On this Gold Rush...
-...late in the season...
...Tony Beets faces an expensive decision.
Oh, yeah. That'll do it.
We're losing 40 bucks a minute.
We're at the end of the season. Every second counts.
Rick Ness' crew faces devastating news.
I have a tumor inside me on my lung. I got one on my spine.
Talked to my doctor, he wants me to go under the knife.
Everyone's on edge. Break one of the pieces of equipment here,
we are
We're all in on this right now.
And Fred Lewis and his band of brothers...
This Mayor's Cut could be the last chance to hit good ground.
-Holy crap. ...go dark...
Looks like Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
...to save their season. -Whoa! Whoa!
-Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Oh!
King of the Klondike,
Tony Beets is fighting
through the shortest mining season ever.
In the next couple of weeks,
the temperatures will plunge below freezing
and his chance of cashing in on record-high gold prices
will be over.
To stay on track,
Tony has daughter Monica running the wash plant
at the mega cut, along with childhood friend,
an honorary Beets family member, Ruby Mahoney.
Great as this material is, it's been some of the most
difficult material that I've had to run.
And all of these big rocks are beating up our plant really hard.
Oh, me.
Hey, can I get somebody on the water? We're shutting down.
- Kevin, do you copy? Kevin.Go for Kevin. Go for Kevin.
I'm gonna need your assistance.
Okay.
Went to get in my truck, I looked over,
water flowing out of this one. Water flowing out of this one.
And there was so much back pressure
that these lids...
...that you see right here and sit like so, blew up.
The mega cut trommel sifts out large rocks
and sends fine material into a distributor.
From there, six chutes evenly feed the sluice runs.
But large rocks have blocked the chutes,
and the built-up pressure has blown up the inspection lids.
You're literally blowing material and putting it right there.
There is not in the sluice box,
which means that does me no good.
Monica calls on brother
-and master mechanic Kevin... Oh.
...to get them back up and running.
What chute have clogged?
-This one? These two.
Lids blew right off.
like this does not belong in here.
What, Kevin?
Yeah.
I wanna see inside the distributor box.
Does it look clogged from the top?
No. Looks all right.
So either a hole in the punch plate, or
the tailings are piling over.
Yeah. One of those two.
Take a look. See, huh?
Oh. Let's have a better look. Yeah.
Oh, yeah, that'll do it.
Huh? Yeah.
A foot-long hole in the punch plate
is letting big rocks through and blocking the chutes.
Hey, Tony. Hey, Tony. Can you come meet us
by the, uh, punch plate on the trommel?
Hey, Tony.
I think I found where the rocks are coming from.
Well, Monica found it.
No.
Yeah.
It might be about time, you think?
I think spend a couple days,
redo all the punch plate.
But then it's done, we don't have to worry about it for another 20 years.
If we don't do this, we're just gonna have progressively
more and more downtime.
More and more problems.
Yeah.
Sounds like a plan. Okay.
First, they'll remove the worn out punch plate
and replace it with six 8-feet sections,
then, weld the steel sections together
and fix them to the trommel.
Welder Cody Hunter
cuts out the old punch plate with an acetylene torch.
Heh.
A hundred miles east of Paradise Hill...
Ruby. Come here, babe.
...Rick Ness and his crew are gearing up
for the final push of the season.
She definitely likes bacon.
Oh, yeah. She loves the bacon.
Bacon's her thing.
You look like you're about to fall right to sleep anyway, Carl.
I don't think coffee would keep you up.
Yo. Here you go.
What am I supposed to do with that?
I thought you needed some fruit in your life.
No, he ate an orange last year.
That's right.
Well, should we get up to work and continue on?
Yeah, continue ripping on each other while we're working?
Best time of the day.
With just weeks before winter shuts them down,
Rick still needs 300 ounces to hit his season goal.
To get him there,
he's banking on the creek cut.
The gold's been nice and steady unlike last year,
which was a giant bust. Now this year just feels different.
You know, it's, with even everything we're up against this year
it's got a better vibe,
and it's just going much better.
But I still need to hit my 1,000-ounce target.
As long as we don't hit any major snags
or we don't get frozen out too early,
I think, uh, I think we're right on track.
