[narrator] Two weeks into gold season,
the Hoffman's are behind with only 76 ounces.
We've kind of fallen back, but we're going forward.
[narrator] Now they must average 92 ounces a week
to hit their 1,000 ounce benchmark.
We haven't seen rain in a long time.
[narrator] But extreme weather threatens to bring a sudden end...
Super worried about the water. If we can't sluice, we can't catch the gold.
[narrator] ...as drought conditions...
We could use a good rainy day.
[narrator] ...turn to heavy rains...
Look at it. Oh my gosh.
[over radio]
Everybody shut down. All hands on deck.
[narrator] ...that threaten to wipe the mine...
All the water is just pouring down Doll!
[narrator] ...off the map.
A month and half worth of work right down the drain.
[over radio]
[narrator] It's all hands on deck for a battle of biblical proportions...
We got a situation!
[narrator] ...where everything is on the line.
If this water gets into that cut, we're screwed.
Last year we had unseasonable rain.
Highest amount of rain on record.
This year is just the total opposite. We haven't seen rain in a long time.
[bird screeches]
Now we've got fires coming through.
And, ah, there's a beautiful mountain range over there,
but you can't see it because of all the smoke.
Most of our foliage is pulled back, away from our domes and everything,
so we're okay if the fire should come through.
I really hope it doesn't happen, 'cause that's a bad day.
My only fear is, is that we won't have enough water.
Uh, we're running out, real quick.
There is rain in the forecast, but it's a ways out.
And, uh, boy, we could use just a good rainy day.
The river is way down.
And I'm a little worried this is, this is only July,
and we've got a long ways to go.
I'm super worried about the water. We've got a drought going on.
I am running. It is, uh, it's hot and dusty,
but how long we can run? I don't know.
We don't have enough water to sluice,
and if we can't sluice, we can't catch the gold.
[Micah] This new pay is gonna go so fast.
It's dry. It's running quick.
[Todd] I've never seen it like this.
Usually it's raining.
[narrator] With the Black Pearl still disassembled
and weeks away from being operational,
Todd will keep the Holy Roller going until they run out of water.
I really want to get a thousand ounces.
The Holy Roller is running two eight-inch suctions,
with an eight inch out to the manifold system.
That pump in itself will probably move about 3,000 gallons a minute.
That is a ton of water.
This truck holds a thousand gallons.
Now imagine moving this truck every minute, three times.
So we're trying to pull water from everywhere we can.
This water that I'm getting today is going on the roads of camp.
The roads are as dusty as can be.
So we need to keep that dust down so that we don't have any silica dust in our lungs.
But I had to come to the river to get it,
because there wasn't enough in the Doll to fill the tank.
This drought is serious.
Where I'm standing at right now, I would have been 15 feet underwater right here.
But not this year. This year, we're only at four feet. It's ridiculous.
I'm a little worried that we're gonna have water to make it through the year.
We have one of the finest trommels I've ever seen.
But, if we don't have any water to run through the sluices,
or enough water to run through the sluices?
We can pack it up and go home.
No water? No gold.
Here we go.
Now that I've got the thousand gallons of water,
add in an extra 8,000 pounds and I've gotta get it up the hill.
We all woke up this morning to the smoke that blew in from the forest fire.
And you're breathing it all day. It's not easy.
But there's absolutely nothing that's gonna stop me
from working on the Black Pearl and getting it running.
[narrator] Hunter recently purchased a large wash plant he nicknamed the Black Pearl.
In order to haul it to the mining site, he had to cut it into three pieces.
The base, the trommel, and the hopper.
Now, Hunter and Sparky must refurbish each part before they can reassemble it.
-What's up, my brother? -What's up, G?
[Sparky] So after we've cleaned up these rings,
maybe we can fix that support beam where the old guys [bleep] up bad.
-Dude, that's so fricking bent. -Yeah.
[Hunter] Some of the older guys came in,
for whatever reason, they felt like it was their job to unload all of our wash plant.
-Whoa! -Hold on!
-Whoa! -Stop!
I can't even look at this [bleep]!
-Hang on! -Hold on and we'll get that [bleep]!
How are we going to weld it back together,
-when you're dragging it on the ground? -Don't worry about it.
[Sparky] Now we have to take more work time,
more time that we could have been building on this frame.
