"You and I are gone." "There is a huge swath in Indian River." "Sorry.." "N" "Little bit more." "Good." "I see." "Are you ready to move this thing?" "We have to make do with what we have." "Whoa." "Thanks, man." "Hey." "Keep pouring." "148.2." "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" "What's going on?" "On this "Gold Rush..."" "This is bad." "I think we should shut it down." "All I know is I'm not getting paid, Todd." "Crap!" "It's a disaster." "Right now it's a losing battle." "Fuck." "That's all frozen mud." "Time's ticking." "I think this mean's shutting Rick down." "It's just fuckin' bullshit." "I just got word back that my grandpa died." "I got to go." "♪♪ ♪♪" "First pay of the Buckland." "Right here." "Narrator:" "The Hoffman crew is finally running pay dirt on their new Buckland claim." "Still hoping to reach Todd's 5,000-ounce $6 million goal." "This season started rough." "I hope to turn it around." "Whatever happens, we got to keep running." "One little thing and we're done done." "Come on baby." "Narrator:" "To be on target they should already have 2,000 ounces." "They have just 138." "I don't care how deep it is." "I want gold." "I want to get to the gold and I want it quick." "Narrator:" "Their entire season now rests on the pay dirt they're running through the plant." "Bottom line is nobody gets paid unless we get gold." "So." "Until that happens, everybody's working for free." "I hope it's got gold in it." "I don't like the way that looks." "Todd!" "What's going on?" "It's not going through the grizzly bars." "Narrator:" "The clay rich pay dirt is clogging up the wash plant feeder." "Let's shut it down!" "Dammit!" "Hey, shut it down!" "Shut it down." "He wants me to shut it down." "Shut it down." "Turn the feeder off." "Shut the feeder off." "Todd!" "It's just piling." "Ohh." "Arrgh." "This is bad." "Todd." "Too much clay in it." "Crap!" "Aww." "Aw." "What are you doing?" "Have a look at this crap, Dave." "It, it's clay with pay gravel stuck in it." "Look at that." "Tell me what you think." "Clay with gold in it." "Aww." "Are you freakin' kidding me." "Now what?" "It needs water and scrubbing... to beat it up." "The solution is a wet beater, if you can find one." "Aww." "A wet feed system turns the pay dirt into slurry so even clay-rich material will pass hrough the wash plant." "I'll find whatever we need." "All I know is I'm not getting paid, Todd." "Dude, if we need the money, I can try to find the money." "I don't know what I want to do." "The solution's probably not gonna be real cheap and it is probably not gonna be real fast." "We're just taking one hit after another and..." "I'm wondering just how many hits my guys could take." "I don't want to have a season where we don't get any gold." "It's happened to me twice before and I don't want it to happen again." "Narrator:" "Todd's total haul so far is just $165,000" "And it's all they've got to cover basic running costs." "Hey, man." "What's going on?" "Awg." "Hey, dad." "The wash plant's down." "Oh, great." "Yeah." "The belt feeder that we have is not gonna work." "We need a wet feed system." "The problem is I priced a couple of them out but it's... $80,000 bucks." "Oh man." "Last year was such a high." "Yeah, I know." "And this year is such a downer." "I'm thinking about maybe we should just freakin' shut it down, and go the frick home." "Aw uh." "That's the way you think." "That's not the way I think." "You know, Todd, you can just pack it in, and you leave the guys and go." "They'll survive." "But you don't come off a winner with 130 ounces." "You don't quit." "You got to be an example for your boys." "It's half of our season's take right now." "You sure you want to do this." "Yeah." "Hell, you got a lot of expenses to bring the plant down." "This, that, the other." "Fuel." "Yeah." "You know, if we don't, we won't know." "You got to do it." "I hate to, but we got to do it." "This is adding up to be a hell of a lot of money." "It's gonna be okay." "Hope you're right, dad." "I hope you're right." "Yeah." "She's doing pretty good." "Narrator:" "At Eureka Creek, Tony's dredge has produced 913 ounces of gold worth $1.1 million dollars." "Almost half-way to his 2,000-ounce $2.4 million season goal." "But the pay streak they've been mining has run out and they need to change direction." "I figure we go right, we can get that swipe next to the river." "That means we have to go