"I never thought it'd come to this." "I lost my team." "Narrator:" "On this "Gold Rush"..." "We're killing ourselves right now trying to run this line with four guys." "I need some pay, and I need it now." "I wouldn't wish this on anybody...even Parker." "Gonna break something." "That's ridiculous." "Shut it down!" "Holy crap!" "Sucks for him." "It's my party, right?" "We're on the pay dirt." "[ laughs ]" "We've got to get Big Red sluicing, as soon as we can." "This is fuckin' frustrating." "[ banging noise ]" "What the fuck is that?" "I don't know." "Just not how I planned it would work out." "I can't believe what's happened this summer." "My guys are gone." "They're all gone." "Oh, you may be watching the Hoffmans mine their last bit of dirt," "And it might be just frickin' today." "[ snake rattles ]" "Narrator:" "Three months ago," "Todd came to Oregon with high hopes for a $6 million season." "I want to see a miracle on this mountain." "I want 5,000 ounces." "The Hoffman crew began mining for nuggets at the High Bar." "Everybody's reputation's on the line on this hill." "Narrator:" "Five weeks later, with just 138 ounces of gold..." "I feel like such a fool right now." "...he and his crew abandon the High Bar and stake their season on a new mine... the Buckland." "Dave:" "We got any chance of saving this season, it's right here." "Narrator:" "After another six weeks and a pathetic 64 ounces, the crew fell apart..." "Hey, hey, hey!" "Knock it off!" "That cut's done." "I'm done." "Narrator: ...and quit." "Todd:" "No, no." "I can't run this without you, Dave." "Come on." "Oregon was meant to be a beautiful homecoming." "Todd:" "I can barely breathe." "My losses are in the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars, so..." "Yeah." "[ sighs ] I don't know." "It feels like a weight on my shoulders." "Yeah, I'm too deep." "I can't quit." "Narrator:" "Todd started the season with a crew of 15." "Now he's down to his Dad, his son, and faithful friend Thurber." "I don't know what to tell you about this." "It's like, this is not how I planned it to go." "Thurber, Why'd you stay with us?" "You should be..." "you should go home." "I've been through everything with you guys." "All right." "Thanks, man." "Okay." "If we're gonna go out, let's go out swinging." "Yep." "I know that that's got gold in it." "It's just deep, you know?" "Well, I tell you what." "Thurber, you grab a rock truck." "Hunter, you know... probably more about the plant than any of us." "Why don't you run the loader there." "Dad, go ahead and feed it." "feed the plant." "I'm gonna load out some pay." "And we're just gonna run as much dirt as we can." "The ground is gonna give you what it's gonna give you." "Well, there's always possibilities, you know, but..." "Right now, it doesn't look real promising." "Oh, it's like a frickin' pipe dream, Dad, to be honest with you." "All right, let's go." "Narrator:" "Todd's already close to 3/4 of a million dollars in the hole." "To cover his costs, he'll need to mine another 500 ounces of gold... more than twice his total to date." "You know what?" "Maybe we just wanted to come home so bad, and wanted to believe in it so bad." "You know, I don't know." "I never thought it'd come to this." "[ sighs deeply ]" "Narrator:" "Even with his whole crew digging 100 feet down In the cut, they still struggled to find any pay worth running." "Todd:" "While the guys strip this whole cut, I'm just scavenging whatever I can." "I'm just trying to find any bit that looks like pay." "I just got to keep the plant running for right now." "Jack:" "We have to stick with it." "We're caught.." "between a rock and a hard place." "We've got a big... nut to crack here." "I just don't know how long it can go on." "Hunter:" "Everything's gone the opposite of how we planned it to go." "I hope that we get some good gold in the box, 'cause, uh..." "We could really use some... some good news right now." "You know, everybody's gone, but" "Some people say that uh... that rock bottom is at least a solid foundation." "Maybe we can rebuild from here." "So, everything's running good here." "Sluicifer's running through dirt good." "And the only problem is there's not a lot of gold in there." "Narrator:" "In the Klondike," "Parker Schnabel is halfway through his season." "But he has less than a third of the gold he needs to hit his target." "Schnabel:" "Our last cleanup only had 102 ounces." "If we're gonna hit our 4,000-ounce target here," "Rick really needs to get going down on Indian River." "Narrator:" "Five miles west, at Indian River," "Rick Ness is working hard to get their second operation up and running." "Focus on this