[wind blowing]
[Todd] Ooh. It's getting real cold.
-[blows] -[narrator] As winter tightens its grip
on the Mammoth Valley mine...
The winter is really starting to set in.
[Todd] The season could end pretty quickly.
[narrator] ...time is running out for the Hoffman crew
to hit their 1,023-ounce goal.
Let's try to get as much gold as we can.
[on comms] Keep going, guys.
-[air hissing] -[Dakota speaking]
[Sterling] Oh, [bleep]!
[narrator] But when disaster strikes...
-[air hissing] -[Todd on comms] What's going on down there?
The Black Pearl motor caught on fire.
[Todd exhales]
[Tater] Whoa!
[narrator] ...veteran miner Jack Hoffman...
If we raise the hopper,
we can double the dirt coming out of this one.
[narrator] ...must re-engineer his test plants.
[Sparky] All right, we're lit up.
[narrator] And as mine boss Todd orders round the clock mining...
[Todd speaking]
[narrator] ...his crew asks if risks to man and machine...
[Hunter] I've run a night shift before on this mine,
and it's hard, you can't see.
-[thuds] -Oh, [bleep]!
[narrator] ...are worth the gold they're struggling to put in their pockets.
Let's hope it all pays off.
[Todd] Ooh! It's getting real cold.
Alaska's weather changes are drastically different
than the lower 48.
Quite literally, you can look like spring one week
and then look like autumn the next,
and we're heading towards a cold front.
It's getting pretty mean, like it'll get to the point
where you won't be able to feel your hands in the morning.
That means, uh, possibly our season could end pretty quickly.
[cranes calling]
Once you start seeing the Sandhill cranes,
then you've got about 10 days and you're done. Done sluicing.
You know, it's starting to get cold.
The thunder is starting to change.
Color's different.
My plan is just to keep churning through this plateau pay dirt,
put as much through the plant as I can.
This is when guys start
-itching to go home. -[blows]
[exhales deeply]
But if we could get a big win this week,
maybe even triple digits in this plant, oh, man,
that would put a lot of wind back in everybody's sails.
[Hunter] We're just trying to make the most of the situation we're in.
It's getting real cold.
You're waking up in the morning.
Everything's iced up.
We got really lucky that we found the plateau.
[narrator] After the state of Alaska shut down their open-cut mine,
Hunter discovered decades-old pay dirt at the plateau,
several miles from their operation.
[Hunter] This all looks like thawed pay.
This is what we're looking for.
It's just not in the most convenient spot.
[narrator] For the Hoffman's,
the last best hope for hitting their 1,023-ounce gold,
and rewarding the crew with a gold bonus,
means racing the plateau pay dirt
back to the Holy Roller and Black Pearl wash plants
before the equipment freezes.
[Hunter] I'm hoping that, you know,
it pays off because we're out of time,
and otherwise it's just another season where we come up short.
And I don't want that.
Give me, um, ten shots in the U-joint,
ten shots in the slip joint
-on the whole drive line. Okay? -Okay.
Just start from one end and go all the way forward.
Don't skip around or you'll miss some.
-Yeah, I'll start right here and work back. -Yep.
We're winterizing our heavy equipment today.
It's important because when it gets really, really, really cold,
the fluids in this machine will expand and break stuff.
So we want to make sure that
it's all taken care of before winter hits.
[whirring]
Nice.
So we're just making sure that they're hit with grease before it freezes.
That's part of the winterization process.
[Sparky] Right now I'm draining the water separator.
This dirty diesel that would filter out the water...
We're just gonna dispose of it.
Right now we're winterizing the rock trucks
'cause it's a fatal winter.
That will destroy every piece of equipment if you don't do it right.
Dude, it's freezing.
My hands are like, numb.
This is a testament to our audacious youth. So...
There you have it.
Well, we're getting there.
[Sparky] Yeah. This is it, man.
Your last season.
-[Jack] Well, yeah, you know... -Let's be real.
You know how it is.
Just gotta...
Just gotta keep plugging along and do what you can, you know?
Hey, man, you know what? These little setbacks...
-[Jack] Yeah. -...only riles us up
for bigger comebacks.
[Todd on comms] Let's get back to it, boys.
[wind blowing]
Since the, uh, Lost Cut ran out,
we just had to run this, uh, pay from the plateau.
