"Six down on their luck men from the lower 48 states risk everything to find gold on a small claim in southeast Alaska." "Where is the gold?" "After four and a half months of mining 294)}Holy cow!" "They're finally finding gold." "We got our first real nugget." "That's it." "But it may be too little too late." "We're pretty much up the creek without a paddle." "for only $8000 dollars worth of gold." "Quite possibly could lose my house." "With the harsh Alaskan winter banging on the door." "The crew is at their breaking point." "Back up." "Just back off with it." "And plummeting temperatures wreak havoc on the mining equipment." "I think it's froze." "We've got winter already." "Ooh." "The answer to their prayers could lie at the bottom of a 50 foot hole." "If they can get there before the deep freeze." "We're going right to the bitter end." "It's mid September and winter is coming to the gold fields of Alaska." "274)}What you got Thurb?" "The salmon return to spawn before the big freeze." "Nice one Todd." "Todd Hoffman and his mining crew hit the river to catch a free meal." "There's one." "Look at that color on him." "Wow." "But Alaska never gives anything away without a fight." "Oh oh." "What you got?" "Trouble." "Huge." "Did you see him." "Geez." "Yeah." "like who knows." "600 pounder." "That's a dangerous situation right there." "that bear's a dead bear." "What the heck." "Did I see water spraying up?" "Oh." "There's another one." "The bears are fattening up on the salmon for the long winter hibernation." "man." "They're working their way down here." "most gold mines are closed." "The Hoffman's claim is still open." "The crew of six has been digging for gold for over four months." "They can't stop now." "If I don't get gold I'm going back home with nothing." "their home made wash plant is running over 1000 tons of gold bearing dirt every day." "Now we're rocking and rolling." "They're hoping they capture gold in hundreds of buckets of black sand." "This thing weighs a ton." "Must be full of gold." "But they're pinning all their hopes on finding the big gold nuggets deep down on the bedrock." "We're only about 20 feet from hitting really good gold." "Now greenhorn miner Todd Hoffman is confident he's closing in on a $15 million dollar fortune." "Right here is where we're trying to get below these big boulders." "See the rock underneath my dad's track?" "okay." "From that brown line down it's all virgin ground." "The crew has been digging on what they think is the site of an ancient waterfall." "they found more and more gold in deposits known as pay streaks." "But the take so far is small change in comparison to the big gold the Hoffmans believe is sitting on the bedrock at the bottom of what miners call a glory hole." "The dirt they dig out of the glory hole is taken over to their wash plant in a second hand loader." "This is only a 1973." "We're a little bit past our warranty." "The old loader delivers the dirt to the front of the wash plant to be processed for gold." "the loader goes round the back to move the waste rocks pouring out of the other end." "Everything will back up and all get overran with material and they'll run out." "the 37 year old loader has to work continously." "But it struggles to keep up with the wash plant's mighty hunger." "Jack." "Need some material." "the old workhorse is finally worn out." "The cab started filling with smoke and I looked over and all my electrical wire is burning." "that just fried." "Ah... but this is one of the worst to have a problem with because" "It does all the moving of the material." "The old tired equipment cannot keep up with the pace." "something's gotta give." "How long until you think we're on bedrock?" "I mean how long do you think it's gonna take us to get down there." "Another week?" "I could.." "No." "max." "Well the golds getting better." "It's obviously down below." "But I'm just wondering how far down below." "I mean I'm even kinda considering that maybe we just stop running until we touch bedrock." "and then just run the material that we hit down below." "There's no benefit to that." "I'd rather spend the last bit of money we have on only the dirt that's above bedrock." "is to give the guys a bunch of gold." "that's not much." "Todd wants to stop running tons of shallower dirt to concentrate all of their resources on digging to the big gold at the bottom of the glory hole." "Come here." "Let's have a little meeting with the guys." "and have only found 6 ounces of gold worth about $8000 dollars." "They have to find around 190 ounces of gold before anyone gets paid a single cent." "Their decision could be make or break." "the two options are this." "But we may run out of money." "And