area." "Yeah." "And then, yeah, try to clean this all up." "All right." "We'll just keep her going." "Eight weeks ago," "Parker gave Rick the chance to run his own operation." "I'd love to bump our goal up to 4,000 ounces and try to do 1,000 ounces down there." "So..." "That's on you." "Yeah, let's do it, man." "Narrator:" "Since then, Rick's excavated 1.5 million yards of overburden in his struggle to find gold-rich pay dirt." "Yeah, I'm hoping to get down to pay dirt any minute here, uh." "I've got some water poking up, trying to ruin my day." "That's a pretty good sign that I'm getting down to the level." "Don't quite have the wash plant up on the pad yet," "But everything I'm doing right now is leading up to that." "Oh." "Oh, yeah." "I know that feeling." "Teeth of the bucket are starting to chatter on some big rocks." "I betcha that's pay dirt." "Yep." "Bingo." "Oh, Brennan, guess what I've found?" "We're on pay dirt, boy." "[ laughs ] [ humming ]" "This is my first pan down at Indian River." "Kinda excited to see what kind of result I can get." "I-I really want to see some gold in this pan." "Make sure you're on the right track." "Come on, gold." "Now we're talking." "Woo." "Sweet." "There's a good 10 pieces in there." "And then, you know, a bunch of little colors." "All right, so we're gonna start hauling pay finally." "Woo!" "[ laughs ]" "Narrator:" "The gold In the ground at Indian River could save their season." "Ness:" "Five years ago, I was the one sitting in that rock truck down there,just hauling dirt." "And now I'm watching the dirt get hauled up to the pad for my own operation." "That's pretty sweet." "It's been a lot of hard work to get here." "But it's all paying off right now." "Narrator:" "But there will be no gold without a wash plant." "And Big Red is stuck five miles away in Parker's yard." "Ness:" "I need Big Red up here." "Without it, we're screwed." "We have approximately 60 hours on that run." "And that's been pretty good." "And we made some really good headway." "Narrator:" "Dredge master Kevin Beets is running 130 yards of pay dirt an hour." "So far this season, he's produced 1,445 ounces of gold, worth $1.7 million." "Kevin:" "Plane." "Yeah, that's our plane." "That might be Tony." "Narrator:" "Tony's master plan this year?" "Get a second dredge running alongside this one at Eureka Creek." "Already months behind schedule and having invested close to $2 million, he's come to check on his money maker." "All right." "Okay." "See you in a bit." "Pretty good." "Jason!" "Shut it down!" "[ clang ]" "Tony's costs are spiraling out of control." "He needs to recover every grain of gold he can from Kevin's operation." "Gold should settle in the first few feet of the sluices." "If Tony finds gold at the bottom of the riffles, it means the dredge is blowing thousands of dollars worth of gold right off the end." "Yeah?" "Yeah?" "[ whistles ]" "[ whistles ]" "So?" "So?" "So that leaves me with a fuckin' problem to fix." "Well, mine, I guess." "So, basically, make it fuckin' work?" "All right." "Kevin:" "Well, apparently it's my show, so I'll make it happen." "I'll come up with something that I like and go with it." "He doesn't like that, well, sucks for him." "It's my party, right?" "Ness:" "All right, so we're gonna move Big Red down to Indian River." "Don't look like much sitting up here right now, but" "We'll get her whipped back into shape." "Narrator:" "Rick Ness is down to pay dirt at his Indian River operation." "All he needs now is Parker's trusted old wash plant, Big Red, brought out of retirement to save their season." "[ horn honks ]" "Schnabel:" "Yeah, I mean, the wash plant's the heart of the operation, and now we're damn close to getting sluicing and making some money." "Narrator:" "Parker brings in his semi truck along with a specialized trailer designed to load from the front." "That trailer's about as small as it could be and still do the job." "It's gonna be tight, but I don't care at this point." "We're gonna get it on that trailer and we're gonna get it moved." "Schnabel:" "I think she's got some more gold in her." "Might not look like it, but..." "The fuckin' work's just begun." "Narrator:" "First, Parker has to detach the semi from the trailer, then drag Big Red onto the trailer using a loader and an excavator." "Finally, he'll reattach the semi." "[ hose snaps ]" "What the fuck." "Apparently, I broke something." "Oh, I do know what I did wrong." "Fuck me." "Forgot to undo those." "Parker has snapped the high-pressure air hoses that operate the trailer's brakes." "Big Red is going nowhere." "For fuck sake!" "What are those, Parker?" "What now?" "!" "What?" "I fucked