through those tailings there." "Narrator:" "Tony wants to mine an area of good ground they missed last year." "But there is a line of tailings in the way." "His plan...attach the dredge to two dozers, haul it forward... and dredge right through the tailings pile to get to the good ground." "Let's go." "Narrator:" "With Tony and Kevin away," "Jason is left in charge of the move." "We're just waiting for the guys to finish up on the Deadman, so we can make sure they're ready." "Uh, the winds are starting to pick up which is not an ideal situation." "We're basically a big sail sitting here in the water and we're gonna end up getting pushed to the wrong side." "So they need to get ready quick." "Typical Tony." "Make a crazy plan and walk away right when the going gets tough." "This is really tough to do with a green crew." "Kayle can start." "Just straight down that road." "Kahle." "You can start just going straight down that road." "Okay." "Kahle and Mike take up the slack." "Radio 'em." "We're good to go." "We're good to go." "There we go." "There we go." "Come on." "Holy fuck." "Feel that?" "Fuck." "We're stuck." "Okay." "Stand, stand down." "Tell them to stop." "Kahle, stop for a second." "Mike stop." "We're bottomed out." "Huh." "Fuck." "We're on the bottom..somewhere." "Gonna be a whole ridge under there the dredge is sitting on." "Narrator:" "The dredge is stuck on a bedrock ridge." "If Jason continues to haul it forward, he risks tearing a hole in the hull and ending their season." "I need to get over it." "We're going forward slowly." "Should be able to drag it through." "Mike can keep going." "Hang on there." "Pull like you've never pulled before." "Fuck." "That does not sound good." "Come on." "Million dollar machine right now in my hands." "Slowy inching." "(Dredge hull scraping on bottom)" "Fuck, yeah." "We're floating." "Winches are off and I'm still drifting." "Oh shit, that's a relief." "We just came over the hump." "Dredge settled into the pond and I can tell that we're floating." "Good job, guys." "I think we're where we need to be." "That was a little more stressful than I was expecting." "I'm gonna start dredging." "Aye aye Captain." "And here we go." "Jason can now cut a path through the tailings." "We don't have a choice." "We have to dig through that to get over where Kevin wants us to go." "All that right there is washed, it's gonna beat the shit out of the trommel again." "It's already been through there once." "Next 24 hours are gonna be rough." "Still to come...this season... on "Gold Rush"" "There's the problem." "This is a rusty." "That's close." "Yeah." "We are kind of dead in the water at this point." "Forty." "We're well behind right now." "Yeah, we're in trouble." "This isn't the way it's supposed to be, alright." "Hey hey." "Hey." "Hey!" "Oh shit." "I never thought it'd come to this." "That cut's done." "I'm done." "I lost my whole team." "Oregon was meant to be a beautiful homecoming." "It's just turned into an absolute nightmare." "You may be watching the Hoffmans mine their last bit of dirt." "Right now we're just pushing some dirt back." "Got a little bit of extra overburden stacked up here but..." "That's all right." "Get it dealt with." "We've got a much smaller crew this season, which.., means there's not a lot of margin for error, you know." "Everybody's got to pull their weight." "Narrator:" "At Scribner Creek, Parker's crew is pushing harder than ever." "The wash plant's running pretty good... here." "I think we've work out the majority of the kinks." "There's definitely a lot more pressure on now." "We have to get some gold out of the ground and make some money." "Narrator:" "So far this season, they have mined 638 ounces of gold worth three-quarters of a million dollars." "But...that's only 15% of Parker's 4000 ounce, 4.8 million dollar goal." "In a radical move to hit his target, he's tasked his foreman Rick to open a second operation at Indian River." "Yeah." "I'm pretty proud of Rick, you know." "He's done a really good job." "He's come a long way." "Five years ago when he started out at Big Nugget, he didn't know anything about moving dirt." "This is the first time Rick will really be on his own." "Looking forward to seeing how he deals with it." "All right, super truckers." "Roll it." "Five miles west, Parker's relying on Rick to get 1,000 ounces out of his Indian River cut." "Got three trucks now, thankfully.." "Still