Rock truck driver Chris Kruse
hauls overburden from the cut.
Every bit of gold that we get out of this new cut
is, uh, is gonna get us that much closer to our goal.
That's, that's the objective right now.
Get to our goal,
um, maybe even go beyond our goal
and, uh, get us back home to Milwaukee, man.
Lots of good food.
We're getting close enough to the end here
that I can, uh, I can more or less taste it.
I'm really missing pizza from back home.
I have not found any decent pizza whatsoever.
Chicken sandwich,
tacos, crispy chicken tacos.
Oh,
We are kind of crushing the numbers here with a small amount of people.
Operator Mark Doverspike
feeds the wash plant with gold-rich pay.
It's been work,
and we've had some long days and things have been good.
Like, we've been getting along.
We've all been kind of[bleep].
Chatting on the radio and harassing each other.
It's, uh, it's been good.
I absolutely am here to
get a gold bonus.
Basically, it's in everyone's best interest
to be on task, on time, getting this job done.
Oh, my back.
Mechanic Carl Rosk
needs to get the second rock truck running to keep the plant fed.
Oh... Oh, yeah.
Yeah, it's, It's been busy, man.
Like, holy smokes, it's been busy.
Finishing off a rock truck here that's been
broken down for a while. So we finally got parts for it. So...
You gotta fix the leak up on the valve cover, so...
Just trying to get it all done.
Mechanical stuff fails.
It just happens, really. That's why I have a job.
So, gotta keep the boys happy there,
and we're getting there just slowly, right?
-Yeah.
I just got a message here from my doctor
that he wants me to call him asap, so.
it could be something to do with my back.
You doing okay?
Two years ago,
Carl revealed he had a tumor growing on his spine.
I've got a lot of stuff on my plate right now, man.
I have a tumor inside me on my lung.
-I got one on my spine. -
And I got to get it looked at.
man. - Yeah.
Tumor? Like, do you have cancer?
No. Well, that's, we got to check it out, right?
While the tumor turned out to be benign,
it's left Carl in constant pain.
Has anybody seen Carl?
I just saw him peel out of here.
And he's heading out towards camp.
What's up, man?
Yeah, I have a little bad news here, dude. So...
Um, I talked to my doctor, and he wants me
to go under the knife, like, right now.
-Holy - Yeah.
It's, like, non-negotiable, right? Like, it's...
-Special surgeon, -So you got to go right away.
Carl's surgeon has a slot for him to remove the tumor.
If he can get to the hospital in Kelowna, BC,
a thousand miles away in just three days.
And then it's, like, uh, they haven't really been
telling me what kind of recovery I'm gonna be, right?
Like, am I gonna be able to come back to get everything, right?
Because I got to leave in such short notice, right? So...
Yeah. Well, I, uh, none of that should matter.
I mean, it's... I've been watching you
limp around for last couple years, right?
-Yeah. - It's about time.
It's gonna hurt us, like, you're myguy here, right?
- Like, this place doesn't go without you. -Yeah.
-But... - I feel like I'm letting everybody down.
No, no, you shouldn't.
I mean, I was shocked at first, Carl,
but honestly, I'm happy for you.
- And I hate seeing you like that. So... -Yeah.
You think about it, Carl. You won't have to do that all the time.
I know. I can't wait.
[bleep], man. You'll be back to backflips on your dirt bike in a month.
I appreciate it, dude.
- I really appreciate it, man. Thanks, Rick. -Yeah.
-And actually... -Yeah.
-I love you, buddy. -I love you, man.
You're gonna be a new man, Carl.
You're gonna be a new man.
You know, losing my mom a couple years ago,
it helped me realize, you know, that health is really important.
And, you know, it's, uh, it's about time he gets that surgery
and it's gonna hurt us really bad not having him here.
Um, but, honestly, it's what's best for him,
and I'm happy for him.
We're, uh, heading to Whitehorse,
I'm gonna get on a plane and head to Kelowna.
And we're gonna get this done finally, so...
A little, uh, anxious, I guess. But, uh,
be nice to be pain-free. Leaving the crew
at the worst possible time, but, uh, you know,
finally gonna get her done. So, I am ready.
