Gold Rush

Parker, you got a copy? Parker?

Yeah. Go ahead.

We mined out the Unforgiven cut so fast,

so we're gonna shut the plant down.

All right.

I'll let Chris know and he can head down for a cleanup.

Copy that.

Parker Schnabel is in a hole.

Two months into the season,

he's brought in just 400 ounces,

worth around $800,000.

And now, his only gold-producing wash plant

is shut down.

So the pit Tyson's in right now

should've lasted two to three weeks.

What was it, a week?

Like, just flew through it.

So, yeah, we're back to having no money coming in,

which is not very good.

Parker has spent nearly everything he has

on his new $15 million Dominion Creek claim.

And he's spending more

every day to get down to gold.

With no other cuts ready to run,

the chances of going bust

are at an all-time high.

We'll clear everything out.

See if we have any gold in here.

Gold recovery expert, Chris Doumitt,

pulls the gold-catching mats from Sluicifer.

Hi, Doumitt.

Hey, T.

How is Parker doing?

Well, kid's under a lot of stress.

And he... He's just...

It's a lot of mental stress.

The kid's never had debt like this, right?

I doubt most people

will ever have debt like he has right now.

In the spring, we're spending, what,

a million dollars a week?

And how much have we brought in?

-That's, uh... -Yeah.

You know, they gotta start calling in those debts

and we gotta get some gold to fulfill those debts.

If we don't pay the bills, we lose what we've got,

and what we got invested into it.

So, that's kind of riding on his mind, too.

Yeah, for sure.

I have a dream of sluicing a thawed cut one day.

Wow.

I dream of a beach in the Bahamas,

but if you wanna sluice thawed ground...

You gotta raise your standards, son.

-All righty. See ya. -Good to see ya.

Ten miles away,

Parker rolls up on foreman Mitch Blaschke,

who's stripping their first cut

at Dominion Creek,

the Money Pit.

What's happening?

How's your levels?

Oh, not too bad.

How do you feel about this level

you're cutting to in that ditch?

I mean, it feels like pay.

Okay, I have a thought.

Let's hear it.

Because this is all pretty well dried out,

so you could probably sluice your ditch, right?

Yeah.

Okay.

Desperate to get gold coming in,

Parker now wants to sluice the ditches.

Over the last six weeks,

Parker's crew has stripped 24 acres of the Money Pit

down to frozen pay.

Around the edge of the cut,

they've dug ditches from melt water

from the thawing pay gravels to drain into.

Most of the cut is still frozen.

But there's a small amount of thawed pay dirt

deep in the ditches

that's ready to run through a wash plant.

What plan are you thinking?

That one that's here.

Probably.

Little son of the Sluicifer there?

Son of Sluicifer?

We gotta get a name for it.

It's hard when it's just like,

"That... Which one? That wash plant."

The Macon SD-600, you mean?

Yes, that one. Exactly.

The nearly-new wash plant

was included in the deal

when Parker bought Dominion.

All that needs to happen to that plant

where it sits is the water line hooked up.

And the suction thrown in the creek.

And we could, like, do it for a bit.

All right.

Sounds good.

Well, we've decided we need to fire up

Sluicifer's twin here.

Now, we're just making sure that we've got it all ready

to start running.

We've gotta start pulling the ditching out

and we can start making some money.

It's gotta come from somewhere

and, well, hopefully, this plant's gonna catch us some gold.

Big day for us here.

Finally sending some pay to a wash plant.

Emma, won't you come over here to the 480?

Copy that, Mitch.

We're on our way to start hauling some pay.

All right. This is it right here.

This scoop makes the first truckload of pay

heading to a wash plant at Dominion.

Let's do this.

Woo-hoo!

There's so much riding on this here.

This is gonna tell us all about this ground

that Parker bought,

and what's really in it.

We're just gonna fire this plant up and see if it works.

We got water, which is good.

And we got a screen that shakes, which is good.

Now just see if we can add some dirt to it.

Now...

almost $18 million in the hole,

Parker's finally running pay dirt at Dominion.

Hopefully, there's lots of gold in it.

Hey, Morgan,

how's that stockpile looking over there?

Hey, man,

the stockpile's getting pretty small.

Uh-oh.

100 miles east of the Klondike gold fields,

Rick Ness and his crew are on the brink

of running out of his only source of money.

With the stockpile for the pay getting low,

you know, we're gonna be completely out.

And if we run out without a plan,

that means the plant's off and we're not running,

and that means less gold.

After taking a year off

that left him nearly broke,

Rick first sluiced easy to hit stockpiled pay dirt.

But now, it's nearly gone.

He needs to figure out his next move,

or his dreams of a comeback

are dead in the water.

What we really need to do is up production

and find some new ground.

So, right now, I'm heading over to look at Rally Valley.

Can't stare at it every day as I go by,

but, you know, I'm getting a little anxious to get back in there.

Two seasons ago...

This is one of the scariest things I've ever done.

Rick removed over a million yards of dirt

to hit a gold bonanza in Rally Valley.

Oh, wow.

In just six weeks,

it paid out over 1,100 ounces.

Awesome.

But the 190-foot deep pit...

Ooh, .

...became too dangerous to mine.

that wall's caving in.

This season,

Rick is determined

to finish what he started.

Honestly, I kind of thought

that we'd be in better shape by now this time of year.

I thought it would be really pretty much ready to go.

There's rock coming down,

that's not fully stable yet.

I can't afford to put people in here right now

because someone will get hurt or worse.

You know, and I'm not gonna put anybody in my crew

in that kind of position.

And not all the gold in the world's worth that.

I mean, the water's another story.

I mean, we were probably about 50 feet

below that water level.

So, I've gotta pump all that water out,

but, you know, there's no sense even doing that

until it's safe to get in there.

And it's still not safe.

It's unfinished business in a way that, you know,

I sunk a ton of money into this

and I want what's out of it.

You know, I want the gold at the bottom,

you know, that's what I want.

I want that for myself and I want that for my crew.

We gotta keep gold coming in somehow.

Rick desperately needs

an alternative site to mine.

Heading upstream,