13x27 - The Biggest Gold Weighs - Gold Rush Special

[bunniefuu]

Let's get down to business.

NARRATOR: On this Gold Rush...

Need a bigger pan.

..the greatest paydays...
We broke the scale!

..in Gold Rush history.

[TONY SPEAKING]

From the biggest...
[LAUGHTER]

This is definitely a record breaker.

..to the most surprising.

That's a [BLEEP] beauty.

[TONY SPEAKING]

These are the gold weighs
that change lives.
And for the first time...

PARKER: That's just over


..we reveal the total
multimillion dollar gold haul.

We earn this [BLEEP] with blood,
sweat and some tears.

From the last 12 years...

[CHEERING]

Best [BLEEP] crew in the Klondike!



Hey, uh, careful on that one.
I put a little too much in there.

All right, I'll baby it. Good man.
Hope it'll make it over there.

Seventeen-year-old Parker Schnabel
is six weeks

into his second season
mining for gold.

His best weekly haul ever
is 25 ounces.

But this young, ambitious mine boss
has only just got started.

PARKER: So, I know you've been
sitting in a truck all day,

but it's for good reason
cos we're going
for 50 ounces this week.



We'll need a lot of dirt,
so keep doing your thing.
You got it.


is worth $80,000,

almost double what Parker made
in his first season.

But the gold is no vanity project.

And he needs the money to pay
for a road to access
his Smith Creek claim.

Virgin ground he believes is filled
with big gold.

We have to run a lot of dirt to get


But we're going to.

Today, we'll put about


This plant's never seen
let alone in a day.

I don't know if the plant's gonna
be able to handle that.

To race through the pay,
Parker cranks his grandpa's


[MACHINE RATTLING]
There's a new rattle.

There's a big part of
the bearing right there.

The extra load
has destroyed a bearing

on one of the trommel's
guide wheels...

Cut the power.

..forcing Parker to shut down.

The bearing on the upper side here
completely went out on us.

I got to change this outside bearing
right here.

What... what do you want to do?
I think I'm gonna have
to torch it off.

This is no easy bush-fix.

Fail, and Parker risks missing
his target of 50 ounces.

There's the broken piece.

And then there's part
of the bearings... [CHUCKLES]
what's left of them.

I'd rather be able to set
the new one in
and screw it right back down.

We're ready to go.
Let's start it up.

Stand back.

Look at that.

Having lost most of the day,

Parker pushes on through
the night to reach
his 1,000 yard a day target.

It's tough right now cos, you know,
we're tired,

we've been working long hours.

You can't see really
cos it's pretty dark.

You know, this plant's being
pushed hard.

Parker pulls the mats...
Shut it down.

..and gathers his crew for a career
defining gold weigh.

MITCH: I think it's
definitely gonna come
down to the wire for sure.

Right.

We worked real hard.

We worked together,
and hopefully,
the results will show that.

Parker's biggest
weigh in so far is 25 ounces.

MAN: 30, 32, 35.



In one week.
MAN: That's pretty exciting, guys.

Worth $88,000...

PARKER: That's pretty
impressive right there.

..the biggest payday
by far of his young career.

We'll start working on Smith Creek.
We're cracking that open.

Yeah, it's pretty relieving.

This game-changing
gold funds the road
to the nugget rich Smith Creek.

Secures Parker a season
total of 192 ounces...

Got to go where the gold is.
The Yukon is the place to be.

..and propels him to the Klondike...

All right, let's get down
to business. MAN: Yeah.

And that's $3 million
right there on the table.

..where Parker goes on to record
the three biggest weekly gold weighs
on Gold Rush.

In 2018, 955 ounces.

When I came up here six years ago,
that was the dream.

At the time,
worth over a million dollars.

In 2021...

MAN: And we're still going.
Keep her going, keep her going.

[ALL CHEERING]

..a staggering 1,168 ounces.

A $2 million payday.

PARKER: Don't drop it.

And in 2020, an all-time scale
busting gold weigh.

Are they like


They're like 500 apiece.
PARKER: What?

..2,294 ounces

worth nearly $4.4 million.

[LAUGHING] That's like the biggest
one we've ever had, isn't it?