I will be back. So I'm leaving my stuff all here.
I'm leaving my dog. So, yeah, I got to come back, so...
Oh, yeah, I know.
He thinks he's coming with me but he's not.
I'm sorry, you can't come.
Yeah. Thinks he's coming.
I'm sorry, buddy. You can't come with me, you know?
I know, I know, I know.
Last week, Tony had to leave.
I've got Stuart running water.
I got Stefan down here digging dirt.
I got Alex up on the hill,
feeding the Colonel, both loaders moving dirt.
Everything's going great.
We're back to business.
In Oregon's Elkhorn Mountains,
ex-Special Forces medic Fred Lewis
is fighting to keep his dream alive.
Last week, Fred opened up a new cut
on the site of the old Mayor's house
in the hope of finding virgin ground.
This Mayor's Cut could be
our last chance to hit good ground.
If Fred's hunch proves right,
the new cut could turn his season around.
We're all in on this right now.
Got a nice system set up.
Well, we're able to keep up with the two excavators.
Kyle Pletzke uses the 988 loader
to run paydirt through the grizzly bars
to filter out heavy rocks.
I've got this big old dinosaur,
and she can really move the pay.
Seems to be going really well.
In the smaller L60,
foreman Kendell Madden
transports the pay to the wash plant.
Moving a lot of dirt.
Operating nice and smooth. That's what we like to see.
Former Sergeant Stuart McKenzie
is on water duty.
Kind of inherited the pump.
It's a pain in the ass.
But I've kind of become a jack of all trades,
master of none.
To whatever comes to mind. So I have done a little bit of everything, so...
Kind of sucks, though, because, uh,
we really don't have that much gold at this moment in time.
4-0 P.S.I. Fred, 4-0 P.S.I.
Copy.
Yo, what the [bleep]?
This thing's overheatin' bad.
Fred, yo, we've got an issue, dude.
This thing is overheating. It's bad.
Well, that is going to up things, if that's not a quick fix.
Holy crap. Listen to it.
-Whoo! -That sucks.
Yeah, it could be a water pump,
but we could be losing it to, uh, bad head gasket.
That's a cheap part.
However, timewise, it could be weeks
to get that thing torn apart and get everything here that we need.
-That's if they have the part anywhere near here. - Yeah.
Without a licensed mechanic
Fred and his crew must battle through on their own.
Let's not cry over it.
Uh, reality is we're gonna have to use the Volvo for everything now.
We'll just have to keep it moving.
Just look at our bucket standing here, man.
I mean, I've got less than half the amount of yardage
that I can move at one time.
With its three-yard bucket,
the L60 is less than half the size of the 988.
Okay, well, I'll put my head around this.
In the meantime, do what we gotta do
to keep this one moving all the time.
I'll give it my all. I'm not saying I won't,
but I just want you to know ahead of time
that I don't want this to fall on me
if we start falling behind.
No, it's not going to fall on you.
It's going to fall on the fact that that has a 10-yard bucket
and that has a 3-yard bucket.
I've got more pay than I could put through the plant.
That's probably the worst thing that could happen.
If I can't put pay through the Colonel,
I'm not going to get any gold, and the season's over.
Kyle now faces a Herculean task.
I'm just gonna have to fly around here as fast as I can and try to keep up.
We've got to come all the way around top road...
It's basically locked in. Got overburden on one side,
pay on the other.
It doesn't leave any room for me to hop in.
He has to collect pay at the Mayor's Cut,
take it 100 yards along the upper road to the grizzly bars
to filter out heavy rock, then run it to the plant.
For every five trips, he must take away one load of tailings,
return along the upper road,
and dump in the old Swamp Cut before starting over again.
Thank you.
Just kind of constantly on me to keep moving, keep moving, keep moving.
I got to go all the way back to the opposite side of the mine...
get this pay over to the grizzly...
Right now this motor won't run fast enough for me.
I still have to be safe.
Gonna run it through the grizzly. Pull it out of the grizzlies.
From the grizzly's to the pay pile.
Now for the tailings.
It's probably a 10-minute round trip.
Kyle was really having to work like a madman trying to keep up.
