It's quite a bit of gold in there.
[Todd] That is awesome.
[narrator] On an Alaskan mine site
that ruined many generations of miners...
-That's a pile of gold right there, guys. -Whoo!
[narrator] ...the Hoffman clan is finally banking real gold.
[Todd] Three thousand ounces is within reach.
Now it's about us.
[narrator] Mine boss Todd Hoffman's strategy to build roads
gives the crew access to muddy pay dirt.
It's, like, five foot of slop right there.
All the pay dirt is soup.
[narrator] But in a closed system...
-How dirty is that water? -Getting worse.
[narrator] ...too much mud creates problems of its own.
[Todd] We're going to start losing gold.
Guys, this ain't good.
We're going to have to shut down.
Muddy water makes gold float.
[narrator] The only chance of making their goal...
Come on, girl, pull together for us.
[narrator] ...is engineering a way to beat nature at its own game.
Four hours of trying to put a pipe in the ditch is kind of stupid.
Whoa. Whoa.
[Todd] How many yards you got in this thing?
[Andy] There's 8,000 yards on the bottom.
Hey, Dakota, how dirty is that water?
It's getting dirtier. Getting worse.
[Todd] Yeah, the water's concerning.
-It's really dirty right there. -Yeah.
[Todd speaking]
If you can't keep your water clean,
you're not going to catch the gold.
[narrator] Just three weeks into the season,
the mine's water circuit exposes a mysterious issue,
muddy runoff.
[Todd] Muddy water makes gold float.
And it's going to go down the box right out into the drink.
So we got some real problems in the sluice box.
We're actually running the dirtiest water that we've ever sluiced
because I'm bringing all the water out of the cut,
and I'm running it into my circuit.
[narrator] The Hoffman's use a closed-loop circuit
to recycle and clean their water.
Clean water is pumped from a large holding pond to the wash plants
and then discarded out of the sluice boxes.
This dirty water is sent back into the circuit
where the sediment from the used water settles to the bottom,
allowing clean water to travel back to the starting point,
the holding pond.
But with the muddy water reaching the plants,
Todd suspects a breakdown somewhere in the circuit.
[Todd] Oh, my gosh, look at it.
Wow.
So we've had a lot of dirty water in the cut,
and we've had to drain it into our circuit and try to clean it up.
I don't know what's going on. We got to figure it out.
So, the cut over here,
you got these drainage ditches.
So as the muddy ice melts,
the water comes down the ditch,
we pump it up over the dike here,
and we've put it in right here.
We got a problem here,
this water, it's too dirty to sluice.
And if the water's too dirty, you're not going to catch the gold
because the dirty water makes gold float.
We are on track for our best season that we've ever had.
We've got two great weigh-ins. I want a third one.
I can't let this problem throw us off course.
So I need to shut the plants down and get this problem fixed
until I can get some cleaner water.
Guys, this ain't good.
We're going to have to shut down
and fix this fricken water, one way or another here.
Go ahead and shut it down.
[engine stopping]
When our plants are down, we're losing $40,000 per day.
Go ahead and kill the pump.
The water's muddy, so we got to figure out what's going on
and fix this,
otherwise we're going to lose or momentum,
and we're not going to hit our goal.
I'm telling you, this is pretty cool
-being able to go out across this. -All right.
This doesn't tear anything up.
[narrator] At the edge of Mammoth Valley,
several miles southeast of the Lost Cut,
Jack and Hunter take the sherk into unmined terrain
in search of a new source of gold.
I wonder what that is right there?
Dead straight forward, that's a bear, or a musk ox, or something, right?
Might be a musk ox.
-[Hunter] Oh, my gosh. -[Jack] Yeah, he's a big old boy.
[musk ox grunts]
Hunter and I are prospecting today.
I've never ridden in a Sherp. So it's going to be fun
We're going to go out and, uh, find another source of gold
because the Lost Cut's bound to run out.
Where are we going?