Oh, yeah. This is definitely
a record breaker.

RICK: Yeah, it's getting colder
and colder every morning.

I can't even see out
the windshield anymore.
There's so much frost.

In his first season as a mine boss,

Rick Ness is chasing
the dream of striking it rich

with a crew made up of friends
from home.

RICK: We're so close to our target,
I just don't know
what to do anymore.

I mean, we've exhausted
all of our ground.

Rick needs a final


to hit his 1,000-ounce goal
and send everyone home
with gold in their pockets.

But winter is closing in.

He's out of thawed pay and his
wash plant is shut down.

RICK: We ain't giving up.

I got somebody flying
in today to help me out.

For the final push,
Rick leans on the one person
who will always answer his call.

Hey. [BLEEP] Arriving in style?

Yeah, well, you know.
How you doin', Dad?

It's good to see you, man. You too.

I'm here to help. That's awesome.

Rick's dad has over
operating heavy equipment.

RICK: We're short 27 ounces.

g*dd*mn it. You've got to get
that [BLEEP] 1,000 ounces.

Perhaps a second look
at your drill charts there
and see where you...

See where your best veins are.
Maybe you got some more
left that you can...

..quickly access.

Where that pile of overburden is,
that's where the bedrock came up

and that's where
all the best drill holes were.

And it is where
we did our best gold.

I'll jump on that D9
and give it my best shot.

They plan to open a small extension
to the cut in the hope
it has enough thawed pay.

And in less than no time,
Rick Senior

RICK OVER RADIO:
Let's fire up Durt Reynolds.

I want to make sure we get all
the dirt run through the plant.

This paydirt's still frozen
and full of chunks, but

I don't even give a [BLEEP] ,
we're gonna run it anyways.

We're into the minuses.
Everything's got to keep moving.

Even us.

RYAN OVER RADIO: Looks like
we're not feeding right.
What the [BLEEP] happened?

I'm guessing
that chunky [BLEEP] got stuck
in there and froze up.

We're not feeding the plant.

Frozen pay
has clogged the hopper feeder.

To try and dislodge the blockage,

Rick turns up
the conveyors to top speed.

We just hit it full speed.

We'll know if it's gonna
come loose, cos
if it ain't [BLEEP] freed up,

it's gonna tear that belt.

Ben...

bump that [BLEEP].

Oh, it don't sound good. Ben...
bump that...

One more time.

RICK: There she goes.
BEN: There she goes.

Holy [BLEEP] , look
at those big [BLEEP] chunks.

I think those are the two
that are really blocking it.

RICK: Whoo!

Four hours later, the pay
from the extension runs out.

RYAN: This is the last
bucket of paydirt for the year.

All right. Shove her on through
and we'll shut it down.

Copy that.

Rick shuts down for the final
time this season

and gathers the crew
to see if they've hit
their 1,000-ounce goal.

Oh. Oh, yeah.

So, we had 27 ounces to get.

Might be in that jar.
I think it's time to find out.

That's 20.

MAN 1: Looking good. MAN 2: Yeah.
There's our 27 ounces.

[ALL CHEERING]

There's another. [MAN BLEEPS]

[ALL CHEERING]

The final gold weigh, 132.49 ounces.

At the time, worth $159,000.

Blew by it.

Rick's biggest ever gold weigh...

propels him 100 ounces over
his 1,000 ounce season goal.

RICK: You guys deserve
all the credit.

[ALL CHEERING]

The following season
Rick vacates the Klondike...

[RICK SPEAKING]

..to hunt Keno's famous
monster nuggets...

What? ..and hits the jackpot.

That's a [BLEEP] beauty,
like that's worth
some serious money.

..with a 1.5 ounce nugget,
the biggest
ever found on Gold Rush.

And in 2021, Rick goes
from strength to strength...



..with his three
biggest weekly gold weighs...

That's 315 ounces on the week.

This'll sound really good.

Oh.

That is by far, biggest
gold total for a week.

It's almost 400 ounces, 393.

[BLEEP] yeah.

..taking his career gold
total so far to nearly 5,000 ounces

worth nearly $8 million.