just moving mud man." "That's the name of the game right now." "I'm hoping within... maybe two weeks we can start sluicing." "If we've got the people down here, then we can do it." "Rick has a fleet of six vehicles digging down in search of gold rich pay dirt." "There is a huge sense of pride in any endeavor." "This is my first shot at running my own operation, you know." "And I... worked hard to get here." "This is really where my heart's at." "I really want to help Rick prove to Parker that he can do his own thing, and..." "I hope it works out for him and for all of us." "But we'll have to see how that goes." "What's up?" "Ah, really." "Yeah." "Yeah." "Um," "Well, no, I'm not gonna miss that." "So.." "Yeah." "Well, thanks." "Yeah, thanks." "So." "I got to go home for a funeral." "My grandpa died." "Fuck, man." "That's too bad." "I think I'll only be gone for about five days." "It's uh, bad timing." "I'm fuckin' sorry man." "Not a problem." "Is there anything I can do to help?" "No, I just got to look at flights today." "I saw him right before I left." "Well, I guess this is our year for fuckin funerals." "Holy hell." "I got to run." "All right." "Parker was pretty understanding." "I don't really want to leave this place." "But I, you know.." "I can't not go." "I can't..." "Not be there for my mom and the rest of my family." "So..." "This Indian River cut is my season." "I hate leaving it but it's just gonna have to happen." "Now down." "Okay now." "Nice and easy, Hunter." "In Oregon," "'Kay now." "Boom out." "All mining has stopped at the Buckland claims." "I'll uh, swing this block around." "You're clear." "Narrator:" "While Todd's son, Hunter," "And Dave Turin build a platform for a wet feeder, that will allow them to finally run their clay rich pay dirt." "A conventional feeder uses a conveyor to send material up to the screen deck." "A wet feed system washes the material, then uses gravity to send the slurry down to the wash plant, which means they've got to build a monster platform to raise the feeder pad by 25 feet." "There's not many guys I've seen that has... the finesse and the controls that Hunter has at a young age." "He's one of the best operators I've seen." "He's just a natural." "Yeah." "It's nice to step up and have this job of building a wall... to get the new feeder put in place." "Everybody, you know, is counting on the wash plant getting up and running, Getting this wall done." "So, uh..." "Yeah, it is a lot more responsibility but, uh" "I'm glad to have it." "Each of these blocks weighs two tons." "Easy easy." "There's no room for error." "I don't want to lose my fingers or my toes." "Straight down." "Nice!" "Nice, Hunter!" "To build up the platform," "Hunter backfills with rock, then tamps it down." "When you're stacking blocks like this, you're gonna build a wall really high." "If your base isn't solid, then your whole wall is gonna get out of whack." "Good job." "There better be some gold down there at the bottom of that cut." "Safety officer Trey Paulson needs to inspect the 150-ton structure before the wet feeder can be installed." "We need to make sure everything's square before we get going." "Oh, geez." "That's not good" "This section of block is bowed out." "And then if you look at the far end, it is actually leaning out." "When it comes down to something like this, you just have to make a call." "You don't want somebody to end up getting hurt, or even worse, killed." "And with a wall like this," "It's,you know, it's not good." "Hey, Dave." "Um..." "I was just looking at the blocks." "Did you see that top section of the wall?" "This is gonna be a high-impact area and I think we did a piss-poor job building for it, personally." "Um..." "I don't think this is gonna work." "Shit." "Hey Mike." "At the Beets camp, there's an emergency." "The dredge is like..." "Tipped over last night." "Minnie wants you to go..." "She wants you to go down there to help." "(Groans) Shit." "Tony and Kevin are away." "The crew scrambles to rescue the stricken dredge." "It's a pretty easy job up there in the wheelhouse most of the time." "But.." "Shit." "When it fuckin' goes wrong, it goes wrong." "And it" "And it's a disaster." "Holy shit." "I haven't seen that thing like that." "Even the first sinking wasn't that fuckin' bad." "For the second time in six weeks, Tony's million dollar dredge, has sunk." "Just fuckin woke me up on my day off." "Gotta go