I kind of feel bad...
The faster I load, the more tailings I make...
And, uh, well, the more he's got to work.
Three buckets left, Fred.
We're out of dirt!
All our pay's been already processed through the Colonel.
We gotta shut her down early.
It's soul-crushing 'cause everything's working right now,
but we just don't have pay 'cause we don't have the machines.
Stuart, shut the water down, buddy!
What thenow?
We're out of pay, man.
Already?
- It's not possible, is it? -Sucks, you know?
Damn it.
We're going to have to do something else.
Keep that Volvo running full-time.
We're gonna have to do night shifts, I think.
That's the only way to do it.
Yeah.
Stockpiling day and night, keep the plant up and running.
So I'm going to put you, Kendall, and Alex.
'Cause you guys all have the most experience.
Give it a good week.
Let's just do a whole week of night shifts and see how that helps.
- Gotta do something, man. -All right, man,
All right.
Decided it was the best thing to do.
Pretty much going to try and keep things moving constantly.
If we can stockpile enough pay
and we get everything set so the night crew could run...
pull every bit of dirt out of here we can.
To get the plant back up and running, Fred orders a split shift.
The day crew uses the loader to stockpile pay.
Then, the late shift will use the same loader
to feed the wash plant and remove tailings.
How's it going? It's Fred.
Fred calls the claim owner who leased him the 988.
Well, good and not good.
Everything is going good,
except... I think the 988 is done.
Um, Kyle, being the one that operates it the most,
seems to think it's the head gasket.
Well, I don't know what to tell you, Fred.
It's gonna take three weeks.
So what do you want to do?
All right. Well, let me get back to you,
and we'll talk about it in a little bit.
All right.
that. I'm just gonna use the money
that I would have used in that loader
to get another one. He's not getting it done.
With enough pay stockpiled to run for at least five hours,
it's time for the first night shift.
All right, everything's looking good, gents.
Pretty sunset on the mine, but you know what?
I don't have enough time to look up and enjoy it.
Got to keep my nose down on the ground and...
keep on working hard.
Down here at the Mayor's Cut now,
the longer we can run, better chances we have
to find as much gold as possible.
You know, running this without Carl, is just, uh...
it's so beyond not ideal that it's not even funny.
You know, it's flat-out scary.
At Lower Duncan Creek,
mechanic Carl Rosk has left the claim for urgent surgery.
Carl, you know, my buddy, my mechanic,
and he's, uh... he's gonna be sorely missed.
Man, it's just, uh... I'm not going to let my guard down.
I'm very, very aware what time of year it is, and how every second counts.
I miss the guy. It's not easy not having a friend here
and not having a buddy to work with.
And so is not having a mechanic.
It's really, really not fun either.
We're gonna have two down rock trucks,
so everyone's on edge...
not to break anything.
'Cause you break one of the pieces of equipment here, we are
I'm not a full-time mechanic,
I can't run the computers.
I can do small fixes, a little bit of welding, a little bit of wrenching...
To bring up another mechanic here is...
It's a... it's a long call,
especially at the tail end of this season right now.
We lost a day's... we're losing thousands and thousands of dollars.
We lost Carl, which is, uh, super unfortunate.
You know, if he's not busy pulling wrenches, he'll jump a machine.
You know, he'll do whatever needs to be done.
And that's what we're gonna lose.
What in the is going on here?
Why will you not dig?
Gotta be kidding me.
Something's going on with the bucket on this thing. Damn it!
I'm in the 700, yeah. Something's going on with it now,
I'm going to need you to come out here and take a look at this thing.
On my way, boss. Heading there now.
At Lower Duncan Creek,
Rick Ness is without a mechanic
and his 700 excavator is down with a broken bucket.
Former pipefitter Ben Bellai is the only crew member
with enough welding experience to attempt the fix.
This is the spot where I had Carl fix it last time.
Yep.
He did not want to do it 'cause it's not right.
So unfortunately, we're throwing one more Band-Aid at it
before we fix it right.
Two months ago, Carl welded the collar back on
when it failed the first time.
How do we get this to work?
Weld, weld, weld to make it tighter, right.
Just trying to build this up more... ugly.