up, so..." "Just fuck off for a minute." "This is fuckin' frustrating." "Ness:" "Well, it looks like Parker pulled away before he completely disconnected from the trailer." "Pulled out the air lines and the..." "and the electrical." "Nice." "You have a small hose clamp?" "I think I have some." "You have a screwdriver, too?" "Flathead, right?" "Yeah." "Schnabel:" "There we go." "Yeah, that'll work." "Well, the air lines are temporarily fixed." "Hopefully, that's enough to get our wash plant moved." "All right." "Let's do this." "We're probably gonna have to rig up to it." "Ness:" "We're just gonna get both machines hooked up to it, one on each end." "There we go." "All right." "We got this sucker in the air." "It's time to get it on the trailer." "Whoa!" "Easy." "Rick, just left a bit." "We got it." "That's it?" "Perfect." "[ grunts ]" "Yeah." "Fits like a glove." "Yeah, that worked smooth." "Yeah." "Schnabel:" "Yeah, we got the plant on the trailer." "Now we just need to chain it down and drive her down to Indian River." "It's about," "I don't know, five, six miles." "Not too bad." "What's the worst that can happen?" "[ brakes hiss ]" "[ banging noises ]" "What the fuck was that?" "[ brakes hiss ] [ more banging ]" "What the fuck was that?" "Narrator:" "Parker Schnabel is hauling 15 tons of trusted, old wash plant from his yard to Rick's new Indian River operation." "Are my back tires not spinning?" "But there's a problem with the trailer." "[ air hisses ]" "Front one's spinning, but not the rear two." "What the fuckin' shit?" "The brakes aren't releasing." "So, they're not getting the air they need to release" "Narrator:" "The wheels are locked, which means the high-pressure air is not reaching the brakes." "Parker tries switching the hoses." "[ air hisses ]" "What was that?" "Heard a burst of air back here." "What?" "Oh, yeah, we got some air coming back here now." "I can hear it." "I just switched them again." "Oh, yeah." "Brakes are moving now." "Yeah." "All right, Rick." "Let's get this wash plant to Indian River." "Now let's see what kind of a super trucker I am." "Ness:" "Oh, that's a sweet sight here..." "Big Red coming down the road behind me." "Heh, heh, heh." "Thing's fuckin' tall." "You know, for the most part, this is gonna be Rick's show." "And I'm excited about that." "I'm excited for him." "I mean, he's in for 1,000." "Hopefully, it'll be really good and he can do more." "Is that good?" "Yeah, perfect!" "Made it!" "[Honk Honk]" "Whoo!" "[ laughs ]" "All right." "There you go." "There you go." "You got yourself a wash plant." "Narrator:" "With pay dirt in the cut and Big Red on site," "Rick's Indian River claim..." "Good luck." "...is almost ready to start producing gold." "This old girl's produced 4,000 ounces for us up to this date." "So..." "I need another 1,000 out of it in the next two months." "Big Red... at Indian River..." "Unreal." "[ horn honks ]" "Hey, Thurber, I'm gonna have to really fill you full here." "I'm gonna fill you up as much as I can get in there." "Narrator:" "Todd Hoffman's crew has mutinied." "Now he's struggling to run the Buckland mine with his Dad, his son, and Thurber." "Okay, I'll push you up." "That's enough." "We're gonna break something." "That's ridiculous." "Thurber hauls what they hope is pay dirt, half a mile to the plant." "Hunter:" "You know, we're killing ourselves right now trying to run this mine with four guys." "And who knows if this pay even has anything good in it." "Jack:" "I'm gonna be running out of pay here pretty quick." "I don't know if I'm digging up my own ramp that I..." "I'm sitting on." "Whether I'm getting pay or getting dirt." "Hey uh, Todd, we're running out of pay up here." "There's not a lot I can do about that right now." "I'm doing the best we can." "Yeah, well, you're gonna have to do a little bit better than that." "[ groans ]" "I don't know what you're gonna do, but I need some pay, and I need it now." "Todd, this one truck just isn't cutting it." "What's Hunter doing up there?" "He's clearing tailings out..." "Let the tailings pile up." "Who cares?" "Tell Hunter just get in a truck and get his ass down here!" "All right." "Hey, Hunter." "Your Dad needs you to hop in a rock truck," "Come help haul pay." "We're not getting enough over here." "Okay, I'll go get in a truck." "Todd:" "Hey, thanks for coming, man." "We needed your help back here." "Okay." "I'll do my best." "Go for it." "Take this load." "Okay, Thurb." "I'm telling you, I think we can keep up with two trucks." "Yeah, it's definitely gonna help." "We're hauling twice as much now." "I'm having to jump between the loader and the rock truck right now." "I have to watch