down and see what the scoop is with the dredge." "Tony's got a lot of money tied up in this machine." "And here it is sitting there looking like that." "It's not a fuckin' proud moment." "Fuck." "Don't even know where to start with this." "It's got to be something broken in the pontoons." "To take on water that quick." "Tony and Kevin are not gonna be pleased about this one." "Boss Tony and son Kevin are in Alaska at an auction sourcing parts for their second dredge." "It's always the goal to have this thing running when Tony shows up." "That's what makes him happy, right?" "Right now we're just pumping out the pontoons that we can get at." "We still have too much water to get at the pontoons that are keeping us down so we're just trying to" "Help lighten the load, get rid of some weight." "So we can get that dredge floating again." "This fuckin' thing." "When it's not running he's missing out on 1,000 bucks an hour." "That's a lot of fuckin' money at the end of the day." "If that's even possible." "We're fighting a losing battle here." "Should we pump out the pond?" "Yep." "What do you think about that?" "We've got a bigger pump, at the camp." "Yeah, that would do it, I guess." "Mike brings in a monster pump capable of shifting 6,000 gallons per minute." "It's pumping water." "Now we just got to let it do its thing, give it some time to get this water level down." "At the Buckland mine, Todd's $80,000 wet feed system has arrived." "We've been waiting for this for quite some time." "It is the last piece we need to be able to get the plant up and running." "But no one is running dirt and no one is making money until Dave has fixed the wall." "Here's the deal." "You wanted a wet feeder." "I brought the feeder." "You said you'd have a wall." "You didn't tell me you'd have a wall in two weeks." "So this is what we're waiting on?" "Yep." "Those guys are ready to bring pay dirt." "This is the bottleneck." "We ain't running dirt without this frickin' wall." "Would you hurry the frick up." "Everybody's worried." "Right now we're not producing any gold." "Right now the wash plant is not moving." "And it is because I don't have the stupid wall built. ." "So," "Umm." "Yeah, I get it." "I feel the pressure." "The wall is dangerously unstable." "Dave needs to reinforce it before they can install the wet feed system." "We're gonna cable back to the joint, and then," "Juan is building a plate, that's and then in the center of it" "And grab the corner and then in the center of it" "And grab the corner" "No, in the center of it we're gonna pull with another cable and tension it to these and we're gonna bury these." "Okay." "Dave's plan..." "Fix steel plates to the outside of the wall," "Attach them to concrete dead weights using cables and apply tension using an excavator." "Here we go." "Perfect." "You want to do.." "We want to do them just like that?" "I like it." "I mean we're already pulling against that block." "Once you bury this, there's absolutely no way that wall's falling." "Alright." "Pull this back, Hunter." "Be careful now." "We just have to go easy." "Pull it." "Easy." "Look out!" "Clang." "Whoa whoa." "Hunter." "A little too much." "Holy frick!" "Actually snapped that." "Hunter doesn't quite know exactly how much tension he has on it." "He pulled a little too hard." "And we broke a turnbuckle." "What we're doing here is real, real fine work." "So." "I can't say that, you know, it is his fault really." "Nice an easy." "We'll just pull on it a little bit." "A bit more." "Good." "Dave's retro fit has worked." "The wall's done." "We're ready to go." "The 25-foot pad is finally stable." "Yada, man." "Let's go put it together." "Oh." "Rib me." "Yeah." "Keep going, Dan." "This season started rough." "I hope to turn it around." "I really want to get gold down here in the lower 48." "If we don't kick some ass, I don't see us going beyond this year." "We got to get some gold." "Parker's wash plant, Sluicefer, is racing through boundary cut pay dirt." "There's just two of us in here, you know." "We're moving quite a bit of dirt." "We've been able to, pretty consistently be doing about 250 yards an hour... for 10, 11 hours a day." "So." "That's um, that's not too bad for just two people." "Parker digs pay in the 360." "Here we go." "Time to get some more dirt into this beast." "Tyson loads the wash plant." "It's exhausting." "And especially with the smaller crew this year." "Some