So I want to go out...
-And... -[Jack] Yeah.
-Okay. -[Hunter] So I'm thinking, yeah, we'll creep out,
and hopefully today's the day we find something.
[Jack] You know , maybe we'll find that pot of gold at the end of that rainbow.
We're using a map that has our mines drill results.
It's kind of like a treasure map
that'll help us find our next big deposit.
Carry Creek could be our salvation, I don't know.
-[Hunter speaking] -[Jack] Yeah.
[Jack] Yeah.
Most of the reason why I'm out here this year
is just for my grandpa, honestly.
And if this is going to be his last year,
then I feel a responsibility to make Jack's last season a huge one.
-[Jack] Are we going to go down that way? -[Hunter] Yeah.
Bigger pond, second, third.
-Dike this up here. -Uh-huh.
Put a pipe across right here then.
I think that'll help us a lot.
[Andy] Okay, let's keep going.
So we didn't anticipate, um, having the water so dirty coming out of our cut.
We got to do something to clean it.
What we're doing today is we're going to build several different small ponds
off to the side of our circuit,
and try to pump into it,
and let our, uh, muddy material settle
before the water goes back into our circuit.
[narrator] Andy's new idea to clean the water
involves building three settling ponds next to the water circuit.
They'll pump dirty water from the lost cut into the ponds
where the sediment will separate from the water.
If they're successful,
the clean water will flow through a large pipe,
known as a culvert, into the circuit.
[Andy] It's no sluicing today.
It's building some ponds and trying to get a different circuit going
to settle this mud out.
While I'm finishing digging these pounds,
Framer's putting in that culvert
to get the clean water into the circuit.
-[Framer] Go grab the other one... -[Dakota speaking]
...from the same end, the far end,
and then bring it around.
This is the only piece of pipe we have large enough
to make it across the road here for the haul road.
Unfortunately, it's in two pieces.
So we're going to have to find our own way to weld it together
because it won't fit in our welder.
So, the best option I think we have
is to take a piece of steel and heat it up,
and melt the two pieces of pipe,
and then we'll use the machines to fuse the pipe together.
-[Dakota] More? -[Framer] Yeah, give me a little more.
Okay.
It's the same process as using a fusion machine.
I haven't done this before,
but theoretically, it should work.
We just have to lock the pipe together so they line up,
and then you've got to face the pipes
so the pipes are even when you heat them,
and then you need an element to heat the pipe,
and then something to press the pipes together,
and hold them while they cool.
So we're using two excavators to hold the pipes in place,
and then Spink's here to pull the pipe back,
to get the heater out,
and then to press the pipe back together,
and hold it too cool off.
As for our heating element, we're using a piece of steel
that is left over from the Holy Roller.
[tool whirring]
What's the plate for?
We don't have a fusion welder, so we have to heat
the plate up with a torch,
and then stick them together,
and then it melts the pipe,
and then you pull them apart,
and then you've got to push the pipe back together and weld it.
All right, put that plate on there now and see white that looks like.
[Andy] You know, I got the three ponds dug,
now we've got to get this culvert finished.
I don't know exactly what Framer's doing,
but this is not the time to be experimenting.
This isn't a science fair, we've got a mine to run.
You think you'll be able to get those to stick together like that?
I hope so. I got no other choice.
It has to be sealed.
So you're just going to heat the steel
-and melt it, and then just slip them together. -[Framer] Yeah.
I'm going to overheat it to, like, 550, and then...
...push it together.
You don't think, even if you wrap the sucker,
put them together tight,
dug a 6-foot hole rock underneath of it,
for drainage if they leaked?
No, I don't, no.
I know I'm right and Andy's wrong.
'Cause I'm tired of going back and fixing everything we do
because we don't do it right the first time.
Every single one of us is here for one reason, to make money,
and that's why I'm trying to do things right,
and we can all go home with some gold in our pocket.
By the time we dig that ditch,
we're going to be already in the sand.