we may break something that we just can't fix." "And that will ruin our chances to get down to bedrock." "we stockpile this material with the loader right up here." "and just dig dig dig." "I still believe the gold's down there." "We haven't touched it." "and that means the end of the summer." "I'm all for going for it." "Thurb?" "No." "I think we're chasing fairy tales." "I think we should run what we can run." "but the recession closed him down." "Right now I don't have a paycheque so" "It's not too hard to figure out I'm in big trouble." "and is one mortgage payment away from losing the family home." "We were at the verge of foreclosure a couple different times cause we did get behind." "too bad"." "That's been really real hard." "Thurber thinks even the poor quality dirt is worth running." "and you got bills to pay." "go home and put a ding in it." "a little..is better than nothing." "I kinda agree with Todd though." "I say throw the dice." "That's what we're here for." "Now there's something I wanted to say." "I've got to really like you guys." "Well." "I want to see y'all get it." "I wanna see what's there." "You're with me." "Yes sir." "I just do not want to leave this place unless I know what is at the bottom." "And that's really why we're all here guys." "just like flying to the moon." "you know." "And this is the beginning of our last push." "We're gonna go get this friggen bedrock." "Everybody in?" "(a chorus of agreement)" "It's bedrock or bust." "The wash plant is shutdown." "Jack is immediately encouraged by what he sees in the glory hole." "green boulders right in here right now." "I'll show ya." "right..." "There." "That's what you gotta look for." "instead of risking it all to dig for bedrock." "we're chasing a fairy tale." "We don't know if there's a waterfall there." "We don't know if there's buckets of gold." "That waterfall could be a hundred feet." "more than we've had all summer." "Run it." "Todd travels to Haines airport." "He's flying in some serious muscle." "we needed a little bit of help." "Trust me." "We need a master plan." "It may be 60 feet deep." "When the miners first came to Alaska hey buddy." "Dave Turin helped them get the wash plant up and running." "man." "Put an angle iron on here." "Bring another angle iron up." "Come on." "Let's get it done you guys." "Come on." "Get going." "Right here." "it's Dave." "We need to position ourselves so we can go down another 20 feet." "Another 20?" "Maybe." "I think I'm at 35 now." "And I think I'd maybe go to 45." "45" "Another ten feet?" "Maybe." "Dave Turin may just be their last hope." "So when's the snow gonna start to fly." "Tomorrow." "Noon." "274)}Hey." "265)\fs28}Up ahead." "Tempers flare over the plans to get to the bottom of the glory hole." "What are you trying to make another road out here?" "I'm not." "I guess you don't understand digging." "Sub freezing temperatures change the game overnight." "Dave." "Grab that hose and shake it a little bit." "Got a little frozen hose somewhere." "Yeah." "And with his house on the line 294)}" "Come on dude." "Don't get all.." "Buzz off." "Thurber snaps." "I'm fuckin told that all of my time was wasted." "Happy fuckin shit." "the miners at Porcupine Creek have made a risky decision." "Shut down the wash plant to concentrate on digging to bedrock." "in every direction." "there's no hope if we break anything." "They have a small window of opportunity to somehow pull 190 ounces of gold out of the ground to turn a profit." "before winter cripples the operation." "I'm encouraged." "We're gonna get you down there." "We gotta make sure it's safe though Jack." "We don't want you tipping that thing over in the middle of that water." "No no." "What if we want to go another 20 feet down?" "What do we gotta do?" "You got some work to do." "Okay." "You gotta get this a little wider." "Yeah." "We got to get more area opened up." "If you could just get us down another 10" "Another 10 feet or so." "10 umm." "I think that's plenty." "Dave gets to work on some quick fixes around the glory hole." "so all you end up with is this tiny little hole at the ottom and you don't have any room to work." "So you gotta start out wider at the top." "And then they can dig down." "And get down deeper." "But they gotta have a lot wider footprint at the top in order to maneuver down at the bottom." "Dave widens the top of the glory hole to make the sides less steep and for the old loader to stockpile material." "Nice to have Dave here." "Finally somebody that besides us idiots." "Hey." "But Jack starts digging a road on the area Dave just widened." "How do we get your dad to quit digging." "Hey dad." "Why are you trying to make another road out here?" "274)}I'm