This could be our last shot right now.
The only pay dirt we have. So hopefully it's packed.
Me and the guys have been pushing ourselves really hard
the last few weeks.
I'm on board. I think everybody's on board.
I really hope we have a big weigh in
'cause if it's bad, I want to go home and see my dog.
[machines whirring]
[crackling]
[Dakota speaking]
[Sterling speaking]
[Dakota speaking]
[Sterling] Oh, [bleep]!
Oh, [bleep]!
[bleep]
[on comms] Shut it down.
[bleep]
[coughs]
[Dakota] Holy [bleep]!
-[comms beep] -[Dakota] Tater. Tater. You got a copy?
[Tater on comms] Yeah, go ahead.
[Dakota] Hey, we need you to come take a look at the Black Pearl.
It's on fire.
[Tater] 10-4.
[Sparky] I see a little bit of smoke.
Dude, what did Sterling do?
I just heard over the radio
that the Black Pearl is on fire.
I don't know exactly what that means
or what the damage is, but we're gonna go check it out.
What do you guys got going on?
The motor is on fire when I came over here.
Well, that's not good.
Nice work putting it out.
What's going on?
The, uh, motor caught on fire while we were running.
-What? -Yeah.
[Hunter] Well, what's burnt on it and how do we fix it?
[Tater] It ain't, uh...
Its wiring's burnt, hoses are burnt.
[Hunter] Hey, uh, Dad, you got a copy on here?
[Todd on comms] Hey, what's going on down there?
The Black Pearl motor caught on fire.
[Todd] I'll be right down.
Hopefully, everything's okay,
but maybe something's seized up. I don't know.
I don't really need another problem at this point.
Oh, yeah.
It's definitely got hot. I see smoke.
Tater. How bad is it?
[Tater] It's not good.
It got hot. It's been on fire.
[whistles] Still, you can still feel it.
-[Tater] Yeah. -[Todd] Holy cow.
-Well, some of this stuff looks okay. -[Tater] Yeah.
Yeah, some of it does. We've got to figure out why
-it caught fire. -Could be the head. You think it got hot and...
-[Tater] Yeah. Yeah. -...warped the head or...
It's hard to determine till I take it apart.
It obviously got some kind of a leak somewhere,
-and it caught that on fire. -[Tater] Mm-hmm.
Maybe something squirted up here on the turbo. I don't know.
It looks like some oil or something was on it. But...
[groans and bleeps]
What are we looking at here?
Uh, I won't know until we take it apart.
[Todd] To say that this summer's
one of the hardest summers
of my life is an understatement.
It's been very, very difficult.
With all the things we had, and we feel like
we're just fighting for our life, and...
without the Black Pearl we're definitely gonna even have
a hard time getting even to 1,000 ounces.
I'll tell you what.
Fiddle with it. Let's try to clean this up.
Fiddle with it and then give me a... Give me a word back.
-Dig into it. -[Tater] Okay.
Right now, we need both plants more than ever.
We're trying to do a final push, and...
we're just trying to get out of here in one piece
and, uh, trying to beat what we did last year.
And so, you know,
it's another thing taking the wind out of our sails.
All right.
[Sterling] Good job, bro.
[Todd] Without the Black Pearl,
beating, last year's total
is gonna be pretty much impossible.
So hopefully Tater can get this motor fixed.
If he can't think of something,
these guys are probably gonna pull out and head home.
[wind blowing]
[Tater] So at this point, the Black Pearl's dead.
We just had a motor fire on it.
Now I'm taking a closer inspection of the damage
and hoping I can fix it
so it's not done for the season.
Oh, [bleep].
I notice there's a bunch of electronics that are burned up.
I can work some miracles, but not this one.
There's no coming back from that.
[on comms] Guys, uh, Black Pearl is down for the season.
[exhales]
[Hunter] As if we haven't had enough issues.
We have a catastrophic breakdown on the Black Pearl.
And, uh, I don't know what exactly is going on.
Some sort of an oil leak. Something caused a fire.
And I don't know how long it was burning, but...
this might be the end of the Black Pearl for this season.
[Todd] This is not good.
[Todd exhales deeply]
Hey. Black Pearl's finished.
Done. There's no time to get the parts.
She's cooked.
So what happened to it?
The motor fried.