And you know what happens if we get water intrusion into the sand, it's over.
We lose our road.
The problem is if the water gets in the road,
and then it turns everything in the middle of the road to mud.
It won't just dry out on its own.
You got to dig all that mud out, throw it away,
and then put all new materials back in the road.
Let's just get this done real fast.
We'll find a way there.
[Andy] Any time we set up a new water system,
it's always a pain, it never goes as fast as you want it to.
I didn't come up here to dig ditches and put water pipes together.
I came up here to mine, so hopefully we can get it done quick,
keep going forward.
[Framer] Damn it.
[Framer] Let's clean it up. Let's just get this done real fast.
We'll find a way there.
[narrator] With the mine shut down
due to the dirty water in the circuit,
Framer and his crew work on the time-consuming task
of connecting two pipes to lay under the road.
[Framer] Pull this one. Keep it coming.
You got a lot of doubters up here, bud.
I want stuff done right the first time,
and know for the entire rest of the season
that our road isn't going to fail
because we took a shortcut.
-Up on the metal. -Yeah.
[Framer] Last season, I was a new guy,
and I was worried about, you know, stepping on people's toes.
This year, I honestly don't care about that.
Like, I'm going to hurt your feelings, that's fine, I don't care.
But everyone here needs to just stand up and tell Andy and Todd both,
like, "No, we got to take the time and do it right,
so we're not backstepping every single day.
Just hold it on this.
Just put the heat out on the corner.
It'll transfer it in.
Go up, up, up, there you go.
[Todd] I've used those pieces before.
You can just put fabric around it, and you're done with it.
This isn't rocket science, but sometimes...
...you just need to do things and get them done.
I'm tired of waiting.
[Framer] Shove it over.
Oh, no. Hold on.
-[bleep] -[pipe thuds]
Come on, girl, hold together for us.
-Tony. -Hey, Todd.
-How you doing, man? -Good, how are you?
Good. Glad you came. Good to see you.
-What's going on? -A lot of dirty water.
We got to get something to solve this pretty quick.
Okay. I brought the green chemistry you wanted.
-So let's get down and take a look. -[Todd] Okay. Okay.
-We'll do some testing. -I'll, uh, ride with you.
-Okay, sounds good. -[Todd] Okay.
I called Tony from the Dober company
to help me clean up this water.
He has a green product. It's a flocculent.
And it's actually made up from ground up crab shells.
You put it in the water.
It's supposed to pull that sediment out of the water.
But first, we got to test the product
and make sure it's even going to work.
[Tony] We'll see if we can knock it out, uh, on the first try here.
So this is simulating when your water's running,
and you're agitating the water.
Adding the chemistry in just like you would do over at the plant.
Let this stir a little bit.
And then we should...
...get some treatment.
[Todd] Whoa.
Holy cow, that's quick.
I wasn't, uh, expecting to see that that quick.
My gosh, look at it.
Look at that.
[Tony] I think that's your answer right there.
-What do you think, boss? -[Todd] I... I like it.
How fast can we get it?
We've got it on the floor. We could ship it out tomorrow.
[Todd] Okay. Right there, man.
This could change our season right there.
So I got to get my hands on this product ASAP
'cause we got to get our plants up and running,
or we're not going to meet our goals.
-See these white flowers. -[Hunter] Yeah.
Those only come up when they've dug.
-I know. Look at this. Look at this hole. -Yeah.
[Hunter] That was a ditch.
[Jack] The old timers were there.
[vocalizes]
Hunter and I are prospecting Carry Creek.
This is my last season,
and so my time on this land is probably at an end.
It's really important that we find another source of gold
because the last cut's bound to run out,
and I want Hunter to have a long and fruitful future.
So, we could be sitting on the drill holes right here.
[Hunter] Yeah.
[Jack] This creek is just southeast of the Last Cut.
We need to find a spot that has at least three ounces of gold per hundred
to make it worth it to mine.