-Building that divider that we need to do. -Yeah.
Like, and these guys, like, it felt like they didn't care about our stuff.
Like, I genuinely don't appreciate that.
Well, I already brought it up with them.
And I already expressed to them how I feel about them doing this.
And it is what it is. It's like, we're just gonna fix it. And, you know.
The victory is going to be sweeter.
[Hunter] Nobody on our entire crew, not my dad, not Andy,
not any of these guys, They've never taken a trommel this size,
cut it completely apart, trucked it all the way out to the middle of nowhere,
reassembled it, and gold mined with it.
And that's what I'm about to do. So I can't wait to see this thing running.
[female reporter over radio]
[Sparky] Dude.
[Jack] You know, I prayed about things.
I said, "God, we need water."
Now I'm having to say, "God, turn it off, please." You know?
Right now, we've got too much water.
[narrator] As the storm builds,
the fear of potentially not having enough water to run the mine
quickly turns to anxiety that there's too much water.
[over radio]
Yeah, I got a copy.
[over radio]
Is it really that much water coming down, huh?
[over radio]
Okay, everybody shut down. All hands on deck.
[narrator] Todd knows that too much water can end the season in an instant.
He mobilizes all crew members.
I just got a call from Andy, he says all the water is just pouring down Doll.
The ancient river bed is flooding.
We're gonna go up there and just see what we can do.
[Todd] Look at this. It's already come up at least a foot.
It hasn't even begun.
And we've got two inches of rain coming.
So what happens if Doll Creek, I use that term loosely.
That's a river. It's gonna be a river in a minute.
What happens if that breaks into that pay dirt?
It's gonna dilute it. It's gonna wash most of it downstream, dilute it all out.
Put mud in on top of it.
We go to four to five ounces a hundred to, I don't know. An ounce, half ounce?
All we can do is, uh, start putting in overflows.
Whatever we've gotta do to save the cut.
Oh, dang. We go from drought to tropical rains.
It was Jack's fault. He started praying really hard.
Yeah, maybe tell him to back off a little bit.
I'm gonna have him back off on those prayers,
because if this water gets into that cut, we're screwed.
We need to get more berms. Put in some overflows,
and if you need help, we'll put all hands on deck and let's just fight for it.
Okay, we've got our work cut out for us.
All right. Good luck. Stay in touch on me.
All right.
You know, Todd has put a lot of responsibility on me.
I don't know how to do everything.
There's a lot of things I get in and start doing and I figure it out.
This is one that could be way over my head.
[narrator] With the floodwaters rising,
Andy has his hands full trying to protect the ancient riverbed.
[Andy] I don't know how high up the water level is gonna go,
so I'm gonna put some dirt on these berms, try to get them a little bit higher.
And hope for the best.
[narrator] If floodwaters wash into the ancient riverbed,
their one thousand ounce gold may wash away with it.
[Todd] What are you gonna do, pack it in there, Andy?
Yeah, we'll get these things built up as best I can.
[over radio]
[narrator] With the team spread out, the Holy Roller remains shut down,
and Todd moves further behind.
They move quickly to save their water system and their season.
All we wanna do is build these berms up,
because if we get a flash flood down here,
it's gonna go up over the top, boom!
If this sucker runs over into that cut right there,
we might as well just pack up and go home.
It's a lot of weight on Andy's shoulders.
I've gotta make sure this stuff is done right.
[Todd] So Andy's dipping into some of our best paydirt right there,
to actually go and put it on the berm, because it's actually waterproof.
[over radio]
Yeah. This stuff's fresh, but it packs good,
so we'll use it to save the cut. We can get it back later.
I can't believe we're using this rich paydirt right here for the berm,
but, I don't know. I think it's the less of two weevils, bud.
[over radio]
Got it? All right, good,
because I don't want to put any more of that pay dirt on there.
Everything is about water. Managing water. Keeping dirty water here. Clean water here.
And no water in the cut.
And right now, I'm not so sure we're gonna be able to pull this off.
[Todd] I don't know, dude. Can we do it? Are we gonna do it?
I hope so. It's all we can do. I don't know what else to do. Berm it up? I don't know.
We'll just see how much rain comes tonight.
We're ready as good as we can.
Hey, keep your radio on. We'll just monitor it.