not." "I'm just trying to get rid of some material." "I don't understand your master plan." "turn around and load." "You can if you go down here." "I guess that you don't understand digging." "We had a" "Got to a make it work." "We had a plan." "Dave laid it out ." "You're not getting it." "You're doing your own thing." "that's" "Dad." "We brought Dave." "We brought Dave in to build us a plan." "And you're not doing it." "and sit there." "I got a guy here that's got a plan." "Don't you want to listen to him?" "Dave?" "294)}" "Look." "I'm 30 feet down in.." "Why don't you just listen for a second." "and just get this." "get this all leveled out." "So you're not dinking around with it." "and Jack and Todd agree to disagree." "and go dig something." "And I'm Like "No." "We got to have a friggen plan here Pop"." "you can just go down there and just move stuff." "Dave's been down this road before." "That's the father/son thing." "I deal with it all the time with my dad." "It's like" "We still don't know anything." "And we never probably will." "according to Dave's plan." "Hey." "Don't tell my dad." "He don't like anybody in here." "an area larger than a football field." "But Dave is only getting started." "He also has a controversial suggestion." "Run the wash plant again." "Hey." "We gotta talk." "Okay." "What are you got going here?" "M You gotta help me out here." "I" "Well." "I'm kind of lost." "I see you digging a hole." "I know." "You're not running the wash plant?" "I know." "It" "Why can't you get that material up to the plant." "our main goal is to get down to the gold at bedrock." "So basically I said Hey." "We'll use the loader to support Jack. and we only run the juiciest material that we have." "Here's what I think you oughta do." "Cut in a new road." "Get that haul time down and get it closer to the plant and then he can haul it off as fast as Jack can dig it." "And you can run." "The loader has been taking the long way around the glory hole to the wash plant." "The route is inefficient." "And tough on the 37 year old machine." "Dave suggests a shortcut that will take the strain off the loader and get dirt processed a lot faster." "I'm gonna push a road right down in here." "Gonna make these guys so much more efficient at getting the material out of the ground to the plant." "the crew might just be able to run the wash plant and dig for bedrock." "I don't know if it can be done." "I'm not saying Dave can't do it." "I'm just saying with our junk and our guys if we could run both effectively." "I'm okay to run.." "I need to accomplish the goal of going down to the bottom of this hole." "but they finally manage to get the new road cut." "moving material over to the plant." "Jack fills up their patched up loader and it manages the new road without a problem." "Now they can dig deep and run dirt at the same time." "Should be pretty pretty awesome stuff." "Just when things are finally running like clockwork." "The Alaskan winter makes it's first appearance at the mine." "isn't it?" "in our rain." "The snow is a game changer." "Dave's improvements may be too little too late." "And here it is." "It's here." "Just couldn't come at a worse time." "signaling the beginning of the end of the gold mining season." "Without water we can't run." "So if it freezes any more than this we're gonna be in trouble." "This is just nothing yet." "Just the beginning." "It's gonna get awful cold here." "If we can get to bedrock in time before we get ran out of here by the snow." "That's the question." "I don't know." "it's gonna be a nightmare." "This is just a little shot of snow." "And it's kind of a warning shot across the bow kinda." "I think waking everybody up." "We should start thinking about" "How much time we have left." "if the equipment can handle the weather." "As long as we don't slow him down we can run the plant." "I say let's run it." "I'm fine." "It's the loader is the most important." "Take it easy." "Let's go." "Better just to run." "And look in that sluice box and see what we got." "My dad can't be more than 4 or 5 feet from bedrock." "I expect him to hit it within the next 48 hours." "000 dollars worth of gold they need just to break even." "no one knows how the wash plant will cope." "It's cold in here." "My feet are freezing." "Ready." "Are you ready?" "Let's wash some rock." "Good to be running." "That whole plan of just stopping to dig down to bedrock didn't seem right." "Jack reaches the deepest he's ever been in the glory hole." "The loader ferries the precious dirt straight up to the wash plant using Dave Turin's new shortcut." "up at the wash plant." "Hey." "The bottom of the back end and that ain't pumping right." "The little jig at