I'll send this bucket out for you to fix properly this winter,
but we just need to get this bucket off,
re-weld this collar back on,
just like Carl did,
and slam it back in service.
Sounds good. Get ready. -All right.
The bucket on the 700 excavator
is connected to the arm by two pins
and secured by welded columns.
Carl's weld has failed, causing the pin to loosen, making a bucket unusable.
Now Rick and Ben must attempt to re-weld the collar.
Harder.
We should be out in the field, moving dirt, you know.
It's a big push here at the end of season.
You know, Carl's off to get better,
and it's up to us to keep things going.
I mean, uh, we have to finish this strong for him, you know?
How are you, buddy?
Missin' his Dad. Look at that sad face.
Oh, the tow hauler just pulled in.
Good.
Perfect.
Yep.
There we go. yeah, buddy!
Bingo.
yeah!
The collar, boss, is gonna go back onto this side right here,
and it's gonna be all lined up.
This is gonna be flush to kind of look like this.
-Let's make it happen. - You got some work.
Every minute that this machine's down,
we're falling behind out on the cut, right?
And at the end of the season like this, it's not where you want to be,
like, we had so much happen,
we had to scramble, like, to get this creek cut going,
like, we're barely... barely staying ahead.
And something like this could, uh, you know, derail everything.
So we need to get this thing hammered back together quick
and get it back out in the field, digging.
I can smell my hair burning!
Let's start doing some grinding.
Sent a little video of Champ to Carl
while he's waiting for surgery,
-His dog being a... absolute maniac...
...like normal.
So, this is all cleaned up now,
all the welds are gone, it's level and all we have to do
is put the pin in through here
and line everything up, tack all around it and weld her up.
-All right. Ready? -Yeah.
Nice.
It's looking pretty good. Not that much play.
Okay. Okay, I got to go work.
Stop it.
Yeah.
Looks fine. Should go back together.
Just gonna take a hell of a lot of heating and welding,
and it should do the job.
Holy
Your dad is not gonna be happy.
A lot of uh...
A lot of a lot of work to get that thing done.
I think Carl would be happy about it.
yeah.
He'd be even happier that he didn't have to do it.
yeah. We got it, buddy.
Nice job. -Yeah.
Nice work.
Why the do I even have Carl here?
Thanks to Ben's welding skills,
the 700 is back in the game, and Rick is back on the gold.
Oh, yeah, This turned into quite a project, eh?
At Paradise Hill,
with the mining season slipping away,
Tony Beets' operation has been down for five days
as Cody and Brendan race
to finish welding the new punch plate into place.
Do you want to weld these, Tony?
They've only completed two-thirds of the project.
So, I did the math. It works out to about 40 bucks a minute.
That's more than most folks bring home in an hour.
We're losing that every minute the plant's not running.
Assuming only getting a single ounce per hour.
If we're getting two ounces, it's double. Three ounces, triple.
So hope you all can understand why we're a bit keen
to keep the plant going as much as possible in the limited time we have.
Oh!
-The old fellow is not real happy about it. -No.
Sucks being down.
Yeah, all right. Let's hit her.
Day six, and still no gold to show for the week.
Yeah.
What do you wanna do with these end pieces here?
Nothing?
Okay.
All right.
Already down $300,000 in lost gold,
Tony wastes no time getting the trommel back up and running.
Super-excited to get back to sluicing.
All right, copy. Firing up.
Let me know when the water shows up.
At Paradise Hill, Tony Beets is ready
to fire up his trommel after six days of repairs.
Yeah, real refreshing.
So we've always had a little bit of a leak where this
hose and valve connect to the 12-inch pipe there.
But, uh, I guess it decided when everything was shut off
that it was gonna be extra loose.
Okay.
Super-cool.
I see a huge pile of pay in front of us,
so that's movement in the right direction.
At the Elkhorn claim with just one loader,
Fred Lewis' crew is working split shifts
in the hope of a big payout from the Mayor's cut.
I know this next few weeks,
it's actually pretty crucial. I'm a little bit nervous about it.
If we don't get anything, we're screwed.
Oh, I see they put some more boulders in here.