It goes up a couple more feet, we might be in trouble.
We can't always pick our weather.
-[Andy] No. -Hey, at least we got rain.
I just hope the rain doesn't destroy what we've got cooking here, you know?
Yeah, for sure.
-[Todd] All right, good job. Let's go. -All right.
[narrator] While Todd and Andy monitor the ancient river cut,
[Sparky] Flipping soaking wet. Earlier, it was pouring down.
[narrator] Hunter starts working on the Black Pearl's hopper.
-[Hunter] I might flip that hopper over right now. -[Sparky] Yeah.
I'm gonna come in here with the excavator,
and I'll pick that up, bring it over here,
tip it over and then we'll rig it, pick it up,
and crib underneath, so that we get those legs off the ground.
And I'll just start [bleep] going on it.
[narrator] Using chains, Hunter and Sparky will attempt to carefully tilt the hopper
onto its back, so they can repair the bent support legs,
before reassembling the entire wash plant.
[Hunter] This is a lot of work for two guys to do in the rain,
that I've never done this before.
Yeah, stay back a little bit, I'm gonna see if I can get it off the ground.
Working in the rain makes everything much more difficult.
On top of that, it's just miserable. You're soaked to the bone.
Makes everything much more hazardous and much more difficult.
But right now, we don't have a choice.
I'm gonna just keep it low to the ground.
I'm gonna set it down right here.
I want you to throw a chain,
see that little, that little ring that's welded on that left? Yep.
-Throw that chain in there. -Gotcha.
[narrator] Hunter wants to lay the hopper on the most level ground possible,
and it's Sparky's job to rotate it into just the right position.
[Hunter] Okay, go around that way, Sparky.
Go around that way and see if it'll spin.
[Sparky grunts]
[Sparky] It's a little heavy!
I can set it like this too, and we'll tip it this way.
Pull it as far as you can and I'll drop it.
[Sparky grunts]
And this will help, you ready?
-[Sparky grunts] -[metal clangs]
Let's pull the chains off.
I'm going to use the bucket. I'm going to tip it.
[Sparky] Just gonna tip this hopper forward.
The chain's gonna be a safety catch.
[Hunter] Go for it?
[Sparky] I think go for it.
Stay back. It's gonna get a little squirrelly, man.
I'll lift those legs up, and we'll shove those big timbers underneath it.
[Sparky] Okay.
That's plenty.
-Is that enough to slide those under? -[Sparky] Yeah.
[Hunter] Right now, I'm not gonna let anything stop us getting this plant running.
You know, it's pouring down rain, but there's a lot of work to be done,
so we're just gonna work through it.
We have to keep plugging away on this plant.
And, you know, if we can get it running, I think we're gonna make a lot of money.
-[Hunter] Ready? -[Sparky] Keep going, keep going.
[Hunter] Try to get that other one in. I'm not gonna move.
[Sparky] It's plenty.
We've just dropped the hopper on its side,
we're going to put some cribbing underneath it for safety precautions.
Other than that, we can attack this project now.
-[Hunter] I like this. -[Sparky] Yeah, this is sick.
[Hunter] How I wanted it to go. Instead, it went not good.
-Oh, that's money. -Money, exactly, dude. Money.
This is a prime example of be careful what you pray for.
Uh, we've asked for rain and God has provided.
Unfortunately, now we have a bit too much.
Our pond system has completely filled up.
The pump has now died.
[narrator] The pump has been placed at the edge of the pond,
to prevent the rising water from washing out the mine's main road.
Losing access to the road would bring the mine to a standstill.
It would be a very, very bad thing.
So Randy must save the pump in order to save the road.
Why did you stop?
[engine turns over without starting]
The reason why this pump's not running
is the fuel suction is here and the fuel level has dropped below the suction line.
So now I need to get this pump back to normal,
so that the fuel pickup can pick up the fuel.
Hey, who's in the, uh, 490 over here by the Pearl?
[over radio]
Tater, can you bring that over here?
I need the assistance immediately.
If this breaks this little barrier and floods our road,
eventually it'll find another path and it'll slowly wash out the dirt and rock of the road.
And then we've gotta rebuild the whole entire road system.
Once we bring this back down, then this road will be fine.
But we cannot lose the road.
Here comes Tater.
[Randy] Just push down on that tongue.