the wash plant." "I have to do the tailings." "Feels like I'm doing the job of three guys." "And um, I'm pretty maxed out right now, and it's pretty ridiculous." "Hunter's running around like a chicken with his head cut off." "But he's doing a real good job." "Hey, we have a water leak." "The feeder's blowing water out the back." "Shut it down!" "Holy crap!" "Hey, kill the pump!" "I got the water off." "Ah, we blew a hose here." "All right." "I'm gonna shut the plant down." "We have a hose that feeds the main conveyor." "It either just blew off or the straps broke." "I don't know which." "Holy cow." "Blew the clamp right off." "Aw." "You know, these are the type that you can't reuse." "Thurber, go find some clamps." "Let's clamp it back on." "We'll see if it'll hold." "What if I wasn't here at the wash plant?" "I'm half a mile away at the cut." "Hey, I..." "I can't..." "He can't watch the whole thing and feed it." "And if something goes wrong and really breaks, then we're not mining at all." "Hunter, we're not blaming you or blaming anybody." "I am sorry." "I know we're shorthanded." "But we got to keep our eyes on this frickin' plant." "So, let's just keep it rolling." "Found three brand new heavy duty clamps." "Yeah, that looks all right." "Yeah, it is." "Even better." "Yeah." "Let me hold on to it." "Okay, good." "Stagger all these." "Okay." "I think we got her." "You's want to fire up?" "You know what?" "Something like that could've just shut us down." "I think we got real lucky on a hose." "This summer's been unbelievable." "And very, very difficult." "I wouldn't wish this on anybody..." "Even Parker." "We gonna rip this old piece of shit off." "Then we're gonna bring in a new one." "Narrator:" "Kevin Beets' dredge has been losing gold down the fine tailing chutes." "It's a very gentle procedure, as you can see." "Splash!" "Fuckin' done." "Kevin's plan..." "Replace the simple, old, metal chutes with a pair of 20-foot sluice boxes containing mats and expanded metal." "This should trap all the gold he's been losing." "Mechanic Mike Beaudry has come to help." "Beaudry:" "Do everything we can on the ground." "Then, soon as we're ready, we'll slam this stuff in quick, and we'll be done." "Then the dredge can go back to work." "Each of the finished sluice extensions weighs 1,500 pounds." "They must be perfectly lined up with the runs on the dredge so water flows evenly all the way to the end." "Go up, Kevin." "Hold up, Kev!" "Don't get too crazy." "Ken, pull that end that way." "Okay, just wait." "That's not gonna work." "Fuckin' thing looks like It's twisted in the middle." "Which way are you thinking?" "That way?" "Right now, It's looking this way..." "It's looking this way." "Tilt it that way?" "It's tilted this way." "That one is or both of them?" "This one." "Just hang on." "[ sighs ]" "This needs to go that way?" "Yeah." "Well, that's okay." "Go get me that come-along." "Pull on that." "Pull it slow, slow, slow, slow." "There you go." "There you go." "How about this way?" "Yeah?" "Yeah." "Oh, oh, that's better." "I'm not sure how much I trust these cables." "Why?" "'Cause that's a lot of weight." "Those cables are good for 5,000 pounds each." "Tighten that other turnbuckle up a little more?" "Yeah." "It's sitting in there quite nice." "You know, it's a little heavier than we were expecting, but it's all we need." "Just got to sit there and work." "Now that they're on, we can fire her up, start making gold again." "Here we go." "[ water flowing ]" "Oh, I hear water." "And here she comes." "Oh shit." "Well, they're still on, so that's a good start." "They seem to be working." "Overall, I'm happy." "Just got to wait and see how they work out." "Get in here, Doumitt." ""Sluicifer" is a tough word to say." "Thank you, Mitch." "No problem." "Narrator:" "For three weeks, Parker has been mining the Boundary Cut extension." "But the results have been falling short." "After another week of running, it's time to see if things have improved." "So, I know we've been focused on getting Big Red moved." "But uh, Sluicifer's still sluicing away." "And uh, hopefully, this Boundary Cut extension got a little better." "Our last cleanup was, what, 102?" "Yeah, pretty pathetic." "Narrator:" "To keep on track to hit his 4,000-ounce, $4.8 million season," "Parker needs this cleanup to produce over 160 ounces." "Well, here's the moment of truth." "Hopefully, it adds up." "It's at 20... 40... 60... 80... 