's go time.
And we've got to make it happen now.
This morning, over 400 wildfires
are raging across British Columbia.
Huge areas to the north of the province have been evacuated.
In parts of the central interior,
residents are being advised to stay indoors
as thick smoke has caused the air quality
to reach its highest level of alert.
Looks like we're made today. Yeah.
30 miles south of the fires...
This must be it.
...Freddy and Juan's reinforcements,
Alex and Travis arrived, with much needed supplies.
Well, we got a bunch of work ahead of us, guys.
We're going to have to bust ass on this one.
We've got a complete drive system we've got to build.
We've got to rebuild the hopper, the grizzlies on that.
Freddy is rebuilding the sluices right now.
And then on top of that, we've got to get it in place, get water around to it.
We've got to dig out ponds.
- It sounds good. - All right.
So let's get all that steel and everything unloaded.
- Yeah. - Copy that. All right, guys. Thanks.
All right.
We're gonna put him right to work.
Hopefully, with our help, we'll be able to get everything we need done.
No strangers to a mine site,
Travis Stockman and Alex Voight have helped out before.
When they give us a call, you know they're far behind.
Travis and I are always willing to help these guys.
In 2022, when Freddy left a rescue for a medical emergency,
the guy stepped in to help military veterans Mark
and Rick increase their gold recovery by a huge 1300 percent.
Back a little. We'll just set it sideways.
Better work here on now.
Hey, Freddy.
How's it going?
Behind the trommel,
Freddy prepares the sides of the old sluice for an upgrade.
Just getting started grinding these old bankers down.
So I'm going to put higher sides on it.
And then we'll put a different wedge system in it.
- Okay. - I'm gonna remodify everything on here.
- Man, it's smoky. - Yeah, we've got forest fires burning nearby.
Coughing all the time.
Yeah, we've got one far away, but a new one's just popped up,
- so we'll keep our eye on it. - Okay.
- We've got all our heads on a swivel. - Yeah.
Anything you need me to do?
Just keep an eye out so I don't catch something on fire.
Copy that.
And then I'll probably have your help put the plates on.
- You got it. - Thanks, sir.
All right. It's really tinder dry right now.
There's a lot of fires in the area,
and there's a lot of particulates in the air,
so it's a little hard on the lungs.
Just hold it for me and I'll mark it.
Okay. I got it. Perfect.
Eyeballs.
Alex and Jay help Freddy weld high steel sides onto the sluice box
so they can run more material.
We've got to clean the inside of this
because this is gonna slide inside there.
So once we mount the motor onto this plate, we can adjust it.
At the plant, Juan and Travis installed the new motive.
The 20 hp V twin gas engine has the torque capability
to turn the drum fully loaded with rocks at 20 revolutions per minute.
Get it here, get it in place, line it up and weld it.
Yeah.
Hopefully I'll get it running before the end of the day.
I'm very happy looking at some monster motor.
This is gonna be beautiful.
Just weld it.
I'm really happy the way it's coming together.
We got it in.
It's lined up properly and we've got the mount that we designed installed,
so that way we can adjust it and it should be good.
So the carpet is catching all the fines, right?
Sluice welds complete,
Freddy shows mine operator Jay how to assemble the box for maximum gold recovery.
We're using this carpet to trap the gold,
but we're also using different mannerisms
in how we put this box together.
You want to grab one of those riffles?
- Can do. - Yep.
I've made these, so they'll tip in.
- So see how they tip in now? - Okay.
- For speed, right? - Yeah.
So now we'll take our short boards there and get some wedges.
We've got six different changes in this sluice box.
Every piece of gold is different, right?
Yeah. - So you're a piece of gold,
it doesn't like this situation for some reason.
- You may not like that little first change. - Right.
You may keep skipping down the box
and find that this is the change, get hung up in there.
- It's always something different. - Oh, that totally makes sense.
Did you grow up in a Cornell area or?
No, it's a city. I'm strictly a city guy.
My brother, he introduced me to this area.
When I was impressionable. 12 years old.
- Yeah, it was good times as a kid. - Yeah.
Did he do a lot of prospecting?
Yeah, he did. He did a lot of panning up here.
So you and your brother still go out gold panning?
I lost my brother a few years ago,
but ever since that time, I've always wondered about gold.
I'm sorry to hear about your brother.