the back is clogging up." "Not working right." "Something is stopping the gold bearing black sand from reaching the bucket." "Todd." "This isn't even moving." "there's no fresh water." "I think it's froze." "Exactly what I thought was gonna happen." "We got winter already." "but it's more like December here." "Hey David." "Grab that hose and shake it a little bit." "Got a little frozen hose some where." "It's somewhere right in here guys." "The duplex jig should be pulsating 160 times a minute to catch fine gold." "Gotta let this run out a little bit." "and one side has completely seized up." "What it's got." "It's got a bunch of sand in there and it got frozen together." "Yeah." "I can tell by little chunks coming out." "Ah." "There you go." "Todd clears the ice from the jig's outlet funnel." "Is everybody stopped running up there?" "I don't know." "But gold rich black sand is being lost." "He needs to get the outlet funnel back in place." "Fast." "I don't know how I'm gonna get this in there." "You got gloves." "jumping in the glory hole." "Did it?" "Okay." "Don't." "Just don't mess with it." "Geez." "There." "Now it's moving." "See it?" "Yup." "With the blockage fixed the water can again carry fine gold particles through the system and into the buckets." "it stays working you know." "The wash plant is back to running dirt from over 40 feet down in the glory hole." "we're in excellent stuff." "the crew manages to run their entire stockpile of dirt." "no more." "they will stop the plant and take a look." "I see gold all through that." "With chunks right in here." "When you can see it up here at the top." "so." "Look at this piece down here." "you got a picker?" "Alright." "I don't know if it's a nose picker or or what. but you know it's a picker." "so." "I'll pick gold all day long." "The riffles and nugget traps are catching good gold from this new material." "But it's the fine gold they can't see coming out the back f the wash plant that they think will make them rich." "mixed in with the black sand." "we don't have a way of getting the gold out of the black sand." "and we're learning." "so." "along with a magnetic material called magnetite." "but small particles of fine gold get trapped as well." "is the problem that I'm dealing with." "See it?" "and there's gold when I lifted that out." "I picked up gold with it." "Sometimes you can actually see it." "Looks like hair." "every passing day generates another 24 buckets of black sand." "Jim Thurber has been hauling the buckets from day one." "Seems like we're spinning our wheels." "We got a bunch of black sand." "I can't go make a mortgage payment with black sand." "I can't take it in the supermarket and buy groceries. (Exhales heavily)" "A crazy amount." "We get 24 buckets a day." "I got that much friggen black sand." "_" "I just got 30 more buckets." "And it's like I can't keep going and buying buckets." "It's $150 dollars every time I buy 'em." "Thurber's desperate to get at the thousands of dollars worth of gold they think is trapped in the buckets." "I don't know." "to have any profit to share with his crew." "It's like they you know." "Like I'm supposed to pull a rabbit out of my hat." "I don't know." "But that's a lot." "Todd calls in yet another expert from his home state of Oregon with a machine that could solve all their problems." "Dude." "Eh dude." "You tired or what?" "Are you guys hard to find." "A long drive." "Brian Tolle is an inventor with a passion for gold mining." "He claims his latest invention can remove the magnetic material from Todd's buckets." "Leaving behind nothing but gold and other minerals." "Hey Brian." "The last time we ran is right here." "Holy crap." "And you said you can do this in a half hour?" "Is this magnetic?" "Is it real magnetic?" "Fifty percent of it is." "Fifty?" "Ninety is better." "The Hoffman crew tried once before to get gold out of the black sand with a wave table." "It's just not worth the powder to blow it to hell." "they couldn't get any gold out of the black sand." "You cannot pull it off of here." "I know but" "It's in production mode." "You cannot do this." "I can't talk to you." "tensions hit a fever pitch." "Because I've been here for 3 months without any fuckin money." "you wanna go." "Go." "never to return." "it's Brian Tolle's turn to put himself in the firing line." "3 or 4 tons of black sand sitting here." "as I check claims." "or how much he's expecting an hour." "Brian." "Ta da." "Wow." "What's that?" "So." "There it is." "You're kidding me." "No way." "You got it all painted and everything." "Todd and his crew have called in many favors along the way." "But none more important than this one." "Expectations are high." "It'll work with