Yeah, it's... It's a good feeling.

NARRATOR: For maverick gold miner
Tony Beets,

the secret to his biggest
gold weighs lies in the past.

[TONY SPEAKING]

MAN: It's huge.

[TONY SPEAKING]

MAN: It looks really nice.

Powered by a single engine
and needing just a two-man crew,

the cost-efficient dredge uses
buckets to scoop up pay

running it through a trommel
before sh**ting tailings
out the back.

Tony believes dredging
for gold will deliver
big profits.

[TONY SPEAKING]

The dredge is dismantled and rebuilt
at Tony's Indian River claim
to the tune of $1 million.

I'm christening you Minnie's ATM!

[TONY SPEAKING]

In 2015,
Tony attempts to wake the beast
for the first time in 30 years.

MAN: There it goes. It's going.

Hey! Hey!

Don't be pulling over too hard.

Stop. Stop.

The bucket line slipped
off the tip of the ladder,

it's like losing a track
on the excavator.

We've got to get
all equipment rounded up

in the rigging to try
and pull it back on there.

Foreman Gene Cheeseman brings
in a pipe layer to haul
the bucket ladder back into place.

You need to be right
alongside of here.

Pull.

Ok. You guys ready
to run it in reverse?

Just keep her coming.

We did it. I can't believe that.

Mike, let's go ahead
and get the water going
and get everything spinning.

After a three-hour delay,

the dredge is back
on track and catching gold.

We're getting water going again
so you can get to run it again.

[TONY SPEAKING] Ok.

Tony runs the dredge for 20 hours.

TONY: Shut it down!

Which will reveal whether
his million-dollar gamble

on the 75-year-old dredge
has paid off?

[TONY SPEAKING]

To turn a profit,
Tony needs the dredge
to produce an ounce an hour.

[TONY SPEAKING]

MAN: It's 21 ounces.

[TONY SPEAKING]

WOMAN: I'm impressed.
I'm really am impressed
with what you guys done.

So, it catches
that is no doubt, then...

We know it's there. We've proven it.

[TONY SPEAKING]

Over the next four seasons mining...

WOMAN: Three hundred.
That's pretty amazing.

..Tony's dredge produces
record breaking gold weighs.

[TONY SPEAKING]

WOMAN: 532.6.

..amassing almost 6,000 ounces

in 2022 worth over
$10 million.

Holy [BLEEP].



Let the game begin.

Fred Hertz starts his second mine
at Porcupine Creek

with the goal of putting


To help, he takes
a gamble on a rookie...

Hey, Fred. How are you?

I'm all right. How are you, Dustin?
I'm doing good.

..his son, Dustin.

DUSTIN: Fred put it in my head
that there's some ancient waterfall
somewhere around here,

and as soon as we find
the bottom of it,
we'll never have to work again.

With dreams of riches untold...

FRED: All I can see is gold soup
going out of there

..the team excavate
the ancient waterfall

in the hope the deeply buried
plunge pools
contain a jackpot of gold.

DUSTIN: Look at all those flakes.

Early signs show
they're digging in the right spot.

FRED: We're gonna need
every bit we can get.

Fred spends a month
relentlessly digging down

betting he'll strike gold
before he hit bedrock.

Oh. Crying out loud.

[BLEEP]

That's it. We're done.

The material is just too hard,
and this thing doesn't have
enough power to just continue.

We're at the limits
of what the equipment can do.

We can't go back down there no more.

One hundred feet down,
Fred is forced to stop

just 20 ounces short of their


But son Dustin isn't ready
to give up.

DUSTIN: I don't think
we have enough gold.

I got one last thing I can try.

I might dredge... I might dredge
the bottom of the hole.

Dustin brings in his mini dredge,
a suction wash plant
designed to catch gold

in difficult to reach plunge pools.

DUSTIN: It's our last
ditch effort right now.

FRED: You want nuggets?

Argh! My whole body's
numb right now.

[SIGHS] Oh, Lord.

To hit their 160 ounce
season target...

Hey, guys.

...success depends
on Dustin's last ditch effort.

Well,

fellas,


[GASPS] Oh, we made it.

..and change.