Yeah, it just sort of stays with it. You just move on, right?
Yeah.
He's a good man.
I took after him in a lot of ways. I looked up to him.
He was 10 years older than me, so he was like a father and brother.
When this opportunity came up, it was just after my brother's death
and I jumped on it because it just felt right.
When I'm here, I feel him everywhere.
I know he would just be in his element here,
and I know he'd be proud of me.
Let's get all the stuff in. It looks like a nice sluice box, huh?
You betcha.
Well, if you wanna knock the wedges in,
I'm gonna go get busy fabricating stuff.
Okay, Fred. Got it.
See you in a bit. You bet.
Every mine you go on, people are people, right?
You're gonna find out a lot more about a person by working with them.
He got into prospect as a kid with his brother.
He's out here, you know, living his dream and his brother's dream.
This plant, to my knowledge, hasn't been ran in a lot of years.
So, you know, it's kind of a mystery
whether that gearbox is good or not.
So we're going to find out.
The gearbox reduces the revolutions per minute of the motor
and rotates the trommel at the correct speed.
If seized, the trommel won't turn.
If that gearbox is bad, we've got to start from scratch again.
We'll have to get a new gearbox,
and I don't know if we can source one in time.
Well, Freddy, moment of truth. I'm gonna start it up, see what it does.
Fire it up, Juan.
Uh-oh.
Impressive.
This is great.
Oh, isn't that pretty?
That's it. It runs.
Beautiful. Beautiful.
I can't believe it did run. This is excellent. This is really nice.
It's been sitting in the field for 20-plus years.
No, it's fantastic.
It actually can run.
Well, I'm gonna get on to other things.
Yeah, me too. Thanks, Freddy.
I didn't know what kind of conditions the gearbox was in.
But now that we've actually seen it run,
its spinning on its own power, the RPMs are proper, that's half the battle.
Now, we kind of see a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel.
Smoke warnings here on the indexes, it goes one to ten.
It's over a ten in terms of smoke in the air and it being unhealthy.
Dang, Freddy.
Well, this morning we got out to the trucks
and they were just all full of ash.
With just 48 hours remaining at the Naver Creek mine...
Smoke's worse here. - Yeah, it is, way worse.
...a change in wind direction brings the air quality index
to dangerous levels.
- This is kind of rough breathing this in all day. - Yeah.
If conditions worsen, it could shut down the rescue.
I'm tipping it forward.
First task of the morning...
Yeah. - I'm trying to put all the gold.
There's no corner in a round pan,
but I'm going to call it the corner.
- Okay. - That's the corner.
Yeah. ...class is in session
as Freddy gives greenhorn Sacha a lesson in panning for gold.
I want that gold right in the corner of the pan.
- Right there. - Right.
- So in your mind, picture it dropping right there... - Okay.
...with the angle of your pan and stuff.
- Bigger ones like that, get rid of him. - Yeah.
- Wow. That's quite a bit, eh? - Really...
Well, there's a lot of pie right there, too, that you're seeing.
So how are you to tell the difference?
- Gold never sparkles. It's always a dull yellow. - Right. Okay. Got it.
- Yeah. Look at your rings and your jewelry. Right? - Right.
- This guy here is a piece of gold. - Right.
Well, those are a piece of gold. All this is pyrite.
Okay.
It's not fantastic, but we'll know more when we run it, I guess.
- Yeah. - But yeah, we wanted to test different layers.
- Okay. - Like the stuff right on bedrock,
the stuff in the decomposed bedrock that far down
and some like that far down.
- Okay. - This is what we want to do there.
Right?
So what got you into gold mining out here?
I came up last year with my kids just to get away.
Is that right?
The first time I saw gold, those little specks, those little beautiful specks,
I was hooked.
Trevor and I are dating, and he suggested I come up here
and just be part of the crew.
I've just struggled for so long with two children, raising them,
trying to support them as best I could.
So to prosper in gold financially would be amazing.
This year, Sacha's 22-year-old son, Dustin, has joined her
in the gold fields.
Dustin is working on the machines.
He's doing whatever needs to be done. He just loves to be useful.
I don't have a retirement plan,
and if this is successful,
it'll be a game changer.
I'm circling, but I'm also taking material out of the pan at the same time.
- You see those rocks going out? - Okay.