Using the two excavators,
Khara, Stuart and Stefan
stockpile pay during the day shift.
We've got high expectations for what we need to get done here.
Back at camp, Kyle, Kendall and Alex
are ready for another night of feeding pay to the wash plant.
-We'll get up there. -We got some work to do.
Let's go do it. Can you throw me my jacket there?
-Freaking cold. -Yeah, it's a little nippy.
Got to give it up to Alex and Kyle, they're busting their asses.
Love it.
Bucket number 100 in the hopper.
Woo! Yee-haw!
To be keeping things moving along smoothly...
...sometimes we even impress ourselves.
Looks like Close Encounters of the Third Kindor something.
Seems like we're doing well. We're doing things right.
And we're working well together as a team.
So far, so good.
We've got a lot going against us right now,
but for the most part we're running.
That's all that matters.
Whoa! Whoa!
Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!
Oh!
-Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! -Stop, stop, stop, stop.
Dude.
I don't know if a rock slipped out under there or what.
Their shift is getting a little tired or something.
Dude, my fricking heart is racing.
All of a sudden I'm just look over
and I just see your whole thing
just start teetering sideways.
I think you might have to help me back out of this, dude. This is a little sketchy.
All right. Yeah.
We got it. Just straight back.
Let's not do that again, please.
-Yeah. I'll try not to. Man. - Sketchy night.
Stay safe.
Scared the living out of me.
Yeah, that makes two of us.
Let's, uh, let's keep all the wheels down on the ground, please.
Yeah, sounds good, bro.
Doing the night's been difficult and, you know,
been really wearing on me personally.
Go ahead and fix up the old 988.
Not sure that's an option.
With his crew on their last legs,
mine boss Fred has taken action.
When I say all in, I mean all in.
I'm gonna invest every penny I have
to make this season successful.
If this doesn't work, I'm gonna go down fighting.
Instead of taking three weeks
to fix the 988, he's leased a replacement.
Look at what we got.
Wow! Look at the bucket on that bad boy.
-Oh, I know. -That's great.
-Looks like we got a new loader.
With a 5-yard bucket,
the 380 can do nearly twice the work of the L60.
We gotta finish out the season strong, and that's the way to do it.
Whoo!
-Okay.
-Ta-da! -Yeah!
Awesome.
-That bucket's gonna help. -Check her out.
Five versus the three.
So we get almost double.
I didn't even look at it.
I called them and I said, uh, "I need a loader." And they're like, "What kind?"
Like, "I want the biggest bucket you have delivered to this spot."
-All right. -We got her to the end of the season.
-Really? -We can go get it dirty.
How many burnouts can we do in these tires?
At least one real good one.
All right, let's fricking fire it up.
Let's go get us some gold!
-Fire it up!
In the 380, Kyle gets back to stockpiling pay
and clearing tailings.
Oh, yeah.
Feels good to have a little power under my butt again.
Should be able to be pretty easy
to finish out the season in this big thing.
So we need to find a lot more gold.
And Kendell uses the second loader
to run the pay to the plant.
The Lewis crew is back to running Mayor's cut pay.
We got this new piece of equipment and I could tell morale is high.
Kyle's super-happy.
We're gonna be moving a lot more efficiently around the plant.
We got a bunch of stockpile pay.
We've got more pay in the hole to come out.
It's ready to rock and roll.
Hey, let's fire it up.
At Scribner Creek...
We have a very high bar here
as we're a tight-knit group that get a lot done
and we don't have time for screwing around.
I just don't want anybody around here to get comfortable.
-To not sluicing. -Yeah, man.
Tyson and Alec find a new use for an old tailings pond.
Whoa! Pretty nice.
Dreamin' of Mexico. right now, that's for sure.
Hey, hey.
Wow.
After six days of repairing their trommel,
the Beets finished their week empty-handed.
We had rocks in the chutes, meaning they were falling through the punch plate.
We did find some holes.
-Yeah, eventually. - Yeah.
But guaranteed every time you stop the trommel and look for holes, they're
- under the few rocks you left. -Every time.
Well...
You know, it's too bad because we're around 2,300
and it would've been nice to do a gold play this week.
You need to fix it.