-[Jim] Like, seized up? -[Todd] Got hot.
Who knows? Who knows what damage that did.
I can't believe this happened right now. I mean,
we've been tested over and over,
but I don't wanna give up.
I wanna figure out something.
I do, kind of, have a plan forming
and hopefully, you know, it works out.
The only thing we could do
is get the Jack Rabbit up.
But as of right now, it needs to put more yardage through it.
How many yards an hour were you running?
We're running it really slow, about ten yards.
What the Black Pearl and what the Holy Roller make,
the Jack Rabbit can't do that.
How did this get here?
[Todd] We shifted up, man.
The Jack Rabbit is a small wash plant
that my dad built on his own at home.
So far this season, we've only been using it for testing purposes.
We've been running the dirt that Hunter finds out there on the claim.
It wasn't built to be used as a primary wash plant,
but with the Black Pearl down,
this is what we need out of it. We need production.
It's our only option right now.
I really need a big weigh-in this week.
You know what? We're gonna throw everything we got at it
to try to make this happen.
Crank it up as high as it'll go.
-Whatever it'll take. -[Jack] Yeah.
[Todd] I'm gonna need your plan.
I never thought I'd say it, but we're gonna need it.
Whoo! Yeah.
Okay.
[Todd] It's times like this where you just really have to do everything you can
so that you can come home, whether you win or lose.
But at least you have done everything possible
that you could to try to make it a win for everybody.
So if I gotta run Jack's little plant full-time, then we're gonna do it.
[Jack] Okay. We can't be the Pearl,
but I know it's not steep enough,
the angle for the hawk. That's number one.
Number two is I can speed up the... the shaker plant motor,
get a little bigger hop, you know,
so material will move faster.
If we don't have a Black Pearl,
we still have to run material.
Now, it... it comes down...
Boils right down to this plant.
If we raise the hopper,
we can, uh, probably double
dirt coming out of this one.
-Okay. -All right.
-Let's do it. -Sounds good.
[narrator] To process more pay dirt through the Jack Rabbit,
the crew plans to elevate the wash plants hopper by 30 degrees.
But moving the hopper is risky,
as it can easily collide with the plant
and cause major damage.
Okay. We're good to go.
[Hunter on comms] All right. Coming up.
[narrator] If that happens, the team will only have the Holy Roller
to get them through the rest of this season.
I don't have any more boom up,
so we have to go real short with it or do something.
I'd have to track farther away and then try to lift it.
[Todd on comms] All right.
-[Hunter] Okay. Hold that. Hold that. -[Tater] Whoa!
-[Hunter] Hold that. -[Tater] Easy.
[Hunter] Stick out. There you go. Out now.
-Cool. -All right!
[Jim] Well, that probably is it.
How are we looking, Jack?
-That's pretty damn good right there. -Is that where you want it?
-Yeah. Yeah. -[Sparky] Yeah?
[Jack] Okay. There's no pinch places here.
So there is right here.
-[man] Yep. -So I would zip tie this to that.
-That down here and you're done there. -[man] Okay.
[Hudson] When I saw my grandpa making this plant, uh, back home,
I thought it was cool, but I didn't really think we would be using it,
uh, any much more than just a test plant.
For us to help him run a plant that
he made for his last season, it means a lot.
-Want me to hold it right here? -[Jack bleeps]
Oh, God. Oh, God!
[Jack groaning and inhaling]
[Hudson] All right, let's just... Let's not do anything.
[Jack] Yeah. No, just get it on now.
Get it over that hook. There we go.
Good. Okay.
[bleeping and groaning]
[exhales]
[groans]
[exhales deeply]
-[Hudson] You all right? -[Jack exhales]
Yeah.
[exhales]
[Hudson] Wanna just go back and lay down?
[Jack] No, uh, no. I'm okay right now.
[Hudson] It's not worth hurting yourself over this.
-We can do it. -[Jack exclaims]
[Jack] God. I'm 78 years old.
Not many people were alive at 78.
But I'm here and I'm not...
gonna quit on this plant.
All right. Looks good. Let's give it a try.
[Jack] I'll start the genny.
We're firing it up!
I think it's gonna turn out all right, I hope.
[machines whirring]
This is how you speed it up,
and this is how you slow it down.
This is slow.