our material." "Probably better than any material." "The Hoffman crew is down to the last days of the gold mining season." "Winter's first snow showers and freezing temperatures threaten to close them down at any moment." "we're going right to the bitter end." "They are now running rich deeper dirt through the wash plant than they have all season." "Reckon you a whole bar." "Oh wow." "This is our best run yet." "But the guys have not been able to get their hands on the thousands of dollars worth of fine gold they think is trapped in the black sand until now." "Inventor Brian Tolle has brought in a new machine that could make them all rich." "Here you go." "Hey dad." "Yeah." "I need Jim to come up here." "He's been busting his back on those buckets." "Yeah." "He's the only guy not running a piece." "and work this black sand with Brian." "Okay." "I just want to find out what's going on right here." "Jack's got a sample of dirt from the very bottom of the glory hole." "This is hot stuff." "Let's go." "Jack doesn't trust the prize material to Brian's prototype machine." "He wants to pan it by hand." "I don't want it going through that." "This bucket here stays here." "That black sand is what we're interested in." "Okay." "Let's go." "Okay." "Do not mess with my bucket." "Run this one." "but" "I think we're gonna run it." "or is that too much?" "hey." "Wow." "Here goes." "you get a little bonus look." "Let's go and we'll see." "Gold." "See how the gold's laying down through there." "The Porcupine Creek black sand contains small particles of gold along with other minerals and a magnetic metal compound called magnetite." "The separator has a belt with a magnet inside it." "As the black sand falls through the water magnetite is pulled towards the belt." "and the worthless magnetite is separated out into another." "Takes care of the black sand for ya." "Here's your magnetite buddy." "No gold in it." "That's awesome." "There's your gold side." "So what we're gonna do is just take this magnet." "Run it down through here." "Find out how good of a job we did." "Okay." "Clean." "your biggest enemies in here." "Holding." "Try pan this down a little bit." "The remaining material contains more gold than they have ever seen in their pans." "How many scoops was that?" "Two." "Two scoops." "Whatever we're running is no joke." "Lookit that." "So no magnetic properties in it.?" "Nope." "You cannot argue with success." "That's the way." "Hats off to you brother." "Thank you sir." "Yeah." "It's what it's all about." "the crew needs to run as much deep material as fast as they can." "it's filling up with ground water as soon as Jack stops digging." "they will have to work 24/7 to keep the glory hole drained." "draws the short straw." "I certainly hope it is worth it." "Jack got down into some really really fine material." "That's aboutt he only reason I been doing this." "If it was any thing like it's been the last couple months I probably wouldn't go through this." "The hole is now 250 by 300 feet across and as deep as a five story building." "Over 150 gallons of water flood into it every minute." "It takes about seven and a half hours to pump it down as dry as we can get it." "And now we'll get this one priming." "somebody on another pump cause I'm open and closing valves and turning things on and off." "Chris mans his post all night in case a pump fails." "you know." "One false step could land him in 25 feet of freezing water." "Those banks are steep." "I don't need to hurt myself out here tonight is what I'm saying." "Cause nobody's gonna come check on me." "275)\fs28}Up ahead." "Todd breaks devastating news to Thurber." "I don't know what to tell ya." "Fuckin bullshit." "Come on dude." "Don't get Get off !" "Back up." "Just back off a little bit." "The gold miners have been spared any more snow." "Chris manned the glory hole pumps all night to give Jack a fighting chance to hit bedrock and get to the gold." "Yeah." "It's a hole." "That's for sure." "Yeah." "I'm real proud of him." "Cause now I can see it." "I didn't realize I'd gotten down that far." "Hopefully I can catch bedrock." "So I can pay all these guys uh." "000 dollars to get this far." "now is their best chance of finding enough gold to get paid." "We're gonna hit bedrock today." "I want it." "I want it bad." "Come on." "We're gonna let it run." "With all this material." "We gotta get it out of here." "We gotta run it and it's really good stuff." "The black sand coming out of the wash plant is getting richer by the day." "hoping the gold trapped inside will save his house from foreclosure." "It'll wear on ya." "I'm done." "But you gotta keep going." "I'm physically shot." "But I can't." "I gotta keep