Oh, my gosh. Can you believe that?

Look at that.
Oh, I was so worried.

..worth $260,000.

FRED: I'm proud of you guys.

I'm proud of my team.

WOMAN: Thanks, guys.
FRED: We got it.

McKinley Creek, Alaska,

after hitting gold
at the ancient waterfall,

Fred and Dustin head up mountain
to search for the motherlode.
in the raging white waters.

FRED: We're the only rednecks
crazy enough to do this.

They scour deep ravines and freezing
plunge pools.

[DUSTIN OVER RADIO]
Find that gold, man.

And their bone-chilling
hard work pays off.

Get the [BLEEP] out of here.
Yeah.

FRED: Wow.

Pulling in over


We found gold.


In the race to put millions in gold
on the scales...

Look at all that good stuff. Wow.

..not every miner...
You guys ready?

..has a big first season. 0.36.

Some hope to find redemption
in their second year.

FRED LEWIS:
Right now, I'm all in.

I have nothing left
in my life to liquidate
to make this happen.

Having banked just six ounces
in his first season
mining in Oregon,

ex-Special Forces medic
Fred Lewis heads
to the gold-rich Klondike.

FRED LEWIS: This is how we're gonna
vindicate ourselves

and prove to everybody
that we can mine.

If Fred can't deliver gold here,
his mining career will be over.

FRED LEWIS: Keep putting pay
through the sluice

and getting gold out the other end.

What the [BLEEP]? [GRUNTS]

No, it's [BLEEPED].

[BLEEP] damn it.

Hey, guys, we just threw a track
on this [BLEEPING] excavator,

so I'm gonna need some
help over here right away.

JB:
This is a big headache right here.

In charge of fixing the track,
former US Army mechanic JB Mayer.

We have a tanker's worst
nightmare in the military,
and that's a thrown track.

The chain on a bicycle,
best way to describe it,

except this chain weighs
much, much more than...

than a bicycle chain. [CHUCKLING]

JB: All right.
Now hook it on this tooth.

Curl up a little bit.

Ok.

All right, let's get out of the way.

Oh, [BLEEP].

[BLEEP]

Oh.

Stand back. Hold up!

FRED LEWIS: I knew
that was gonna happen.

Yeah.

We're close as hell now, man.

Yeah. [BLEEP] All right!

WOMAN: Are we on? JB: Yeah.

WOMAN: Heck yeah.
Let's do this.

FRED LEWIS: Find some gold.
JB: All right.

After almost
a full week of sluicing,

Fred shuts down
for his first Klondike gold weigh.

FRED LEWIS: Did it light?

JB: It wants to.

How many green berets
does it take to start a fire?

The gold on the scales
will determine

if Fred can continue
his gold mining dream.

FRED LEWIS: The hard work
we put in, the hard work
we're gonna put in...

is for this gold
that we're about to see.

I don't feel like we're...
greenhorns anymore.

I feel like we're mining.
Oh, yeah.

I just want to go see
how much it is.

WOMAN: Yeah, let's... Let's do it.

Are you guys ready?

MAN: Oh, hell yeah.
I'm nervous.

[ALL GROANING]

FRED LEWIS: All right.
One, two,

three,

four,

five, six.
MAN: Come on, baby.

WOMAN: Keep going.
MAN: Keep going, keep going.

Seven. Seven.
Oh, come on. Keep going.

[ALL LAUGHING]

FRED LEWIS: That's awesome.


In one week, Fred banks
more gold than he did
in his entire first season.

FRED LEWIS: We earned this [BLEEP]
with blood, sweat and some tears.

This was a fight, man.
The whole time. This was a fight.

The Klondike is one of the richest
gold hotspots in the world.

Since gold was first
discovered here in 1896,

miners have pulled out
around 20 million ounces.

By modern equivalence,
a staggering $36 billion.

October 2013,



is shutting down
at the end of his first season
in the Klondike.

Today is the last day
of running for us,

and until we put it on a scale,
I don't think we're gonna
know what's there.

Mining ground
leased from Tony Beets,

Parker sets an ambitious


To hit it, he needs
his final gold weigh
to be his biggest ever,

over 170 ounces.