-This is a little faster. -[machines whirring faster]
Faster it's going,
faster it'll move the rocks along,
jumping on this conveyor belt.
Hey, Thurb, we're going to fire up the water,
and, uh, let's bring it up
another 100 rpm from where we started.
Hey, there, we're at, uh, 1200 rpm.
[Randy] All right, go ahead and run it up.
Just give her all she's got.
All right. See if the dirt's coming in.
Okay, Hunter, go ahead and start feeding it.
Here we go. First bucket of the plateau...
after we get the modifications on the Jack Rabbit,
so we'll see if it works.
Pretty good. Looks perfect.
Rocks are coming off clean.
Shaker duct seems like it's working good.
I think we actually...
made some major improvements to this thing.
[Hudson] Everything looks good so far.
We cranked everything up and...
now we're really moving
about twice as much dirt now.
Should be able to run 375 yards an hour on this bad boy.
[Jack] It really is exciting to see Jack Rabbit run, and, uh...
it worked pretty darn good
for, you know, what I expected.
[Todd] How's the plateau dirt running?
The dirt is running good.
-It's the... the haul that's killing us. -[Todd] Yeah.
It's tough to keep up the plant, but...
I mean, we don't have any other dirt at the moment.
So, I mean, it's just... it's just a grind.
Running out of time is the main thing,
and it's a long haul.
But what if we go ahead and just...
bite the bullet and run at night?
Maybe have the young guys run a night.
Maybe us jump in there, run in the day.
So you wanna haul dirt at night is what you're saying?
Yeah. We're gonna have to haul dirt at night.
If we run 24/7, we still should be okay for a good weigh-in.
I know it's not ideal, but...
I mean, we've run lots of night shifts,
but we don't... we don't truck at night.
-Okay. -Because, I mean, they can't see.
They can see what's in front of them,
but they can't see alongside, behind them, and...
[Todd] We're gonna have to.
We're just gonna have to be careful and drive.
You've got lights, you've got backup cameras. You know?
Have a guy out there loading, and we're just gonna truck at night.
I mean, we've tried it before and done it before.
We've always stopped it because it just got too dangerous.
But, I mean, at this point in the season,
I guess we don't have a lot of choice.
I'll tell the guys we're gonna swap it up.
You and I are gonna probably have to help out
-during the day. -[Todd] Yep.
And running some plants, and hopefully these guys...
can keep it going. You know?
If something happens...
we're done. Let's pull the plug.
-Just make sure it's safe, that's all. -Yep. Okay. Yeah.
[Tater] So we're starting to see the effects of winter
closing in.
We keep seeing geese and sandhill cranes flying overhead,
which means it's getting colder.
Uh, the winter's really starting to set in,
and this is where it gets tough, really tough.
Anytime you do anything, you're fighting the weather.
[Todd] I'm shooting for a big weigh in this week,
so we're gonna pull out all the stops.
So we got Jack's plant ready to run full time.
We have the young guys prepping to run the night shift.
And then, me and the older guys,
we're going to run the day shift.
It's going to be hard, but you know what?
It might be worth it if we can get a mound of gold
on that scale at the end of the week.
[Sparky sighs] Here we go, man.
-[Dakota] Yep. -[Sparky] Yeah.
[Dakota] I've never started this, have you?
[device cranking]
[Sparky] Well, we can figure it out.
Dude...
It could be perfect for me.
I've ran the night shift before.
There is safety concerns.
It can be dangerous, but this is gonna be worth it
because it can literally put gold in my pocket.
-All right, we're lit up. -[Dakota] Here we go.
We're ready for the night shift.
[Dakota] All right, let's do it.
-All right, man. -[Dakota] See you, dawg.
[Sparky] In hopes that we can reach our 1,023-ounce goal,
we got to run through the night.
It's the only way we're gonna get to that goal.
I'm really hoping that this plateau dirt that we're running is rich.
We tested it, but you really never know
how good it is until you run it.
If this plateau dirt doesn't pay off,
I may have to go back and do bounce houses.
[Hunter] This is our first night doing night shift.
I'm on the Jack Rabbit.
We got the rest of the boys on the Holy Roller.
Really just trying to set a good pace.
Keep an eye on what we can, even though it's dark
and, uh, the goal is to make it through the night
without any breakdowns or any issues.