days I don't leave until 9:00, 10:00." "Just 'cause shit needs to get done." "Rick's got his stuff going on down on Indian River, so.." "We don't have a whole lot of reinforcements to call on if we do need help." "Fuck, it's all frozen." "That's all frozen mud." "Tyson and I don't have time to deal with this." "Frozen ground means running Scribner with a two-man crew is impossible." "Hey Tyson." "You got a copy." "I can hear you, Parker." "Uh yeah." "This initial cut back here is still fuckin' frozen." "Does that mean we're going to have to rip the whole thing?" "Yes." "We need to put trucks in here." "That means pulling Brennan and the trucks off the..." "Indian River down there." "I'm coming back in a minute." "Don't do anything." "That's true I guess." "Parker needs to strip back the entire cut and haul out the dirt with rock trucks to allow the permafrost beneath to thaw." "And of course, Rick's not here." "Fuck!" "I mean right now this plant's the only thing paying the bills." "Paying the bills is what has to happen here." "So." "I think this means shutting Rick down." "We all fucked up here." "Something happened." "And it cost the boss a lot of fuckin' money." "Mike and Jason have been pumping out the dredge pond for the last 12 hours." "I think we're done." "and they finally drain the pontoons." "I thought today I'd be, have a chance to stay dry." "But.." "As it turns out, pumping those pontoons to get the sand out... needs to be done before we can fire up." "Tony's not gonna be very happy when he shows up." "This wasn't a mechanical failure." "This wasn't natural causes." "This was 100% human error." "Kevin and Tony arrive back from the auction." "Hey guys." "Howdy." "We are dredging....tailings." "It's been washed." "You can see the sand line on that sluice run." "There's that full of sand." "Hold it." "Fuck." "Yeah." "And, once it's full of sand the water had to go somewhere." "and the hatches were open." "And guess where it went." "As the dredge ran through its own tailings," "The fine sand they contained plugged up the sluices." "The hatches on the deck beneath were open," "So when the sand and water spilled over into the pontoons," "It sank the dredge." "Someone wasn't paying attention." "Well, this was a night shift problem." "That's what it comes down to." "Yeah." "Get rid of him." "Get rid of him." "Perfect." "We just turned the drain pumps off." "So the pond is starting to fill up as we speak." "This is groundwater level right now." "So, once the water level comes up, that's gonna be the next step." "The combination of groundwater and the supply from holding pump soon has the dredge floating." "Welcome aboard, Tony. ." "We're ready." "'Bout time you got it rolling." "Ready as I'm gonna be." "Before Jason starts mining the new ground, he needs to turn the dredge 90 degrees." "and the tailing's conveyor must rotate right over the road." "We are moving. ." "What's the back end look like?" "Is it close to the shore?" "That's looking pretty fuckin' close." "Oh, wait." "Shit." "Got to have decent chicken maneuvers to get this through here." "Holy shit." "Fuckin' this close.." "This close." "The dredge has successfully turned." "Okay Mike." "You're free." "Go ahead." "Here we go." "Staying up, like it should though." "We need to see some gold in that box." "It's been too long." "In Oregon, the Hoffman crew is still waiting to get any gold from the Buckland." "You know, every hour that we're not running we're losing money." "So Juan's having to improvise." "Just trying to finish up his uh, this stand." "Making an adapter to be able to re-use this stand so we can put the blade mill right on top of this." "We got to make do with what we have." "Everyone's starting to lose a little faith." "So, hopefully this'll be able to get us back on the gold," "Bring the faith back up on the crew." "Hey, Hunter." "That's good." "The Hoffman crew has taken delivery of their $80,000 wet feed system." "Before they can get back to mining gold," "Todd needs to carefully position the 22,000-pound unit on the new pad." "Hunter." "We only have one of these and it took us forever to get it." "Pretty crucial that we don't drop this damn thing." "Okay, it's up to you." "Go ahead." "Go up, Hunter." "Nice and easy." "Lifting this is the last piece to getting the wash plant running." "Getting this wet feeder in is not something you can "F" up." "Whoa." "Whoa, whoa, whoa." "Hey!" "..." "Slow." "One