Yep, back her down.
[Randy] Okay, hold that. I'm gonna put some rocks under the back of it.
[engine turns over without starting]
Come on, baby.
[engine turns over without starting]
Come on.
[engine turns over without starting]
Go ahead and slightly let up. See what that does.
[engine turns over without starting]
Come on, baby.
[engine turns over without starting]
[engine roars to life]
[Randy] Beautiful! [laughs]
That sumbitch just went on!
Hopefully this will hold.
[Todd] Look at this! Holy [bleep].
[radio] We need an excavator down here really quick to cork this,
right by the orange farm, quick.
[narrator] Despite Randy's best effort to stop water from flushing out the road,
additional rain is overwhelming their pump.
[Todd] Okay, what do you wanna do? We got a situation.
I think we ought to cut the road, but your call.
I think we'll just cut it into this ditch.
Drain the water out. I stopped everything from coming into our system.
So it should... the pump should start catching up.
If we cut a hole over here, this water will hopefully relieve itself over here.
And then we're gonna have to build our dam back up here.
[narrator] To keep the overflowing pond from washing away the entire road,
Andy digs a narrow trench to contain and control the flow.
Luckily, this didn't happen during the middle of the night,
or we would have woke up to every cut flooded, our berms all gone.
A month and a half worth of work right down the drain.
So, we're just gonna stop mining, we're just gonna let the water go.
I think we're gaining on it, Andy. I think we're gaining on it.
It's not getting deeper down there.
It's dropping up here too.
[narrator] With the overflowing pond
being safely shunted through the temporary channel,
Andy turns his attention back to the ancient river cut,
where additional rain overnight threatens to wash out their richest paydirt.
I guess you gotta be careful what you wish for around here.
You wish for rain, you might get too much.
[Andy] We had a lot of rain last night.
We've got all of our pond system and everything set up to get a lot of water.
We were just in a drought a few days ago, and now we've got water everywhere,
so we're really close on the berms being blown out,
so we're just trying to fix everything.
This creek is moving in a hurry!
This is, uh, yeah, pretty intense.
[Andy] Tater's up here plugging it up,
putting the dam up a little bit higher.
And I think we're gonna be okay. Then I'm gonna stick this culvert in the crossing,
because the culvert that's there is not taking enough water, so we're gonna fix it.
We're not mining today. This is critical and crucial. We can't mess this up.
[narrator] While most of the crew scrambles to control the water,
Hunter is determined to forge ahead on the Black Pearl, which remains in pieces.
-[Sparky] I wish we didn't have to do this. -[Hunter] Yeah, me too.
I wish Andy didn't drag it, or else we'd have a cross member.
[Hunter] The legs on the hopper are bent from,
you know, the way it was offloaded, so it's gonna take more time
to get them straightened back out and get them correct.
Otherwise, when we go to mount it, nothing's gonna line up.
There's a lot of work to be done, and if we don't get the Black Pearl running,
I don't see us reaching a thousand ounces.
With the Holy Roller being shut down with the flooding,
time is of the essence right now.
[Hunter] I'm going to torch these off. I'm going to get this thing leveled.
If we're not welding out here in the rain,
this thing's never going to get done,
I'm never going to get any gold,
and everything we've done up until this point is for nothing, so...
We messed up a lot of our support beams here,
so I've gotta just cut 'em off and start fresh.
You know how to bevel that?
Not really. I was hoping you'd do it, 'cause you're the master.
Gotcha.
[Sparky] You don't wanna cut too far back.
We just want enough meat to where we can grind in there, make it perfect,
seat it, so this thing's not freaking falling apart
when we're feeding fricking rich gold in there.
[Hunter] Sparky's taught me a lot about fabricating, cutting, welding.
So we're just, like, feeding off each other.
You know, the Holy Roller is a brand new wash plant.
It's been worked on for months inside of a shop.
Everything is brand new, fresh paint.
And the Black Pearl's been around since the 80's.
It's older than me and Sparky. It needs an insane amount of work, especially for two kids.
I've never done anything like this before,
but we're gonna keep going until we get it right.
There's not a single guy here that was ever doing what we're doing right now at our age.
That's a fact.
Dude, I used to fricking deliver bounce houses for a living, dude.
Now I'm out here, and kicking it with this guy.
