Gold Rush, S03E13, The Nightshift

THE NIGHTSHIFT

4 months into the 5 months mining season, the Hoffman Crew is running hard at Indian River. Despite their total of 277 ounces of gold, they still need 98 ounces just to break even, let alone hitting their 1000 ounces season goal, which they’re 723 ounces short of. For the Hoffman Crew to reach their season goal, Todd has to come up with a new mining plan. He proposes to Dave Turin, that he starts a nightshift, so that they can keep the wash plant “Big Red” running as much as possible. Dave’s concerned about the wash plant not being able to run that long, the last thing he wants is for the wash plant to break down. Last week, Todd shut down his Quartz Creek operation, and moved all his equipment and men to Indian River, to work alongside with Dave Turin and his crew. Together they managed to get 46 ounces of gold in a week, which is 17 ounces less that Team Turin’s best week. Over the season Team Turin has fine tuned their wash plant, it consistently produces 1 ounce of gold for every 10 buckets of good pay dirt, to succeed this season, Todd needs to double the amount of buckets that they run through the wash plant, and he wants to prove that his crew is at least as good as Dave’s crew. The dayshift ran 124 buckets of pay dirt through the wash plant the nightshift though, wants to run 200 buckets through it. 4 months into the mining season, the Yukon nights are getting longer. Facing a 12-hour shift, Todd sets a goal of 17 buckets an hour. Within hours the fast pace starts taking its toll on the wash plant, but Todd refuses to stop for anything, the water is starting to sweep away the ground under the sluice boxes, but Todd doesn't have time to stop, they have to keep running. The hopper feeder belt suddenly seizes up, forcing Todd to shutdown the wash plant. 3000 pounds of hydraulic pressure is building up on the jammed con weigher, the crew has to remove the rock to relieve the pressure, or they’ll destroy the con weigher. They manage to remove the rock, and they get the con weigher belt running again. After running hard for 12 straight hours, dawn marks the end of Team Todd’s first nightshift, in their first shift Todd’s crew has run a record 1400 yards through the was plant.

Down in Alaska, Fred Hurt is digging gold rich pay dirt at Porcupine Creek. The Dakota Boys have spent the last month on the hunt for what they think is an ancient waterfall, the deeper they've gone in their pit, the better the gold has become. Fred is following the grey material as he digs down, as he’s been so focused on getting the grey dirt, he’s missed something. 1000 years ago a river ran through the valley, forming cracks in the bedrock of the river, the cracks can act as a natural riffle, trapping gold as it flows down the river. Melody explores the big cracks in the bedrock wall of the glory hole, if Melody is right, the cracks could contain thousands of dollars in gold. Fred doesn't buy it he just wants to keep digging down. To dredge in the glory hole, they’d have to flood it with water, and then they’d use a suction hose to vacuum the gold and silk out of the cracks, this material then travels through a floating sluice box, which traps the gold. But a glory hole full of water will prevent Fred from digging. Dustin wants to bring in a dredge to vacuum the gold out of the cracks.

Back up at Indian River, Team Todd’s nightshift is finished and Team Turin takes over. They arrive to a nasty surprise, Todd’s nightshift washed the base out from under the sluice box, determined to run more dirt than Team Turin, Todd refused to stop his shift to fix the problem. The wash plant could easily fall into the pond. Team Turin can’t start their dayshift before they pack rocks back under the base of the 15,000 pound sluice box to keep it from sinking, but the time it takes to make this fix is money straight out of their pocket. They test the fix by turning on the water, but Dave won’t know whether it works, until it gets the full weight of the water and pay dirt running through the wash plant. It appears to be working as it should. To have any hope of reaching their 1000 ounce goal, Team Turin then has to keep up with Team Todd, but its taken Team Turin half their shift just to clean up Todd’s mess.

Down at the Big Nugget Mine, in southeast Alaska. Parker Schnabel is ready to mine his new ground, the Discovery claim. With just a month left in the mining season, Parker is still 96 ounces or $150,000 from breaking even for the season. The Discovery dig site has to payoff, or else Parker will loose money for the second season in a row. Two weeks ago, Parker discovered that Emerson Trench the last remaining ground on Big Nugget, was a bust. Out of option, Parker leased the Discovery claim, it was on this claim that in 1898 the first Porcupine Creek gold was found. Parker's plan is to haul 20 loads of dirt down to his plant each day, but the Discovery claim lies up a dangerous mountain road, that snakes it's way 300 feet up from Big Nugget. Parker is ready to bring down his first load, in an almost 20-year old loader, which weighs 80,000 pounds when it's fully loaded. On either side of the road there's danger, on one side there's bedrock wall which could slice through his tires, and on the other side there's a 300-foot cliff, which drops down to the creek below. Halfway down, Parker scrapes his tires into the bedrock wall, and if he goes just 6-inches to the other side, he could tip over the cliff. Parker makes it safely past, but next he has to back up to a 100-foot cliff, to dump his load down the hillside, so they can use a loader to carry it to the wash plant.