So then we can get some more gold out of here
before we get froze out, so...
We're running some of this pay from the plateau,
and I'm hoping when we shut down,
we have some good gold in the box,
but right now, it's our only option.
[Sterling speaking on radio]
[Hudson on radio] Yeah, what's up?
I'm being safe as I can, but can't see that good.
How are you doing?
Straight back, Toby.
Keep going. Little to your right. Little to your right.
Yeah, right there. Go ahead, dump it.
[Sparky sighs] You know, this night shift isn't for everybody,
and I've ran night shift before on this mine.
It's not my favorite.
It's hard. You can't see, it gets tiring, it gets boring.
I get cross-eyed.
I'm barely keeping my eyes open right now.
It's been a tough season, especially for Todd.
He's got a lot on the table.
He's pushing for more gold in the box,
and the least I can do is just work my ass off for him
so we reach our goal.
Plus, I wanna make sure I leave here
with some serious gold in my pocket.
[man groans]
-[Tater] How's it going? -Yeah, here you go, dude.
[Tater] All right, man.
[Sterling] I'm beat.
[Andy] How'd it go?
[Dakota] Like clockwork.
-Like clockwork? -Always.
Always does for you. Tomorrow night.
-[Jack] Hey. How'd it go? -What's up?
[Jack] Well, pretty good?
[Hunter] The plant's running good.
Right now, everybody's tapped out,
and so I don't know how many more nights we can do this,
but it's what we've got to do right now.
Night, boys.
Keep going, guys. Good job.
It's been a tough season.
In my own way, I'm just trying to make my dad's dreams stay alive.
You know, when you have a good dad like I've had,
you just want to honor him the best you can.
And, you know, even though it's been tough,
this this whole season has been really hard on me.
So I'm not in a good place. But you know what?
I'll do everything I can to finish strong for my dad.
[Jack] You know, I built this plant at home
and nobody expected the little Jack Rabbit
to do as well as it's doing.
But I think it might make us get to our gold.
You know, I can't say what it means to me
to come through for this group of guys.
Todd's had a really rough season,
and I'm really proud of him that he's, uh, stuck with it
and he's led the guys
and he has to step up the plate, hit a home run.
You got to go through it to be a winner.
Well, did you get some sleep?
-Yeah. Yeah, I'm ready to go. -[Jack] Yeah?
-All right. See you then. -[Hunter] Slow and steady.
All right.
-[Sparky] What's up, man? -[Todd] You ready for a...
Ready for another all-nighter?
I can go all day. I can go all night, old man.
All right, buddy. I love you, man.
Have a good one. Be careful.
[Sparky] All right, dude. [grunts]
How you holding up, boys?
I'm doing okay. It's kind of a long haul, and my eyeballs hurt.
[Dakota on radio] All right, just step it up.
Just gotta go all night.
I thought taking care of my daughter when she was a newborn was rough,
but this is a whole new level of sleep deprivation.
[Sterling] I really hope we have a big, you know, gold weigh in this week.
I think we could all use the money.
And, you know, the only way to do that
is to, you know, push through the night.
Shout out to Bagels, my dog.
Uh, hopefully, when I get home,
we can take this gold, buy a house with a big yard.
-[crashes] -[Sparky] Oh, [bleep]
Sparky, are you good?
[on radio] Sparky, what just happened?
-[crashes] -[Sparky] Oh, [bleep]
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Sparky, are you good? What's happened?
I hit the back of the frickin' hopper, dude.
I just hit the back of the hopper.
I really didn't mean to.
I'm super tired.
I'm exhausted, like, I just, I really messed up.
I really did.
All right, just be careful, dude. Just go slow.
Just go easy as we can.
[Sparky groans] The slower we go, the more sleepy I get, dude.
I don't think this night shift's for me, dude.
[Dakota on radio] All right.
I know that we're all striving for the same goal.
But you know what?
I think this is infringing on our safety,
and I think that we should look at the bigger picture.
[on radio] Man, this is not good.
[Dakota] All right. We'll figure something out.
[radio beeps]
Not so good.
Why not so good?
The guys are saying it's a long haul.
Can't really see, having trouble staying awake.
-It's dark. -[Dakota] I know.
And then, part way through the shift,
Sparky hit the hopper.
He hit the plant?
Can't be hitting the plant.