We're freaking kicking ass and taking names, dude.
The biggest wash plant they've ever seen, in the history of their lives.
[Todd speaking over radio]
[Andy speaking over radio]
[narrator] Like the flooded road by the pond,
a crucial section of road by Doll Creek has also been flooded,
and in this case, completely washed away.
It must be fixed before mining operations can resume.
It's still running through there like a freight train.
So Doll Creek is running really hard right now.
We are currently isolated because of this hole in the road,
and half of the mine and half of our equipment is on one side,
and the other half is on the other side. So we can't do anything till we fix this.
[Todd] We're gonna have to drop another culvert in.
And, uh, to do that right, right now, it's gonna be a temporary culvert.
To do it right, you've gotta pack rocks in there.
You can't do that when there's water flowing around it.
So hopefully we can do this. It's like doing surgery,
while everybody's still awake.
[Andy] So Todd, what we're thinking is,
is that I dig this back a little bit, and then put a berm...
Yes, yes.
...to keep the water out of that side,
and then we can lay the culvert and put some water over it.
Yeah, I like it. Dig the berm over there, get the whole river going over there.
Come back here, dig our culvert,
pack it in tons and tons of rock and then shut it off.
[narrator] The plan is to dam up the creek
with a berm just downstream of the break in the road,
then the crew will install a new culvert to go under the road
that will be laid on top of it.
Once those are in place, the berm will be removed
and the water can safely flow under the road, through the new culvert.
Hey, let's get this in.
[over radio] All right, a little left, a little left. Right there. Thank you.
[Todd] So the bank is slowly giving away, with the berm in the creek
just enough to get inside there and do this ditch, and get the culverts in.
[over radio] It'll have to go your way a little bit.
-That good? -[Todd] Heck yeah. Right on the money.
We're trying to get them as close as we can.
We don't have banding, which normally you do.
We need that fabric down there.
But what we're gonna do is actually put fabric over the top,
and that's gonna hopefully keep a lot of that rock and sediment
from going down into that culvert, filling it up, and then becoming useless.
[Todd] Hey, Tater, you wanna get in here?
[Tater] If you want me to, I'll dig it.
[Todd] Tater's the better operator than me, and I think this kind of situation,
we need to get him in the seat instead of me.
[Tater] The bucket's coming off. Oh yeah.
Just turning my bucket around backwards on my machine,
so that I can reach out and sprinkle rock
where I wouldn't have been able to reach.
These creek changes are pretty sick, huh?
Dude, that is bad ass, brother. Bad ass.
[Todd] Okay, heads up, heads up.
We're trying to pack it in, in layers. Layer by layer, pack it in.
If you just dump it and bury it, it's gonna get washed out, so we're packing it in.
A little bit more, put a little bit more.
Pack it in, pack it in, pack it in!
Now I've gotta carefully break this open,
and we're gonna take all the river right down this new culvert.
-So far it's handling it. -Seems to be taking it.
So far so good. I think we're gonna have a win on this one.
We had to build these roads, you know, and it's tough.
Like, you're hemorrhaging money.
So what I'm hoping is that we're gonna make it up in the gold.
That this is worth it. Otherwise we built, you know, a bridge to nowhere.
[Andy] Gonna run up here, I'm gonna take a look at this berm.
Hopefully it, uh, has held up.
[narrator] After flash floods threatened to wash out
the ancient river channel and its rich paydirt,
Andy has returned to inspect the dirt berms he built to protect it.
If that berm was not there, we would have lost it.
So we can't afford that at this point.
We're already late. I don't need to be losing cuts to flooding.
Yesterday, you know, we lost 20-30 thousand dollars, probably.
We can't afford to do that anymore.
[narrator] The Holy Roller stop-down means the Hoffman's one thousand ounce gold
is slipping further away.
I'll tell you what, I see the water going down, my berm is still there.
There's no water in there and I can see the paydirt, so, hallelujah.
[narrator] But the good news is,
they've managed to save the paydirt
that has the potential of getting them there.
I found this ancient river channel seven months ago,
and I've been thinking about all winter digging it
that Mother Nature comes in, torrential downpour, rain, waters coming up,
if it would have blown this thing out, it would have taken all this material,
covered the whole thing.
We would have had a lot of time and money and effort lost.
It's another good day.