Ooh, quite a piece of equipment.
[Hunter] Okay, let me get this fired up.
So my dad finally agreed to invest in some new equipment,
so we're out here with the new drone.
The camera on this drone uses lidar to basically 3D-map the terrain.
Usually, you're just taking stabs in the dark, but,
with this you can get a better idea, you know,
what ground has been opened up before.
Has an area already been mined out or not?
Is the ground thawed? How deep is the overburden?
-[Jack] All right. -And so it does give you a better idea
of what you're working with before you go
bringing equipment out here and go to break ground, so...
[Jack] So, that's sending a message here to you.
-We have all those points. -[Jack] Yeah.
And it's basically going to follow this route that it created.
So red on the map means rock and gravel,
and that's what we're looking for.
That means that it might have been mined by old timers,
and there might be gold there.
-Shoot all that imaging. -[Jack] Yeah.
-[Hunter] Create a map of it. -[Jack] Yeah.
[Hunter] And then it'll download all of that,
and then we'll be able to take a look at what's going on.
-So it will fly that path right there. -[Hunter] Flying itself, yep.
[Jack] My god.
[Hunter] So there's the live video,
-and then that's the lidar imaging. -[Jack] Yeah.
So what's that going to tell you?
-[Hunter] So that'll show us, like, it's showing the creek. -[Jack] Yeah.
-[Hunter] It'll show any holes, ditches, -[Jack] Okay.
Hunter's using some pretty cool technology and lidar,
and I'd given anything for it back in the '80s,
but it wasn't around.
Then we got to figure out how to try to get an excavator out here.
If you can get a dump-truck load,
I'll run it through the plant.
-Yeah. -That'll be pretty cool.
-Run it through your plant. -[Jack] Yeah.
If this can get crazy gold,
-[chuckles] I'm all for it. -Right.
As soon as the drone's finished,
we'll head back and take a look at the footage.
[Jack] Okay.
[Framer] Oh, no, hold on.
[bleep]
Come on, girl, hold together for us.
[Dakota] Do it again.
[Andy] He's trying to do a good job,
so I get what he's trying to do,
but they've been on this thing for four hours.
I would have had the pipe done three and a half hours ago.
I would have been using the road and doing the next project.
So, four hours on a pipe, trying to put a pipe in the ditch is...
It's kind of stupid.
[Framer] We'll cool it off, and if it doesn't hold, I guess...
...we put the [bleep] on the ground and we lose our road.
We got in a hurry 'cause Andy tried to [bleep] us.
"Hi, Andy, I see you there looking over my shoulder."
[Todd] Hey, Andy, how's it going down there?"
[Andy] Still waiting on Framer to finish his pipe.
[Todd] Andy, we got to get this done by tomorrow.
[Andy] Okay.
[Andy] Think it'll hold?
[laughing]
[Framer] All it has to do is hold until it lays in that ditch.
It'll go easy when it's in two pieces.
It'll just, uh...
It won't let me sleep at night if it's in two pieces
'cause I don't how long that road will last
if it [bleep] goes in like that.
Saying, look at the beads on that thing. It would have been perfect.
All we had to do was get it together even.
It's looking pretty [bleep],
but hopefully it holds together.
The true test is when we pick it up if it actually stays together.
So, we'll see.
[crew member] On two sides.
-[Andy] So it goes like this. -Just trying to hold it together.
I don't understand. That doesn't make any sense.
[Tater] Okay, here we go.
Got 5 bucks on your weld.
[Framer] Breathe. Just breathe.
Please hold together for me.
Oh.
[bleep]
Hold on a sec. I'll run over here and straighten it up.
Straight down.
Whoa. Whoa.
[Framer] Straight down.
Whoa. Whoa.
[narrator] With the settling ponds complete,
all eyes are on Framer's pipe.
If his weld doesn't hold,
the Hoffman crew can't resume mining.
He's gonna lay that thing down.
[Framer] Right there.