bad move, it's down there." "It's done." "It's over with." "There goes our season." "Normally you wouldn't let a junior operator do this, but still working with Dave all week, so." "Dave felt like he was doing a good job." "Good to work together." "Okay." "Now come on ahead." "Real slow." "Whoa." "Whoa, stop." "Whoa." "Oo hoo, hoo hoo." "Don't anybody fart." "Whoa." "Oo hoo, hoo hoo." "Don't anybody fart." "Hunter, come down a little bit." "Little more." "Little more." "Stop!" "Perfect." "That's it." "Woo!" "Ho ho ho ho." "Holy frig." "Right there, buddy." "Hunter!" "Good job!" "Like a frickin' pro, man." "I'm glad we got it all in." "Hey, we didn't drop it." "The season continues." "It's time to fire up the wet feed system and find out if it can run their clay-rich pay dirt." "All right, Dave." "You're getting power right now." "Okay." "Here we go." "It's going." "Come on, baby." "Wet feed system coming on!" "Yeah, we got water!" "Let's run some pay dirt!" "Here we go, boys." "First load of pay." "Monster Red's alive." "Everything seems to be running good!" "That is the muddiest, stickiest clay stuff that we've ever ran." "It's going through the plant." "We're actually getting some gold right now." "We're finally running again." "Things might be turning around for us big time." "So far, so good, man!" "Nice, man." "200 yards an hour right there." "It's a hell of a start." "I'll tell you what though." "Without that wet feeder," "Can't run in this gooey stuff." "We need to find some good gold down here or we're in real trouble." "But we got the plant that we need to do it." "That's the most important thing for now." "Thank god for second chances." "This is our second chance." "Let's see if we can make good on it." "Anyway." "This stuff looks pretty good." "Let's go see how it weighs up." "At Scribner Creek, Rick has returned from his grandpa's funeral, in time for Parker's weekly weigh-in." "Howdy, boys." "Yo." "Hey." "How was your trip home?" "Ah." "It was all right." "You know, seen my family." "Say bye to my grandpa." "Yeah." "There's been, there's been a bit of that this season, huh?" "Yeah." "Brutal." "Yup." "All right." "Shall we weigh this up?" "Let's weigh it up." "To hit his 4,000-ounce $4.8 million season goal," "Parker needs this clean-up to deliver around 150 ounces." "60" "Oh, yeah, this is going to be a good one." "90." "There's 100" "Keep pouring." "130." "Keep pouring." "140." "All right." "148.2" "Worth $175,000." "That's our best one so far, ain't it?" "Yeah." "That's a good week." "Yeah." "With this 148," "It will put us uh, 'bout 786." "Their total haul so far this season..." "Is worth $940,000 dollars" "Well." "We're getting there." "We might need a second jar." "I'm sure I have one somewhere." "So umm," "I don't want you to get down about this, but" "For the time being we're just having to park everything at Indian River." "Because..." "Just got a lot of dirt to move up there." "It's just, without having trucks, then we'll have two operations in our sluicer." "Alright, Then we just have to keep at least one up and going." "And" "We don't even have a plant down there yet, so." "In my mind, it's fairly easy twice." "Not that we all like it, but..." "It's got to keep gold on the scale." "How long do you think that will have to continue for." "Well, I don't know." "You know, it's just frustrating." "I'm promised this second operation and then it's just taken away." "It's just fuckin' bullshit." "The idea of two operations is real nice but we're here to run a business." "Yeah." "And if that means having one plant going 24/7, rather than two operations that are both floundering around...." "Then that's what we have to do." "Doesn't really matter who likes it or who doesn't like it." "You know, fuck, I don't like it." "Hey man." "You got to pull all these guys out of here." "Um.." "Got to go back to the boundary cut." "Just when we start getting somewhere, Parker's pulling my whole crew." "That's it." "Subs by JackT" "On the next "Gold Rush..." Subs by JackT" "On the next "Gold Rush..."" "Enough is enough." "It's scary." "Panic Stop, Panic Stop.." "That doesn't sound right." "Something break?" "It's cracked right off." "Ow." "What the fuck?" "We ain't got gold in that cut." "You're nowhere deep enough." "You're gonna be well over 100 feet." "You're telling me that I'm only half-way down?" "I'm scared." "I'm really scared now."