Any day that you can win in Alaska, mining, I'll take.
I'm gonna let Todd know that the berm has held up,
and we can get trucks and stuff back in there and we can get to digging.
Hopefully It's got a lot of gold in it.
So, ancient riverbed, it did not flood.
We were able to save the cut.
Having that river crawling right along our cut? Man, it was scary.
And if it were would have flooded into that, it would have been a disaster.
So, now we're gonna fire up and get things going.
Here we go!
We'll let it warm up a little bit.
Here we go!
It's almost turning.
[over radio] All right, Randy, go ahead and idle up.
[over radio] Hey, it's working! It's turning.
Okay, here we go! We're back rolling!
We're putting dirt through the plant.
I think we got lucky.
I thought that flood was going to take us out, but we got lucky this time.
Hopefully, that doesn't happen again.
[Sparky] Muddy day.
It's going to be a pain in the ass just because of how heavy this thing is.
I think we'll be able to spin it good, but we'll see.
[narrator] Hunter and Sparky are preparing to move
the massive base of the Black Pearl into position.
[Hunter] We've got our strongest chain hooked up, so...
[Sparky] It's not easy in the mud.
Everything's just way more difficult when it's muddy.
Let's see if I can slide it with this 490.
[narrator] The goal is to connect it to the hopper.
[Hunter] Honestly, this is the biggest day we've had in a long time.
Me and Sparky have been welding on this plant for... it seems like forever.
Just even getting the plant to this point,
where we can start putting it back together is a big deal.
[Sparky] It's going pretty smooth right now, just me and Hunter.
Nothing's broken yet, so it's a good sign
we know what we're doing and we're thinking things methodically.
You're doing a great job, brother!
-[Hunter] You like it there? -[Sparky] This looks pretty good.
[narrator] In order to attach the hopper to the frame,
they plan to use the excavator to lift the hopper up over the frame.
Then they will carefully lower the hopper,
until it's four support beams match up with those on the frame.
Basically, we're welding all these tabs to help align all of these beams together.
Once we go to place it, it's just gonna be me and Sparky doing this,
we're gonna put a tagline on it,
and, uh, if everything goes to plan, it'll sit perfectly on here.
Whoo-hoo-hoo!
[narrator] One wrong move can damage both the hopper and the frame,
and cost the mine more precious time.
It's critical that they slip all four of the hopper's legs
over the tabs to lock it into place.
[Sparky] Just bring her this way a little bit.
[Hunter] We've been waiting a long time for this moment right here.
[Sparky] Okay. All the tabs are in.
Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. One tab is out. It almost got in.
I think I might be able... Might be able to pull a chain on the other side of this.
-[Hunter] Okay, what do I do? -[Sparky] Pick it up, pick it up.
There you go. There you go. Hold on.
All right. Go ahead.
Drop her like she's hot.
Okay, hold it.
Hold it, hold it.
[Hunter over radio] That's pretty good.
That was a good idea. That was a damn good idea.
[Hunter over radio] This feels good.
It's like a huge weight off our shoulders.
Hey, every time it's just me and you working on this thing,
It's like... you know what I mean?
This is sick, man, [bleep] sick.
We've been out here welding, cutting in the rain.
Even when we cut this thing apart, it was a lot to take on.
So now that we're reassembling it, it feels really good, man.
We see the vision. Now it's happening.
-[Hunter] What do you think? -[Jack] That is huge!
-[Hunter] It looks good, huh? -[Jack] Yeah.
We're trying to bring you some crazy gold to the gold room.
This is absolutely fantastic.
What you did today is more than those dudes over there done in about three days.
-My God. -We appreciate you for believing in this, Jack.
Well, you know, it's gonna happen. Get her going, man.
I'm really happy my little brother is up here.
Nobody I love more than that guy.
Mmm. Fresh [bleep] tee, dude.
He's just so funny.
You know that smell?
-[Hudson] Mmm. -[Hunter] You're a [bleep].
-[Hudson] Smell it. -[Hunter] Weirdo.
-[Hudson] Smell it. -[Hunter] No!
Ten-four.
[Hunter] There's nobody I love more on Earth than my little brother.
You know, he's never trying to get anybody to like him, but everybody likes him.
[Hudson singing]
I eat a pound of Goldfish a week.