Look at that. We've got one piece of pipe that won't leak.
That weld looks pretty bad,
and I did have my doubts that it wouldn't hold, but,
it held, and that's all that matters, and it's gonna work.
And it's not gonna ruin our road, so we're happy with that.
[Andy] They finally got the pipe in.
Um, I've got no problem with them trying to weld it together.
Problem was it took five hours.
Could have had the thing in there four and a half hours ago.
So I'm glad they got it in. I'm glad it worked.
But there's some things you just can't spend that much time on.
[Framer] All right.
Every one of you [bleep] doubted me.
Is piping gonna hold?
There's a win.
[laughing]
I hate to say it, Andy, but I told you so.
So, I got the imaging from the drone.
-Mmm-hmm. -[Hunter] It was this one here.
-[Jack] Yeah. -[Hunter] The lidar mapping should tell us
where ground's been disturbed,
which can indicate miners have been there before,
meaning there's ground potentially rich with gold.
[Jack] What does that red line mean again?
-[Hunter] That means gravel. -Okay.
And I'm seeing, like, here, it looks like there's gravel out on this point.
-[Jack] Yeah. -I think right here is this.
[Jack] Okay.
-That's where those drills. -[Hunter] Where all those drill holes are.
[Jack] Yeah.
[Hunter] So try to track an excavator in there and see if it's thawed or not.
Oh, okay.
In my experience, if we get gravels up to the surface,
like, we actually saw,
it won't be froze.
-That's been the history. -That's what I'm hoping. Maybe.
It looks like we've found the right spot to pull from Carry Creek,
but it's going to be a little bit tricky to pull a sample out of there.
It's a farther location than the last cut,
and that means we're gonna have to build a road.
It's not impossible,
but if the gold's not at least three ounces a hundred,
it just doesn't make sense.
I think it's worth, uh...
...worth a run.
-I say go for it, man. -Okay.
You getting pretty close over there, big daddy?
[Framer] Let's pump some water.
All right, fire it up. Nice and easy, just an idle.
We got our new ponds up and running.
We're gonna get this flood water out of our cut,
and, uh, hopefully by this evening,
Andy can start hauling some pay.
-Good? -[crew member] Yeah, good.
-We all good? -[Tater] Hours in RPM, sir?
[narrator] To test the new settling-pond system,
the pump will put hundreds of pounds of water pressure on Framer's new piping.
If his bush-fix weld fails,
it's back to square one, building a new culvert,
and that could cost the entire crew a successful gold weigh-in this week.
Yeah.
Tater and the guys are watching the pipes on the existing circuit.
And I'm watching the water on the settling ponds.
[Andy speaking]
Here it is.
Oh, easy. Turn her down. Turn her down, way down.
[Andy speaking]
[Tater] Ten-four, I'm coming.
That's not real good.
Okay, copy that.
How do we have a leak in a pipe that was fine two days ago?
We haven't touched it.
[Tater speaking]
We need to shut her down, Framer.
Go, kill it.
[engine slows]
So it looks like the leak is right...
...here.
I'm going to go ahead and hazard a guess
that it's right there.
This HDPE that runs under the road,
it's gonna cause some erosion issues.
[Framer] And guess whose pipe didn't leak? Mine.
My weld held, but now another pipe is leaking.
This is why it pays to do things right the first time.
[Tater speaking]
[Framer] If we don't fix this leak...
-Start knocking. -...then the road would erode away and fail.
This is the exact problem that I was talking about with Andy on the other pipe.
Dig [bleep] next to it.
[Framer] Same thing would have happened in the middle of the road
when I told him we had to weld it.
And we couldn't just wrap it with a piece of plastic
because we'd be in the same situation over there that we are right now.
[Tater] This is the edge of the pipe.
On the side of it.
[Framer] This is why I told him we got to do things right the first time.
[Hunter] I'm out here in the excavator
because the lidar drone has shown me
some areas over here at Carry Creek
that I think are gonna have some good gold.