Less than a mile from Big Nugget, over at Porcupine Creek. Dustin is heading back to the claim, rather excited. Dustin has just spent $2,000 of his own money on a gold dredge, to get at the gold in the glory hole bedrock wall's cracks, which Melody discovered not long ago, but Fred is still not really excited about using a dredge, because he can't dig at the same time. Dustin though insists that they go for the gold in the cracks with the dredge. Dustin is nervous about the dredge, since he has never used one before. Dustin has flooded part of the glory hole, so Fred can no longer dig, but before Dustin can get to work with the dredge, he and Melody has to carefully move it down into the bottom of the glory hole, if they damage the floats on the sidewall, the dredge will be rendered useless. They manage to eventually place it into the flooded glory hole. Dustin fires up the dredge's vacuum and Melody gets to work on sucking out the dirt inside the bedrock cracks, the vacuum is rated for 30-feet and can easily vacuum up gold from deep within the cracks. Unable to mine, Fred can only stand and watch. After 4 hours of dredging, both Dustin and Melody has had enough, the water is frigid cold, due to it being mountain runoff.

Back over at the Big Nugget Mine, across the creek from the Porcupine claim, Parker Schnabel is feeding his first pay dirt from the Discovery claim into his wash plant. Not long in, one of the blades from inside Parker's trommel tumbles out of the end, they have to shut down the plant to check out the damage done, and to repair the damage as well. Parker is clearly frustrated about the situation, but he has no choice but to weld the blade back into the trommel, even though it's not the preferable fix. He'll only know it works, when it once again can handle the large Big Nugget boulders. They fire up the wash plant once again, and loads dirt into the plant, the fix appears to work perfectly.

Back over at Porcupine Creek, Fred Hurt is frustrated. Dustin and Melody's idea of dredging the cracks in the bedrock wall, has prevented Fred from digging pay dirt out of the glory hole. They're now lifting the dredge back out of the water, down deep in the glory hole. Up in the gold tent, Melody is panning the material which they got from the dredging, the material will prove whether her idea of dredging the cracks was a good idea, and from what she's seeing, Fred will eat his own words. Fred is rather impressed with the take, as Dustin and Melody shows him, they head on inside the cabin to weigh up the gold. Last week, they pulled a record high 28 ounces worth $44,000 in five days of running grey material. This cleanup is from just a single day of dredging. The total take for the dredging is 14 ounces of gold, worth over $20,000, not bad for only a day of dredging.

Back up north, at Indian River, the nightshift is ready to go, the previous night they managed to load 200 buckets into the wash plant, and this night they want to do even better. There's a slight problem though, since the dayshift had to fix Todd's mistake, they didn't manage to stockpile enough pay dirt to feed the nightshift, Todd has Kevin get pay dirt from the bench cut, as Kevin has a truck load, he has to back it up to a 50-foot cliff, and dump it down to the wash plant, that's something he hasn't done yet, in the middle of the night. Kevin can't see his back wheels, so he has no way of knowing if he's close to the edge, an inch too far and he could fall down the cliff in his 40 ton rocktruck, down 5 stories into Walt in the loader. Todd pushes Kevin to keep getting the pay dirt down, but eventually Kevin snaps, and starts an argument with Todd. Though he later agrees to keep going, with Walt as his spotter. Despite the risks the nightshift is back on track.

Down in southeast Alaska, at the Big Nugget Mine. Parker Schnabel is about to find out, whether the Discovery claim were a good idea, he's ready for his first cleanup of the wash plant, with dirt only from the Discovery claim. He needs the dirt to payoff, as he's spent $10,000 in fuel this week, just to haul the dirt down the road. Right off, he spots a lot of gold at the top when he checks out the sluice box, and he calls over the crew to see. The entire crew is amazed by the amount of gold in the sluice. These recent week, Parker has not found too much, the last two weeks, he's only found 14.3 ounces of gold, worth less than $23,000. In just one week, Parker and his crew has cleared 43 ounces, which is worth almost $70,000, his total is now 135 ounces, worth $216,000.

Back up at Indian River in the Klondike, both the day- and nightshift has been mining around the clock, for a week. In 6 days, they've run a massive 10,000 yards through the wash plant. Now it is time to find out, if adding the nightshift was a wise move. They remove the miners moss from the sluice boxes, and takes it over to Jack in the gold tent, Jack then processes the concentrate, cleans the gold and weighs it. The crew is positive that this cleanup will be a big one. Jack finishes weighing up the gold, and heads for the campfire, where the entire Hoffman crew is gathered. He pulls out a jar from the truck, which contains 100 ounces of gold, he then pulls out a second jar from behind his back, containing 37 ounces. The total take for the week, with running the day- and nightshift is 137 ounces, worth a whooping $219,200, the Hoffman Crew is now at 414 ounces for the season so far, which is worth $662,400. This means that the Hoffman Crew are now past their break even point, and every single ounce of gold they now pull from the ground, is going straight into their own pockets. But they still have a long way to go, to get to their 1000 ounce goal, with only one month left in the mining season.

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