Yeah. I think I'm too timid with how I've been panning.
Yeah.
- You see me? I don't mess around. - No, you don't.
You get the job done.
Here we go. That's looking better.
Oh, good.
- These guys. That's a good-sized piece there, - Nice.
another piece there
and a whole bunch of little guys out through here.
Oh, beautiful. I love it.
Well, there's one good sign right there. I'm gonna get back to welding.
- See you in a bit. - Thank you, Freddy.
By giving these guys little tricks, you know,
after we leave, they'll still have those tricks.
And they can, you know, do it on their own
without having to worry about Juan or myself helping them out.
Dang, Freddy. It's really bad down here.
As the rest of the crew begin their day,
concerns about the smoke worsen.
One thing that we've got to take into consideration, too,
it's not just us, you know, we've got an entire crew with us, too.
The rescue takes place in what is now the worst wildfire season
in Canada's history.
Over 10,000 square miles of forest burns in British Columbia,
with one blaze less than 20 miles from the claim.
There's the man.
What's your call?
The air quality index is ten out of ten.
You can see right now, it looks like it's snowing
and it's just ash coming down on us.
Yeah, I know you guys got a lot of work to do,
but for the safety of everyone here and the crew, We have to evacuate.
- Yeah. - Okay.
We gotta go.
- You ready, Juan? - All right, let's go.
As smoke and ash descend on the valley, rescue shuts down for the day.
Already on a really, really tight timeline.
We don't have enough time to lose a day.
No. We didn't have enough time to lose half a day.
Right now, the smoke's cleared out quite a bit.
You can actually see blue sky. We've just got to get this done.
The rain overnight has dampened down the smoke
and the team is back on site.
If we make it on time here, it'll surprise me.
Well, I'm getting the settling pond,
getting bed carved out,
and then fill that thing up with water.
Everybody is racing today
and for the next few days.
So under the gun is an understatement.
We're way behind schedule now.
We're trying to make up all that time we missed.
So you need some help on this, Juan?
Twenty-four hours remaining in the rescue,
the team must fix and attach the hopper,
fabricate a spray bar
and complete a new pond system.
Yeah, if you wanna help me, Freddy,
you can start putting those grizzly bars together.
Weld the tops on them
and I'll start getting all this ready.
I'll build the bars.
Okay. - You build the support for it.
Let's do it.
How much gap do you have there?
Oh. Half inch.
Work, work, work. Weld, weld, weld.
While Alex helps Freddy fabricate the grizzly bars,
Juan and Travis
weld the supports into the hopper.
What we want to do is make sure that
the material that's going through the grizzlies
into the hopper and into the trommel
are under eight inches
because we don't want anything big getting in there
and getting it clogged up.
I got the frame ready to go.
I'm gonna start getting a line where they need to go
and get them welded in.
We're out of time.
We've gotta get this done today.
Travis, let's clean that up real quick.
This is the last grizzly bars we've got to do.
We're gonna get them welded in place.
Okay. Where we at? On yours?
Right there.
Perfect.
We got the grizzly all welded up.
We're gonna lift it up right now.
We're gonna get it in place.
It's kinda the moment of truth.
Hopefully it fits right.
Yeah. That's good.
Watch yourself, Travis.
- Watch your hands, Alex. - Yeah.
Watch your fingers. Coming down.
Get out of there.
Hold on. Hold on.
We're going to strung that guy.
Go around out front, Alex.
There you go.
All here on the front.
Did the chain just go?
Our hook came loose.
At the Naver Creek mine,
one of the four chains
lifting the 2000 pound hopper
has become unhooked.
Right now, I don't need any distractions
is what I'm thinking.
Okay. We're gonna have to get back up there
and hook that back up.
Okay. Coming back up, guys.
Watch out. Okay.
How's it look on that side?
It's so above over there.
Travis, that's good. - He's got it on this side.
You got it?
For the hopper to feed correctly,
the square pillars must insert vertically
into matching pockets on the frame.
Is it there?
It's real close.
Come on down a little.
This side's in. There you go.
It's in. Perfect.
And it's tied up against the trommel.
Nice.
That's a big relief right now, and we've got the hopper on.
And that's a major part of the trommel.
Still got a lot of plumbing to do,
but we're that much closer
to being able to get this down
to the site and getting it hooked up.