If history repeats itself,
winter will shut down Tony in just two weeks,
but he still needs 700 ounces to hit his season goal.
I mean, we don't have any gold to weigh, so you guys might as well go back at it.
Get me some gold for next week.
Yeah, Mike, get your trommels looked at.
Yeah, Mike.
Bye.
You better have some good news, man.
I always have news.
Well, I mean, gold is good news, right?
You guys want to see? Yeah, it's rather do this
-than talk about all the to go through. Agreed.
Down a loader for the week, Fred's crew ran at half capacity.
That one's shiny.
-Nice -Couple good flakes.
The mayor's cut is the third cut for the Lewis crew.
They need it to pay off.
Not as much, guys, but 0.24
Worth just $456.
bringing Fred's season total to 2.98 ounces.
Well, not super-happy about this week, but I think that, uh,
how many more things could go wrong?
-Oh, let's not! Let's... Don't even say that.
We were kind of expecting a low one this week, but...
Keep on soldiering on anyway.
We don't have a lot of time left here.
The Mayor's cut is better than both previous cuts,
but Fred and his crew will need more than ten times
this much gold to save their season.
I think at this point, any waste of time is bad.
We need to use every second we have of every day at this point,
and just try and put as much much through the plant as we can.
-I don't like it, but... -This is why we're here.
-Yeah. -Let's get back to work.
-Back to work. -Let's do it.
if we can keep the plant up and running
and not have as many issues as we had last week,
we'll get more gold, but right now, this total's lower than the last.
Any obstacles to come at this point,
we're just going to punch 'em in the face and keep moving.
Paydirt, plant, gold. That's pretty easy.
Oh, you got me a beer? Thanks.
It's just always a bummer of a week when one of your friends goes down, right?
I did speak to him, uh, today,
and it's actually... Didn't go that good.
Supposed to be, like, six to eight hour surgery,
and you go home that night, and it didn't go that way at all.
Um, I don't know what happened, but he was in there for over 12 hours.
Holy
Yeah, and, uh, and he sure as hell didn't go home, like, he's still there.
And they don't know when they're gonna let him out.
Surprisingly,
or not surprisingly, I mean, he's in good spirits.
Yeah.
Hopefully, after he recovers
he'll be a spry young man again.
Hopefully, you know,
the result of this is a much better Carl.
-He's tough.
And you can't put him down that easy.
-No. - You know,
do we have a plan in place?
Like, what are we gonna do?
We're just trying to take care of our stuff.
If something breaks, hopefully it's nothing, major
and we can all get together and fix it
and keep going 'cause we're so close to the end.
On another note, we did still have work to do,
and we still have gold to weigh.
And this pan feels pretty heavy for me...
Whoo!
All right. Well, let's weigh that up.
At an average of 63 ounces a week
in the creek cut,
Rick has fallen short for the past two weeks.
He needs 77 ounces this week
to get back on track to his 1,000-ounce season target.
Forty, 50, over 60.
Just over 60.
- Oh, yeah. - Nice!
Sweet. -60.46 ounces.
Worth $115,000.
Rick and his crew land short of their goal
for the third week in a row.
In order to hit 1,000 ounces,
they need to pick up the pace
before winter freezes them out.
Well, cheers to Carl's health.
Yep, Carl's health.
- Cheers to that. - Cheers, boys.
Yeah.
I've known Carl 19 years now,
and there's no way this guy's not coming back.
He's got more titanium in him than, like, Terminator.
He'll be back.
Well, on the surface right now I'm scared[bleep].
trying to be mining without a mechanic.
At this point,
I just want my buddy Carl back in one piece.
Next time on Gold Rush...
It's definitely a bit of a tough year.
We're pretty short-staffed.
Parker Schnabel's crew
battles late-season troubles.
There's less people here to fix stuff.
So it's kind of all on my plate.
Fred Lewis gets vital help.
You know, that's just not acceptable.
If that was happening on our mine site,
Parker would come out and not be happy.
Man, now he knows our struggles.
What happened here, Tony?
And the long, harsh season
catches up with Tony Beets.
Check with Kevin, I don't know what happened.
It came apart.
That's honestly what happened.