[over radio]
I don't know what it is about him, it's just, like, I just love the guy.
You know the [bleep] smell, dude.
Nice.
[Todd] For our second clean up, Thurber out here.
This is all ancient river channel pay.
[narrator] After only running for a total of 20 hours due to the rain,
Todd and his crew pull the Holy Roller's mats,
hoping they contain enough gold to keep him afloat.
Well, we got, I don't know, 4,000 yards on the box. Not a lot. Not a lot.
So we'll see what happens here.
Dude, crazy week. Hard on everybody. Water. Flooding.
I was actually pretty dang scared this week.
It was less than a foot from flooding the whole cut.
We got all the culverts in, got all the water diverted. Got everything down.
And it's holding. We should be good now.
-That could have went really bad. -Yeah.
Speaking of bad, we almost lost the ancient river bed
that we've been digging and digging and digging.
Look at this. It's already come up at least a foot.
[Andy] If that dike had blown through, we would have lost a third of our pay dirt.
-Huge. -I was literally watching the water come up.
And I just pull the road out.
And then Framer and Tater came in and put a clank on,
set the culvert, because it flooded.
[Todd] Thank you, guys.
Seriously, though, the experience that you guys have
from a past life came in handy in this life.
Tater, he went ahead and switched the bucket around.
That's kind of crazy. I didn't know they did that.
I don't think that's in the manual, Tater.
No, no, that doesn't come in any instruction manual.
-That's hillbilly construction right there. -Yeah.
Black Pearl, gimme an update.
It's taken a lot of time, but we're just trying to do everything right,
so that when we get it together, we're not gonna have it fall apart on us.
The rain's blowing sideways. We're standing in a mud puddle.
All of our tools are caked in mud. Our torch won't light.
We're caked in mud, and we're just...
We've been soaked to the bone for days trying to get that thing together.
But it was a good moment getting the hopper put on there.
At least you can kind of see it getting assembled. So we're getting there.
We see the vision. We've been talking about this since day one.
It's like, we're never gonna stop. We're gonna keep on going.
There's gonna be a lot of walls in front of us. But if we can find a window,
if we can find a door and bust it open, onto the next thing, you know what I'm saying?
Nice. Nice. I like it. Keep it up, man. I know it's hard, Hunter.
I know you guys are struggling out there. We see it. You know, we're all one team.
So, keep pushing hard. Get the Black Pearl running, man.
[narrator] As of right now, the mine has produced 76 ounces of gold,
with 924 more needed, to meet to reach 1,000 ounces for the season.
To achieve that goal, they need to average 92 ounces of gold per week.
Ah, I can tell by the way you're dangling that thing,
that's not as heavy as last week. Uh-oh.
[all groan]
[Jack] What do you think, huh?
When you get the little copper tray out...
-Yeah, it's not good. -You know it's gonna hurt.
[Jack] What do you think?
-Here we go. -I don't know.
I'm just gonna pour it out.
It was a hard week. I don't even... Man, just pour it out.
It's definitely, it's definitely a gut shot.
Where you're at? Five. Six.
Twenty three. Twenty four.
Twenty eight, 30, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39.
[Jack] 39.2.
-It's not even half of where we're supposed to be. -Right.
That's still, what, 65,000?
Right? $65,000.
I mean, it's below what we need,
but we had a lot of issues that were out of our control. I mean, it is what it is.
Last week we were at 76. This week we're at 39.
We've got a grand total of 115.
Now our average has to be 98 ounces a week, every clean up, so...
[narrator] The Holy Roller's third week cleanup comes in at just over 39 ounces,
for a running total of 115 ounces.
The Hoffmans now need 98 ounces of gold per week
to reach their season goal of 1,000 ounces.
Well, the bottom line is, the challenges are not gonna stop happening.
-Yeah. -There's going to be other stuff that happens.
We'll get flooded out again. We're gonna break downs,
so that's even more reason why we need the Black Pearl.
We're behind our average here. The Black Pearl we're behind.
We're behind, personally, in gold.
We've got to outperform this in what we're doing.
Everybody does. So let us know what we can do to help.
-Yeah. -Once we get you online,
-it's gonna go up. -Oh, yeah.
Let's get some rest, guys. Let's get rolling in the morning.
[chorus of agreement]
You guys get your beauty sleep in.