These guys are pretty green.
So, you know, it's always good to put an eye on stuff
before it gets too out of hand.
With the clock ticking,
the miners have been tasked
to dig out pay
and create a new pond.
It looks like we're almost ready
to start putting water into this thing.
Hey, Trev, we're gonna be coming in.
Freddy is with us.
Yeah, I'm just down in the hole here.
Freddy checks in on the progress of the dig.
You're gonna need more pay than that.
We've got to get all that pay out of there.
I thought you already had it done
or I'd have been out here yesterday.
Try it deeper in bedrock.
Let's say go six inches into that bedrock.
- All right? - Okay.
Sounds good.
More pay must be dug out.
Freddy's plan,
once the pay has been removed and stockpiled,
use the new cut as a settling pond.
Get it all ready
so we can start filling it with water.
All right, let's get her done.
Let's get to it. I'm gonna get the welding.
All right, man. Thank you.
Well, one thing's for sure.
Without water, we won't run.
So we've got to dig those ponds out,
get water in there.
We've just got to get it done.
This has got me really stressed out.
Those guys gotta be out of here real soon,
and we're still digging a pond.
We don't have a new piece of four inch pipe,
so I'm gonna reuse what they had.
I had to cut all the little different plugs
that they had on there and all the adapters.
We're going to turn this into the spray bar
in the hopper.
We're actually gonna put a jet on the back
of the hopper itself.
What that's gonna do is push that material down
into the trommel.
We're gonna call it the pipe with many patches
that my grandpa gave to me.
It's all cobbled together.
I had to put a bunch of patches on it.
But it will work.
It's a sexy piece of pipe, huh?
It's a sexy one.
Oh, yeah. - It's sexy.
All right, let me get up there and see if I can weld it in.
That's it. Done.
Yeah, but I think we can start filling this thing with water.
I mean, it's as deep as I can make it.
Okay. So, Sacha, Dustin,
if you guys can get the pump fired up.
Copy that.
Everybody is racing.
All of us are moving.
Well, Freddy, Juan,
our team doing our part.
Working the pressure go up the line.
Okay. One second.
Okay. We're good. We've got water.
Good job, guys.
Thank you.
That's a good angle right there.
Yeah, I know, it works. That looks good.
With both ponds now full of water...
Let's just backfill it from here.
We've got a pipe now going from our tailings pond
over to our settling ponds.
What it does is recirculates the water.
We don't have to keep pulling in fresh water.
The new settling pond system
is in place.
The dirty water will exit the trommel
with the tailings into the first pond.
As it slows and the heavy silt
sinks to the bottom,
clean water flows downstream
through the culvert into the second pond.
From here, the clean water
can be recirculated back into the plant.
They're definitely bigger than our other pumps.
Yeah, no doubt.
A new four inch pump
will move almost
five hundred gallons of water a minute
to the trommel.
It's a bit of a push to get it all set up
but I think we can do it.
We're all working really hard.
Yeah, so what we'll do is we'll unwrap this.
This one goes into the pond. Okay.
There you go there. Nice. Don't fall in.
There you go.
I was up at, I think, 6:30 to turn on the little pump
and from there,
it's just been nonstop go, go, go!
I can't believe this huge pump
is gonna make a huge difference.
Way bigger than the ones
we've got already. Oh, my God.
Hey, Trevor, just across here?
Yeah, buddy. Yeah. That's great. Thank you.
We got her. It's done.
Nice.
Okay. What do you think?
Literally, the trommel is the next thing in place.
Other than that, everything's done.
I think we're there. I love it.
Perfect. - Good job.
Thanks guys. Yay!
And all of a sudden you're
starting to think more like a miner
and feeling more successful in what we're doing.
We're gonna do this.
We're gonna make it work.
Okay, Juan, you done on your end?
With a few hours
remaining on the Naver Creek mine rescue...
I'm all done, Fred. We're ready to go.
...the team must maneuver the newly tricked out trommel
to its position on the pad 600 yards away.
I can go grab Mark and get his big loader,
- get him in it. - Let's do it.
Okay, Juan, if you can let me know how close
they get when I back up.
We don't have any time for any mess ups.
I'm just hoping we can get it down there in one piece.
You can probably get over this way
quite a bit, Mark.
Let's go.
Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!
The 10,000 pound machine
is too big for the road.
Trev, you got that chainsaw?
Let's knock that one down, huh.
Well, we're about to get into a tree here.
The last thing we want to do is work this hard on something
and bend it up putting it in place.
You ready, Mark? - Ready to go.
Slow and easy.
Okay. We're getting into a pinch point here.
It's gonna be a little tight.
That's good there, Mark. That's good. Right there.
Stop there. Stop there.
Now we gotta hook up all the plumbing,
get the pumps hooked up, sluices.
Let's do it. Sounds good.
These are the final measurements
that he's doing that really decides
whether you catch gold in the sluice box or not.
Come up a little more. Easy.
It's amazing how it's all come together.
We're gonna be running dirt tomorrow.
This is the dream that's coming together.
The sluice is in.
We're just ready to hook up that last water line
and we're ready to go.
Okay.
Completion is another step
towards where we gotta go.
I mean, look at this thing. It's a behemoth.
We haven't even got to see
this trommel run yet.
You know, we've put a hell of a lot of work into it.
Tomorrow morning is the moment of truth.
Well, it's a big day, Freddy.
Yep. Get that plant running.
You know, I'm a little nervous about it, though.
You know, these guys are gonna have to hustle more...
- Yeah. - ...with this plant
and the smaller trommel.
Yeah, right now, it's going to be
more important than ever for them to be organized
in what they do.
Previously, the mobile wash plant
maxed out at 10 yards per hour.
Now, Freddy and Juan have reignited a mining relic,
a giant 40 yard per hour wash plant,
complete with new ponds
and water system.
Well, Juan, show them around, huh?
Yeah, let's do it.
You guys saw what we were doing with the grizzlies.
We actually put some bigger grizzlies on there.
Properly spaced.
We put an electric start motor,
so that way you're not in there
trying to pull a pull cord.
The big thing, too, is now
we've got a four-inch water line coming to your plant.
We redid all this. It doesn't look that sexy,
but it's gonna work. Yeah.
I got to say, this thing looks strong.
Well, you can see the sluice box, guys.
We reconfigured one of yours.
Yep. - Different sides,
completely different lockdown systems.
So, it's set up to catch fine gold
or coarser gold as well.
Yeah, you'll be surprised how much more gold
you'll actually see
in different riffles, you know.
Wow.
Well, let's fire it up, guys.
Yeah.
The trommel's ready to go.
I think we're ready to go.
We can't wait to start it up.
I'm pretty nervous about the four hour test.
This is definitely a pivotal moment for us miners.
Okay, ladies and gentlemen, fire in the hole.
Golden sluice.
You know, Freddy, it's really hard because,
you know, we watched a little plant run.
We didn't get to watch this one run,
so we really didn't know what it was gonna need.
You ready, Jay? First bucket.
All set for the first bucket.
It's a huge difference in there
compared to the first test. Different plant.
The guys have more knowledge now,
a better recovery system, so we'll see what happens.
And we are moving so much more material.
Two hours into the test,
the team have churned through 80 yards of dirt,
four times the amount of pay from the previous run.
Honestly, for a shot in the dark,
I think we did all right.
Yeah, I think so, too.
The sluice is running good.
Yeah. - The water system's running good.
The grizzlies are working good.
I mean, what a difference.
This is really moving material.
That worked, hey Juano!
First time running,
- I'm happy with it. - I am as well.
This wash plant was a complete unknown.
We didn't know how it was really going to run.
But it's going great.
Nothing's holding us up.
Now we've got the flow of that water,
see it's moving all the way across,
and now that water has to make a long journey
before it gets to your other pond,
it makes the silt drop out. Yep.
They're running a lot more material.
The material coming off the end of the trommel.
Clean.
Very proud, very happy.
And excited to see
what's gonna happen at the end of this.
That's what it's all about.
They're a lot smoother as a crew now.
I wouldn't say a well-oiled machine just yet,
but they're doing pretty good.
- Lightly oiled. - Lightly oiled.
I think they're getting the general gist
of how it's supposed to go down.
They're doing good, though.
Looking good, buddy, looking good.
Well, Juan...
Last bucket, huh?
- Four hours. - That's the run.
Hey, Jay.
Last bucket.
Copy that. Last bucket.
To see how much gold's in the sluice box.