So I'm going to poke around and see if that's true or not.
There's some sort of an old miner's cut in here.
Surprisingly, this ground doesn't look frozen at all,
and that's a really good sign.
So, we're gonna try to get 20 yards out of here,
and get it to the Jackrabbit, and run it,
and see if it's gonna be decent or not.
The drone reports show three ounces a hundred down in here.
So, we'll see if that's really true or not.
With it being my grandpa's last season,
I feel a responsibility to do everything I can to figure out our next move,
and make sure that we have pay till the end so we can get to our goal.
So I'm going to load this pay up on the rock truck,
haul it back to camp, and hopefully save the season.
I'd put rock over this corner,
and then the rest of it sand burn.
The pipes are fixed, and we're ready to divert the last cut runoff
to the settling ponds.
And the final step is to introduce the flocculent.
All right, let's hook this thing up and get it rolling.
Todd just had the flocculent rush-delivered to the mine.
So the flocculent comes in these totes.
So basically, by injecting the flocculent right here at the pump,
the flocculent's working as it goes up this pipe and into the first pond.
It's actually mixing all the way up there,
so when it drops in there,
the flocculent actually collects on all the soil and the sediment in the water,
and it pulls it and holds it on the bottom,
and cleans it out as best as we can
and then goes right into our circuit.
So we got our, uh, flocculent pumping in here.
You can see it flowing through.
We're actually, uh, treating water right now.
And, uh, we're really playing catchup now.
We've got a huge goal we're trying to hit for Jack.
It's 3,000, and, uh,
we're set back quite a ways now,
so we're gonna really kick it into high gear,
try and do some catchup and get ready to find some gold.
[Hunter] I'm hauling a new sample from Carry Creek,
and I'm hoping that I can, uh, you know,
find a place where we can start pulling pay and that's gonna pay out.
A lot of these areas have been mined out,
and it's hard to know exactly if you're on the pay layer or not.
So, even with the lidar drone and everything,
doesn't mean that we're guaranteed to find gold.
But I'm gonna bring this test up to Jack's plant
and see if Carry Creek has something better for us.
Basically, my family's mining legacy is hanging in the balance,
and if this is supposed to be the year that we're gonna be breaking records
and ending my grandpa's last season on a win,
and there's a little bit of weight on my shoulders right now,
but I'm hoping that this is gonna be the load that kind of sets us up.
Well...
...here it is, from Carry Creek.
-See what it has in it. -[Jack] Yeah.
-We'll go ahead and run it. -Yeah. Okay.
All right, kid, let's fire up the water pumps.
So we're gonna go ahead and fire up the pumps,
check out the water, see how clean it is,
If we can get it any bit cleaner, we can catch more gold.
Bring the water up on the furrow.
[Tater] Ten-four.
[Framer] All right, Black Pearl's up and running.
Yeah, you know, at first, looks a little bit dirty,
but actually it's cleaning up.
We've been able to knock a lot of the solids out of there
with this, uh, flocking.
-[Todd] If you feel that there's no sediment in there. -[Framer] Oh, yeah.
-[Todd] It's clean. That's good water. -[Framer] Way better.
-Way better. -You can actually feel when it's too dirty.
It actually gets almost slimy.
Yeah, it looks dirty, but you put your hand in there,
and look, it's clean.
[Todd] What we've done is we've added some settling ponds over here,
and added in some more flocking.
We're feeling our water,
and it's actually feel, not by look.
So this here is nice and clean water.
All right. Look at that. Looks good.
Water going down.
Right now we're running some dirt from Carry Creek through Jack's plant.
You know, we'll see if Carry Creek is the place to be or not.
[Jack] You know, look at that water. That's plenty of water.
-[crew member] Looks about... Yeah, it looks right. -Yeah.
[Hunter] We know there's gold in the ground,
um, and this is kind of us just doing more of a bulk test
through Jack's plant.