-[Dakota speaking] -Or wrecking stuff.
That's why I don't like night shift.
All right. Well, we'll get her going, okay?
-[sighs] -[Todd] How you doing?
-Not good, dude. -Really? Why?
-Uh, I hit... I hit the frickin' hopper, dude. -No way.
-[Sparky] All right. -[Todd] Go get some rest.
[Sparky] Thanks, man.
[Todd] I was hoping for a big weigh in for the guys,
but this isn't the way to keep the morale up.
Their safety is more important than anything else.
So we're going to have a meeting after we run today,
and we're going to decide if we want to continue these night shifts.
Well, what are you guys thinkin', night crew?
We're having some issues.
I hate it.
I'm super tired every day,
and it's, like, getting dangerous, you know?
We need sleep. Everybody needs to sleep more.
I think they've been working over 110 hours a week.
And they get rewarded by workin' nights now.
I know none of us want to do it.
And we're in a tight spot. We need to get more gold.
But...
I think there's some diminishing returns at a certain point.
If we're gonna break something
or someone's gonna make a huge issue
and drive a truck into a pond or something, it's not really worth it.
I definitely don't want anybody to get hurt.
I think it's coming down to a safety issue,
and when you can't see, it becomes a problem.
[Sparky] Well, it's just not worth it either,
'cause that's your investment.
And I just hit it last night, the back of the hopper.
Something else, you know, worse could have happened.
I'm cross-eyed and it's dark
and I just don't want to do it.
I was just trying to think outside the box
and try to get as much gold as we can,
and probably was not a good idea.
We're already tired.
Things are already going wrong.
Let's be honest. This season... [chuckles]
You know, I'm still trying to find the good in it,
and I'm looking for the good, and, um...
In my opinion, the only good coming out of this season is
that we're all still here. We're all still a team.
And the, you know,
if this is just ruining the experience,
it's not worth it.
So you guys vote.
You tell me.
-My vote is we don't do the night shift. -[Todd] Nick?
I agree.
Yeah. I don't wanna do it anymore.
I would call off the night shift.
I think we need to end night shift.
Um...
You know, we don't want to end this season
with any more things going wrong, in my opinion.
So, you know, health as first priority
and just try to leave here...
Um, with no more issues.
We'll cancel night shift.
Hopefully, we'll get our...
Get a little bit of our joy back.
That's... That's tough.
Sorry about that. Probably not a great idea right now,
but I want the best for this little company,
and I want the best for you guys,
and I want you guys to get some rest.
I want you guys to smile, I want you guys to hang out,
and let's try to make some good memories on the way out of here.
And, uh, you know, we'll live to fight again another day
and try to finish the season strong.
You guys go get some rest.
Will do.
Especially you, Sparky.
I knew I needed a big weigh in this week.
Otherwise, I was risking losing all the guys.
I'm running the new plateau pay dirt,
and you know what?
It's unproven pay dirt,
and I might have pushed the guys a little too hard.
But I want to show the guys
that their efforts can pay off in gold.
[Hunter] Okay, can we go to bed now?
What do you think about all this winterization, like, what...
Do you have any idea what's going on?
[Nick] No idea. I just know I'm just here to make everybody's job easier
and pull as much weight as I can.
[Sparky] I'm, like, actually surprised how well you're doing.
[Nick chuckles] That's all you, buddy.
[Sparky] You're doing better than what I did my first year of mining.
It's, like, my first time up in Alaska, like,
out... going out of the state,
out of Oregon, you know, 'cause, like, I've been in Oregon
for my entire life, so...
Well, you know where I get my inspiration from, buddy.
-All you, my man. -[Sparky] Shoot, man.
It's like an opportunity that I've never had before.
So I'm just absorbing it as much as I can
and taking whatever anyone can give me.
-And I'm having a blast. -Little dude, I love you.
You know, you're doing great.
I'm proud of what you're doing.
Couldn't have done it without you.
Shut up.
-[Nick laughing] -Just kidding.
-Just kidding. I love you. -Come here.
[Todd] I know the guys are down and tired,
but we did still get three full days in
running the Holy Roller and the Jack Rabbit.
I have a feeling we're gonna see some big gold this week.
And if we don't get gold,
some of these guys are gonna just go home.
[Sparky] All right, Nick, get on the other side.