100." "Not much more than that." "106.9." "Oh oh." "So nothing's changed." "Oh, man." "I mean, dude, it's still 100 ounces of gold," "But that should be almost double that." "Yeah." "I could've skip across that." "An ounce an hour." "Huh." "What's that take us to, Chris?" "About 1,285 now." "Man, we got to start upping that." "Well, it really highlights the fact that we need Big Red up and going." "'cause we've got to do over 250 ounces a week for the rest for the season." "We've got to get Big Red sluicing as soon as we can." "Yeah, understood." "I agree." "And once we turn it on, we can't turn that thing off, because, at this rate..." "I mean, Big Red can do these numbers easy." "All right, Rick." "I just need you to get on that." "10-4." "I'm on it." "Thanks, guys." "Yeah, I mean, this Boundary Cut extension is pretty dog shit." "We're at the point now where we're in a fair bit of trouble, so..." "I'm really counting on Rick to get Big Red up and going, get some gold coming out of Indian River." "Narrator:" "It's 8:00 p.m." "The rest of the crew is eating dinner, but Rick's got other priorities." "I've got Big Red down in my cut." "I'm gonna drag it up to the pad." "I'm gonna be pulling gold out of my own cut." "And it's one hell of a feeling." "I got chills when I said that." "All right." "Fuckin' go time." "Come on, baby." "Let's go." "This is the easy part now." "I'm in the flats." "I got one hell of a hill to climb with it, though." "Yeah, this hill is a... pretty steep angle." "Whew." "Whoo!" "Big Red's on the pad!" "Yes!" "[ grunts ]" "It's another cleanup." "We don't do these every day?" "Yeah." "Narrator:" "Kevin Beets has fitted new sluice extensions to the back end of the dredge." "After two days of welding and four days of running, they've shut down for an all important cleanup." "This second tub is gonna keep the gold concentrate separate between the new runs that we added in last week and the rest of the dredge." "So it's gonna give everybody a good idea of what was actually going off the end." "Aw shit." "What's gonna be really interesting is to see how much gold we get out of those back sluice runs." "I don't know." "We're waiting on you." "Narrator:" "To stay on track to hit Tony's 2,000-ounce season target," "Kevin needs around 50 ounces a week." "Tony: 10, 20." "You got 50." "60." "70, 80, 90, 100." "Good." "140, 150." "180, 190, 200." "Perfect." "208. 220." "226.30." "I think that's pretty fuckin' reasonable." "Eh, a couple of bucks." "Okay." "This is from the extensions, both of them." "Okay." "Yeah." "2 ounces." "3 ounces." "4 ounces." "4.26 ounces." "So, what's the grand total now?" "230.6." "Narrator:" "An extra $5,000 a week..." "Money Tony desperately needs to get his second dredge back on track." "And that extra 2% every cleanup, that's gonna fuckin' help." "Let's pull the mats." "You guys do a cleanup, and we'll see what we got." "Okay." "Let's hope it's good." "Narrator:" "In Oregon, Todd's skeleton crew has fed Monster Red for a week." "We've worked very hard, and I want to go back and see if our hard work paid off." "Narrator:" "But they won't know If they've hit the pay streak until they do the cleanup." "Hey." "What do we got cooking?" "Well..." "Hmm." "Not a whole lot." "Like, break even?" "Narrator:" "To have any chance of breaking even this season, they need at least 50 ounces a week... $60,000 worth of gold." "Nowhere even near." "Let's see, man." "Just take the thing off." "I got to look." "That's it?" "That's it." "You're friggin' kidding me." "No." "Nope." "[ sighs ] Oh...uh." "I could tell you right now that's barely worth weighing." "Go ahead and weigh it, but I'm telling you," "That's not good." "2.8." "Yeah." "Todd, I don't know what to say." "We've put through a lot of yards." "[ groans ]" "It's not worth all of us there sitting all day running for that little bit of gold." "Well, there's really only two choices..." "We keep giving it a shot..." "Subs by:" "Jack T or we quit and go home." "Working with him till the end, I don't know." "That gold does not make it worth it." "If we just walk away right now, you know, it's..." "It's done." "It's over." "Todd:" "No, I'm not happy." "I'm not happy about it." "I got 10 or 12 pieces of heavy equipment at least." "I got my back against the wall." "You know, I don't know if I can keep doing this anymore." "I got a friggin' rainbow coming down into the cut down here." "Narrator:" "On the next "Gold Rush"" "I don't even want to hear it." "Every day he's not sluicing is costing us 20,000, 30,000 bucks." "Feels like mine right now." "She's rising from the ashes!" "To be quite fuckin' honest with you, young man," "I'm really not impressed." "That just beat the subway any day, wouldn't it?" "It's time to start the next phase." "What the hell's he doing here?" "I am tired of feeling like a frickin' loser." "Hey everybody." "Ready to pull out?"