You know, get some actual yardage through it,
and then, uh, we'll pull the box and see what it is.
-What do you think? -[Jack] That rock is coming off really clean.
[Hunter] Yeah, look at it.
Most of the... a small shaker deck
can only handle, you know, so many yards per hour.
And so, you're not gonna break any records volume-wise with it, but,
you know, you are able to... to run a lot more dirt than you would be
with, you know, a gold pan, or a sluice box, or anything like that.
And so, uh, we'll try to get 20 yards through it.
And then pull the box, and you'll kind of get an idea
of, uh, you know, what you'd be looking like
if you were to run this on... on a big plant all day. So...
-How's the sluice look? -[Jack] The sluice is looking good.
You running both of them still?
-[Jack] No, one. -[Hunter] Just one.
[Jack] We're gonna find out if there's gold in it.
I think there is.
Don't know how much.
Just go through the swamp.
Put it right here.
[Hunter] We're about to do our first pull on the Jackrabbit
from Carry Creek.
It's been worked by old timers before.
Using a lidar drone, I could see they did some sort of an old cut.
So, either that's gonna work in our favor, or it's not.
So we're gonna pull the mats from the Jackrabbit, get it all cleaned up.
Get all the gold off of that one.
[chuckles]
[Hunter] If this gold is good,
the next task would be figuring out
how we're gonna get the pay out of there.
[Jack] Basically, Hunter,
-now if Carry Creek is, uh, is our hope right now. -[Hunter] Yeah.
[Jack] You know and I know that in the past,
wherever we saw where miners had been, there was gold.
-You know, they didn't have the time to mess around, so... -Yeah.
-I'm open, bud. -[Hunter] Me too.
-Hopefully, this is better than half an ounce a hundred. -[Jack] Yeah. Yeah.
-I think so. -It's gonna have to be a lot better
for it to be worth it for us to go down in there.
So, we'll see.
I mean, your plant's working good at least.
-[Jack] Yeah. -[Hunter] We got that just try to find some gold, so...
Well, let's get it up to the gold room, see what we got, huh?
-[Hunter] Okay. -All right.
Let's go, guys.
[Todd] When you're ready let me know. I'll switch you out.
[narrator] With clean water flowing through the circuit,
Todd and his team are running Lost Cut pay through both plants
at full capacity.
[Todd] We're back up and running.
Everything seems to be working okay.
The good part about this mine is it is rich.
But you know what, we're probably
finding out why the gold's still here, 'cause it's difficult.
So if we can just handle some of this water management issues
and all the other things that we're dealing with,
and we keep our eye on everything,
we can hit our goals.
Three thousand ounces is within reach.
Now it's about us.
It's ours to lose right here.
So, can we do it? Yeah.
Is there a good chance of us not doing it? Absolutely.
So here we go.
He was the type of guy in a cowboy hat
who could ride a horse backwards blindfolded.
[laughing]
And a hundred years later, you come out with a marshmallow tank.
[Hunter] A marshmallow tank?
-[laughs] Yeah, dude. -Yeah.
You think we can, um, spruce it up a bit?
[man] No.
-I give them props for making it out here, though. -Yeah.
[man] Looks like they gave up on a dream
[narrator] After several days of work reengineering their water-settling circuit,
the crew braces for the only true measure of success...
...results of their weekly gold weigh-in.
It's got a lot of gold in it.
[grunts]
Some chunkies in there.
Oh, dang, there's a lot of gold in that.
[Mike] I like the pull so far.
It's shining back like my smile.
[Todd] The lost cut is rich with gold,
but both plants have been down most of the week,
so I don't want to get overconfident.
We're gonna find out soon enough
if all of our hard work is gonna pay off.
[Jack] This is a test from Carry Creek.
And it's the first material out of my plant.
That's pretty cool.
Now, to see gold coming out.
There... There is gold here.
It might be pretty good, but we'll only know after we weigh it.
Hopefully, it's good.