-Right here? -[Sparky] Yeah.
You know, this...
That night running, dude, I don't like 'em.
-Ah. -It's really not my favorite choice.
But unfortunately, it's what we had to do and hopefully it's, uh...
Our hard efforts was actually worth it
and shows up in the box.
Man, I'm already pretty beat and exhausted.
I can feel it in my bones.
Winter's right around the corner.
-Okay, well... -[Nick grunts]
But this week's weigh in hopefully will reflect
all our hard work we've put in.
So what do you think? You seeing much in here?
That looks pretty good.
It's hard to tell, I mean, until you get it up there and start running it.
Yeah. You shouldn't be able to see it if the box is working right.
it should be in the hydraulics.
-So... -[Dakota] Yeah.
...we'll just get what we can get out of this
and run as much dirt as we can.
So, let's get it to Jack and Thurber and let's see what we get, uh,
we get out of this.
Yeah, I hope we're getting good gold.
Okay. Finish it up, guys. Thank you.
Thanks, man.
[Todd] All right, let's get started.
As you know, it's getting cold.
So we don't know how long we have.
Everything could close in on us right now.
Who knows when this season can end with this weather?
If it got 15 degrees colder,
-probably done, so... -[Sparky] Yeah.
[Todd] All right.
You know, the Black Pearl situation, uh...
was really regrettable. Sorry about that.
Me and Hunter spent a lot of hours welding,
grinding just our blood, sweat and tears into this plant.
And we trained the guys right, but it's out of our control.
I will say it's really bad timing.
Same as last year,
it's, like, you know, right when you want it to run its best,
we have a catastrophic breakdown.
So that's the way it is.
It seems like that's how it goes up here.
So Holy Roller, and then your little guy,
-Jack Rabbit. -[Jack chuckling]
And, uh, we're going to run 'em both to the end.
See what we can... Come out of these things.
That's why I had you guys, you know, run the night shift.
I know it was going to be risky.
You know, it doesn't really matter what skill level you have in mining.
It's, like, night shift is a different animal.
It's, like, there's so many issues and you can have
all the light plants you can have.
But it's, like, it's...
It's definitely... It's definitely a hard push
and you're definitely risking it.
[Todd] Well, we did get some night runs in,
and, uh, let's hope it all pays off.
Dad, you want to see what we get?
All right. I'm gonna pour.
-Well, that's a good sign. -Yeah.
-[Todd] Yeah. -[Jack] Big jar.
[narrator] In order to beat last season
and hit their 1,023-ounce goal,
the team still needs 258 ounces.
[Jack] Yeah.
Twenty. Got 40.
Fifty, sixty.
Seventy.
Eighty.
-Ninety. -Oh, my gosh, come on.
[Jack] 100.
106, 107, 108...
111, 112...
118, 119...
120...
121.7.
-That's great. yeah, boys! -[Jack] Whoo! Whoo!
Yeah! Whoo!
[Sparky] That shift was worth it.
-[Todd] We're getting there. -[Sparky] Whoa.
[Jack] That's a nice pile of gold.
Yeah, dude.
I'm so pumped about this weigh in.
The plateau dirt that we just ran through,
well, it turns out it panned out good.
So I think we're in the money here.
Now I think we're headed towards our goal.
[Todd] Nice.
Well, that's pretty awesome.
I mean, where are we at?
We're at 886.7.
Dude. All right, getting there.
That helped out a ton.
[narrator] With a 121.7-ounce haul, worth over $230,000,
the Hoffmans now need to mine 136 more ounces
before Alaska's harsh winter. freezes them out.
[Todd] The pay dirt looks pretty good, huh?
You know, when you have thawed gravels with no mud,
there's no water in it,
runs fast through the plant.
It may not pay as well for hundred,
but you can run it about twice as fast,
so there's no stripping involved.
Your costs go way down, so that's pretty dang good.
-That's pretty dang good. -[Todd] That's awesome.
But thank you for your sacrifice, guys.
That run at night, it's not easy.
But you did it, you ground it out.
And it shows right here on the scale.
Good job.
You know what? It was a very tough week,
but finally, we're getting the big numbers again.
At this point, we've almost got $1.7 million worth of gold.
It's not where we really wanted to be,
but we're just about where we were last year
and hopefully, we can beat it.
All right, let's get to work.