going." "It's down to Brian Tolle to get gold out of the hundreds of buckets stockpiled on their dig down to bedrock." "they could be looking at two and a half million dollars worth of gold." "they will have spent almost 5 months battling the Alaskan elements for nothing." "They're all over there looking nice and pretty all lined up but what the frig." "I gotta get the gold out of there." "The magnetic separator proved the deepest dirt is rich in gold." "the separator will find it." "It doesn't look very rich to me but" "There is gold that you can barely see." "We'll find out." "But the black sand from the last few months is from much shallower dirt." "there's very little gold." "The news is devastating." "Aw." "Could mean there's nothing in any of our buckets." "At least not enough to make it worth the crap." "That's real fine material right there." "So it's showing that the separator isn't letting it float away and you're losing it." "You're capturing it in here." "But that's hard to say now." "but that's not the case." "If it's in there it's so friggen fine I can't see it." "you know." "I wear glasses." "Brian checks bucket after bucket of the older material." "But the story remains the same." "That's the amount of gold that I got out of one 5 gallon bucket." "That's about $2 dollars worth of gold." "Your buckets cost you 5 bucks apiece." "You got more money in your buckets than in your gold." "Ooh." "I'm sorry." "That's not good." "Yeah." "Now I am sorry." "Thurber's gonna cry." "Thurber spent the season earning the crew a paltry $240 dollars." "Hey Thurb." "Yeah." "Brian Brian found only about $2 dollars worth of blac of gold in that whole bucket of black sand." "One whole bucket." "So what I been doing for the last few months is a bunch of bullshit." "yeah." "I don't know." "Fucking bullshit." "I don't know what to tell you." "Fucking bullshit." "Hey dude." "Don't get" "GET OFF." "We'll talk ab.." "I don't want to talk about it now." "How did he take it?" "How do you think he friggen took it." "Back up." "Just back off a little bit." "I fucking been told that all of my time was wasted." "Ah fuck." "Fuck it." "The gold miners at Porcupine Creek are facing the end of the season." "They were convinced that they had thousands of dollars worth of fine gold in their black sand buckets." "But the buckets have turned out to be worth more than their contents." "the crew has just days to find forty times more gold than they have in almost five months." "it is a desperate time." "It's a lot about survival." "I mean... isn't there." "(sniffles)" "hasn't done it that's for sure." "For some of the crew there is still hope." "Jack's pulling out boulders the size of refrigerators." "A sign that bedrock could be close." "There's this big boulder down here and it wasn't brought in by a river." "It's totally brought in by a glacier." "find gold stacked underneath these big large boulders that are right down on the bottom so" "We have one here." "I don't know if my dad can even get it out but it's big." "There it is." "Dig it." "000 dollars worth of gold under under a boulder like this." "Look at that." "Look at the color of that rock." "A find of that size could save their operation." "You're getting close to something." "oughta be pretty good with gold." "The sediment surrounding the big boulder was undisturbed for thousands of years and could be packed full of gold." "Where's Chris putting this?" "It should be first to run." "This is the hottest stuff we've had yet." "Hey." "That material that Jack's pulling out of the hole right now." "It's the hottest stuff yet." "We're getting close." "We're getting really close." "So." "Just take all that good material straight to the plant." "Got it." "Alright man." "the guys run the best dirt yet through the wash plant." "Everything looks pretty good." "For a bunch of home made crap." "there is a glimmer of hope that he could still save his house from foreclosure." "Really looking forward to this." "This is the deepest we've gone." "The gold's been getting better and better all the way down." "I can't wait to see how this turns out." "It should be our best." "then shutdown to test the dirt they found beneath the boulder." "Look at all this gold right through here guys." "Look at that chunk." "Ah." "That's looking really friggen good." "You know when you can shake your pan." "And here's the gold in it." "That's just uh" "That's the richest music you can hear right there." "000 worth of debt." "If winter doesn't freeze them out first." "you know. wants to know that we still live in a place where there's freedom." "and there still is a chance." "there's a chance for us to go out and do something like this." "254)}Subs by JackT"