Audible review
DOZER WARS
At Quartz Creek, Team Hoffman are finally ready to start processing paydirt with their turbo trommel, which has been sitting dock for two weeks, since it's arrival at Quartz Creek. Last week, the inventor of the turbo trommel installed a new motor, which is able to handle the pressure. Team Hoffman fires up the turbo trommel, and starts processing their first paydirt of the season. Two hours into the run, Todd Hoffman decides to shut down, to make sure that the trommel is producing gold, Todd doesn't want to process his stock piled paydirt, unless he's absolutely 100% sure that the trommel will catch every single grain of gold. Right off the batch, they start off by finding a few decent size nuggets, and as Todd says, that's the biggest nugget they've ever found in any of their mining seasons.
At Indian River, Team Turin is beginning to see bedrock in their first digsite, last week Todd Hoffman secured the upper bench of Indian River, from claim owner Greg McNiel, since it is shallow, parmafrost will not flood the pit as it begins to melt in the summer sun. Over the last 2 months, Team Turin has moved about 75,000 yards of dirt from cut one, and has dug up 170 ounces of gold, worth about $272,000 by themselves. Dave Turin has stock piled the remaining dirt from cut number one, and predicts that it takes about 12 days, before he runs out of paydirt from the stockpile. Dave Turin fires up the D10 dozer, and gets to work on clearing the overgrowth on the upper bench, but quickly find out that there's something wrong with the dozer's blade. The blade can't maintain height by ifself, suggesting that it can't maintain pressure in the hydralics. Dave doesn't have another dozer on site, because his second dozer also is broken, and it has been waiting on parts for 6 weeks. Without a working dozer, Team Turin can't open up a second digsite at Indian River.
At Porcupine Creek in South-East Alaska. 'Dakota' Fred Hurt is struggling to pull paydirt out of their 70 foot hole, because the 270 excavator's bucket can't break up the material, the bucket is scraping against the rock in the hole. The Porcupine crew have a secret weapon though, which they call a bedrock shark, the bucket can be equipped to their 270 excavator, and it has 3 rippers instead of teeth, which a normal bucket has. They make quick work, and equip the bedrock shark quickly, and Fred drives back in the hole to put it to the test, after he has shoveled out a few buckets, something breaks and the new bedrock shark is dangling from the arm of the excavator.
Over at the Big Nugget Mine, Parker Schnabel has to dig down 26 feet to reach what he believe is a paystreak of right, sitting right ontop of the bedrock. Parker and Rick, starts to excavate the overburden and Parker decides to just dump the overburden at the edge of his claim, Glenn which is Parker's fine gold expert, believes that the dirt Parker is dumping, hold valuable gold, so he decides to run a test on it. Glenn is right and Parker might be throwing thousands of dollars away, he shows Parker his discovery and they almost start a fight over it, but Parker doesn't want to run the dirt through their washplant, because he thinks that it's a waste of time.
Back at Quartz Creek Todd's turbo trommel has been running for two days and has been chewing through alot of material. Before the trommel arrived, Todd spent the time on stockpiling 17,000 yards of paydirt, the trommel processes 200 yards an hour and Jack predicts that they'll be through the entire stockpile in about a week. Team Todd, now has to survey the land and find some new ground to mine, Ray the turbo trommel designer comes up with a place which possibly holds alot of gold, he suspects that there's virgin ground below the old dredge tailings on Quartz Creek. In the first half of the 20th century, dredges mined the area on Quartz Creek, but they often couldn't reach the narrow strips of land at the sides of the valley, these strips are known as 'side pay' by miners, and could hold alot of gold. To get to the virgin ground beneath the tailings, Team Todd has to remove 6 feet of tailings the size of a football field, to get to the ground, and for that he needs a dozer.
At Indian River, both the D9 and the D10 dozers are sitting still, both are broken. Mitch the team mechanic, has been waiting for bolts, so he can replace the broken idler wheel which holds the D9 dozer's track in place. First Mitch has to remove the old boths from the wheel and in the process, one of the bolts break inside of the wheel. There's now a quater of the bolt still stuck inside, and Mitch struggles with it, but eventually manages to get it out.
Back up at Porcupine Creek the linkage on the 270 excavator has broken into two pieces, rendering it unfixable. Fred Hurt calls in Danny, a local mechanic to check out the damage, and he states that they probably just should go get a new excavator, Fred though comes up with a plan to make a new linkage for the excavator out of scrap metal, they load up some old grizzly bars which they had laying around and heads into town, where they have more tools.
Bback over at the Big Nugget Mine, in South-East Alaska, Parker has dumped over 5000 tons of overburden, in a scramble to get down to the paystreak, which he believes is sitting right above bedrock on Emerson Trench. Glenn still believes that they're throwing away a lot of money, so he talks with the entire crew. Ultimately Rick and Gary confront Parker with their concerns and Parker decides to start running the overburden, Parker says that he wants to keep the support of both Rick and Gary, since he believe that they played a big part in what they've achieved this season.
At Indian River, Mitch is finally putting the D9 dozer back together, he succesfully puts the track back onto the dozer. The entire Hoffman operation now has one working dozer, but both Todd and Dave needs it to open up a new digsite. Todd pulls rank on Dave, and makes it clear he needs the dozer to open up the digsite before Dave. Dave doesn't seem to like that idea, which is understandable, but Todd has set made it very clear, that they need to have both washplants running to make their 1000 ounce goal. The next morning, Dave gets up early and commandeers the only dozer they have, and he starts working on opening up his second digsite, Todd comes to get the dozer and discovers Dave in it. Dave states that Todd does have auhority, but he also states that Todd isn't his boss.
At Porcupine Creek, Fred is returning with the custom linkage for their 270 excavator, which he build himself. They quickly installs it along with the original bucket on the excavator. He drives down the hole and tests the new custom linkage, and it is rock solid, it holds together and Fred are now back on track down towards glory hole gold. Only two hours in Fred's luck runs out, once again, this time it's the pin holding the idler wheel on the excavator, which Fred fixed a month ago, by also creating a custom one. Dustin confronts Fred, telling him that if he had listened to him and ordered a new one instead of keep fixing it, they could've avoided it completely, but Fred didn't have the money for it a month ago.
Back up at Quartz Creek in the Klondike, Todd still has a problem with the dozer, since Dave keeps the only working one for himself, luckily Mitch the crew mechanic is close to fixing the D10 dozer. Mitch replaces the piston inside the hydralic system on the dozers blade and the dozer is good to go. Todd wastes no time putting Andy onto clearing the tailings on Quartz Creek, so they can get down to what miners call 'side pay' at the edge of the valley. Andy plans to work through the night on clearing the tailings, so he quickly can get some dirt for Todd to run through the trommel, as it is chewing through the stockpiled dirt and break neck speed.
Back at the Big Nugget Mine, Parker Schnabel has been running the overburden from Emerson Trench through his washplant for 3 days. If it has to pay off, they have to cover costs of $6,000 for fuel and labor, they need 4 ounces to break even on their running costs for clearing the overburden, but instead of 4 ounces they pulled out 12 which is worth almost $20,000 dollars, so the decision to run the overburden payed off and cleared them $14,000 in profit.
Back at Quartz Creek, Andy has worked through the night and has cleared all the tailings, exposing a large field. Todd is positive that this is the ground that will get them to their 1000 ounce goal, so he calls in local driller Henry to test out the field. Meanwhile claim owner Greg McNiel arrives and informs them that the ground they think is 'side pay' was dredged and Henry's drilling results confirms that. So there's now a huge useless field, with no gold in the ground.
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