That's it. Shut her down.
Hopefully, it's in the mats.
Mm-hmm. Yep, buried in there.
We'll let you guys get it cleaned up.
All right.
I always like to see a lot of gold
when you shut down on the mat.
I didn't see a lot.
Sluice box didn't look great at all.
So I don't know if we made the right call going 20 times
from what we had on our first test run.
Freddy said it, so we gonna stick to it.
But maybe that was the wrong call.
You wanna see something cool? What's up?
Well, somebody made something for you
that I'm supposed to give you.
- Really? - Come here.
I'll show you what it is.
Well, your wife already made your bulldog a custom cape.
Yeah, it's pretty sweet. I like it.
Another friend of yours made you... No kidding.
...a hat. Hat and cape. That is awesome.
It even matches my hard hat.
Exactly. Look at that.
Probably, smells less.
Does it fit?
Oh. Fits perfect, too. Oh, yeah.
I like that. He looks more distinguished now.
That's pretty cool, Juan.
It's perfect, Fred.
Absolutely perfect.
It takes five minutes just to fill up these little pans.
At the Naver Creek mine,
the crew begin their cleanup.
I'm sorry about just jumping in. No, no, no.
Thank goodness.
But the gold bearing concentrate
is still filled with other heavy minerals.
What are you doing, Freddy?
Right now, we're just using this magnet
to get the magnetic heavies out of it
so we don't have to deal with them.
Right. So we are fighting our way
through them to get to the gold.
Yep.
Here, I got my contractor's license, Fred.
Oh, so you can release.
Freddy's mining hack,
use the magnet through a piece of plastic
to quickly release the worthless heavy metals.
Fantastic, you guys. Thank you.
Even though they're novice to mining,
they're not novice to hard work.
If you have a crew that you enjoy being with
and you can work with and work hard with,
you know that's worth its weight in gold.
I mean the University of Gold by Freddy and Juan,
we've got our two professors there
teaching us what gold mining is.
Getting rid of all this.
Wow.
In five minutes
I already learned so much.
With the magnet
that was a game changer.
We cut from nine hour clean-up to one.
So that's huge.
Got it all cooked up.
When I looked in that sluice box,
my heart sank. Mine too.
Yeah. Really?
To hit Freddy's 20 times gamble,
and put the miners on course
for their 100 ounce season goal,
from this test,
they need at least 0.4 ounces.
- It looks better than the first one. - That's looks a lot better.
Oh, yeah.
Okay. We just went past your first run.
Wow.
Uh-oh.
Look at there. There's 0.4 right there.
- There's 20 times. - Twenty times.
There's 20 times. Yeah.
There's a little more of gold left.
0.49.
Dang. Near to a half an ounce.
As far as I'm concerned, that's a half ounce.
Half an ounce in a four hour run. - Thank you.
So realistically, in a full day,
you can do an ounce.
Yeah. Well, that puts you on target
- for your 100 ounce season, right? - Yeah.
You know, quite an ambitious goal
of a 100 ounce for the season.
With the gold weight we just had right now,
that's a possibility.
But more than anything, they have a future here.
Well, guys, I couldn't be more happy.
I mean, look at the difference.
Your guidance has been huge. Thank you.
You guys take care. Okay.
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Thank you guys. - It was a pleasure.
It means everything.
It means I get to live the life
of a gold miner.
It proves my theories about this claim.
I'm more than happy with everything.
You question, "Am I gonna get a return on this?"
Freddy gave us a good path.
Juan showed us a good path and it's working.
We're getting our money back
out of what we put our heart and soul into.
Hey, Freddy, Juan,
just want to give you guys a little update here.
The first snowflakes started to fall.
But we've made it back,
and we do have some good news for you.
Freddy, you showed me how to prospect.
We managed to open up some other cuts
and we really have some great success with it.
But we can't believe what you guys did for us.
I was really running there at the end of the season.
The sluice box, it's working amazing.
Now we're getting all the gold at the top end.
You guys want to know what our total was?
You guys, you nailed it.
You crushed it with us.
117.3 ounces
Freddy, Juan... We love you.
We're coming back next year.
That's the most important thing there is.
Here's to next year. We're coming next year.
We're coming next season. - Thanks, Freddy and Juan.
- Thanks guys. - Thank you so much.