I'm hoping that this weigh-in brings us between 50 and 70 ounces of gold.
If we do better, then, hey, we gonna be happy.
Framer, so how's the water going?
-I mean, no problems keeping it clean. -[Todd] Yeah.
So we should have clean water here
-for the rest of the season. -Good.
Hunter, tell us what you've been doing.
Well, me and Jack went out over to Carry Creek,
and ran the drone, and found a place that looks like,
you know, old timers, or somebody at one point was doing some sort of cut.
Mmm.
So, we ran 20 yards through the Jackrabbit.
We'll see what it is.
Dad, your plant's still going. Still running.
Yeah, it's going.
Hunter is absolutely doing really great with it.
A little temperamental, but he's caught onto it,
and it's working fine.
He's temperamental, or the plant?
-[Jack] No, no, no, the plant is, you know. -[Todd] Oh, okay.
-[laughing] -[Jack] Hunter's doing a great job.
-Keep looking, and we're gonna find out right now, huh? -[Jack] Yeah.
How much gold did we get out of that?
Well, this is it.
I can't tell you exactly, but we'll find out here.
-You ready? -Yeah.
-0.2. -[Todd] 0.2.
[Hunter] So, like, an ounce a hundred.
-[Jack] Yeah. No. -And it's not an easy spot to get to.
-So probably not worth, uh, investigating anymore. -No.
If it was insane gold, I'd say maybe we give it a shot,
-but I don't think that's gonna carry us home, so... -[Todd] Yeah.
You know, Hunter, so far, you've proved a point.
There is gold out there,
-but it's just not quite what we want yet. -No.
It's really frustrating.
I was really hoping that the dirt from Carry Creek
was gonna pay out more than an ounce a hundred.
I was really hoping that the lidar drone was gonna pay off.
But I know there is some really rich spots on this property.
It's just a matter of finding them.
All right, let's get to the big daddy.
I see a bottle down here.
Well... [chuckles]
Yeah, it's good.
[Todd] Ooh, you're a little shaky when you're carrying that.
It's heavy. It's heavy.
-How heavy? -[Jack] All right.
-Oh, pretty good. -Oh.
[Todd] So this gold is from the lost cut.
It was a real struggle.
We finally got the dirt out of the water
from our new settling-pond system.
So I'm hoping for some good results.
-Okay. Somebody call it out. -[Jack] Okay.
-There's 10. There's 20. -[Todd] Twenty.
[Jack] Fifty. Sixty.
Seventy.
Eighty.
Ninety.
-Hundred. -[Hunter] Dude, this is insane.
[Todd] We're in triple digits again, guys.
-I like it. -This is awesome.
[Jack] Twelve, 113.
119. 120.
-127. 128. -128.
129. 130.2.
-[Todd] Wow. -130.
-That's a big one. -Yeah.
-Way to go. -[Jack] That is good.
-Way to go, everybody. -[crew member] It's a good week.
-So what are we at? Let's, uh, the total. -The total, yeah.
We're at 445.6 total.
-[Todd] Whoo. -[Jack] Great.
I see the light at the end of the tunnel, or is that the train?
It might be a train coming the other way.
I know. That's what I'm worried about.
[narrator] With a 130-ounce haul
from both the Holy Roller and the Black Pearl,
the Hoffman's now need 2,587 more ounces
to hit their 3,033-ounce goal.
[Todd] Thanks, guys, for your hard work this week.
Now we got a lot of catching up to do to hit this goal.
Let's keep it up. We're gonna hit it.
That was a pretty good haul this week for how long we were down.
But, uh, we're definitely a long ways from... from that 3,033-ounce goal.
I want this season to end in a win,
not only just for my dad,
but for all of us.
Let's just hope we can pull this off.
You know what? It's the most unity we've ever had this year.
-Mmm-hmm. -I think it's been most unity we've ever had.
-[Jim] Yeah. Amen. -Let's keep it up, huh?
[Jack] Yeah.