Sorry to keep you guys waiting.

We didn't get 800 ounces.

We got 836.

[ALL CHEERING]

So, we pulled over
$1,000,000 worth of gold
out of the ground this season.

[MAN SPEAKING]

[TONY SPEAKING]

MAN 1: That's amazing.
[TONY SPEAKING]

Parker's crew head home happy...

..but as always, the teenage
mine boss is hungry for more.

I mean, I still got some
fight left in me.

What do you mean by that?
There is one goal we haven't hit.

We could go for 1,000.

Yeah.

I mean, that's the big one.
Good way to end it.

Are you in? I'm in.

A thousand ounces, baby.
Let's do it.

Determined to hit
the new 1,000-ounce goal...

..Parker and Rick
fight on deep into winter.

PARKER: I mean,
I could go home right now

and put 836 ounces of gold
in front of my grandpa.

But why not wait ten days
and put 1,000 in front of him.

All right? That's what I want to do.

The race is on right now.

We've got two trucks
and we've got two people.

So, I'm kind of hot seat
between machines today.

I don't have time to truck
this overburden
gravel out of here.

So, I'm just I got to just
keep kind of tossing it off
to the side as far as I can get it.

Oh. [BLEEP] Oh.

No! No, no. Oh, man.

Easy. Easy.

[BLEEP] machine!

I'm gonna definitely
have to be a little more careful.

And two guys mining like
this is just [BLEEP] stupid.

You know, we have
to find a couple of people
if we're gonna make this work.

With most miners
already home for winter,

Parker seeks help
from the only person

he knows crazy enough
to still be in the Yukon.

PARKER: So right now
I'm going to Tony's.

It's tough asking him for help,

but we just need to get a good final
season push right here.

You know, we've got ground,
but we just don't have
the people to keep doing it.

MINNIE: I know somebody.
[TONY SPEAKING]

You.

Well, you're all done.
You sit on your butt all day.

You might as well
give the kid a hand.

In a bid to hit 1,000 ounces,

Parker needs his mentor, Tony Beets,
to become his skivvy.

Oh, you're so welcome.

The next day, the king
of the Klondike turns up for duty.

PARKER: Glad you made it.

[TONY SPEAKING]

So, maybe you could run
our hoe and load a truck.

[TONY SPEAKING]

Sounds good.
I'm glad you made it, Tony.

I'm glad you're not.

I just told Tony Beets what to do.

Oh.

[TONY SPEAKING]

The gold mining
dream team of Parker,

Rick and Tony work
late into the night.

[TONY SPEAKING]

Right on.

After six months
mining in the Klondike,

Parker heads back to Alaska
to reveal his final gold total.

And my grandpa was the one
that got me in gold mining

and he's been in the hospital
in Seattle and he's back home

and I can't wait to share it
with him and the rest of my family.

Parker. Hey, Parker.

GRANDFATHER:
It's great to see you. You too.

Oh.

You look... You look good.
Thank you.

Wait till you see this.

Whoa. Look at this. [LAUGHING]

I'm going to the Yukon,




Jeez.

I'm overwhelmed.

I never have seen that much
gold in my whole life
in one time.

Seeing my grandpa's face
when we put all that down
on the table...

..made it all worth it.

As the young
prodigy's ambitions grow,
so does his operation.

Running two wash plants,
Big Red and the wash plant
straight out of hell.

Slucifer!

Over the years,
the plants have been competed
in a gold mining showdown.

Slucifer produced 859.8 ounces.

With Slucifer
bringing in over 21,000 ounces

worth over $31 million.

But old faithful,
Big Red takes the crown.

Big Red, let's do this.

Delivering a staggering


nearly $37 million.

We've been busy down here.

Let's put it that way.
RICK: Yeah, buddy.


[TONY SPEAKING]


on soaring gold prices,

Klondike legend, Tony Beets,
has come up with a radical plan.

[TONY SPEAKING]

On Paradise Hill lies
a huge pile of waste rocks

left by miners over
a half a century ago.

[TONY SPEAKING]

Old timers used
hoses to wash valuable paydirt

from the hillside
into primitive sluice boxes.

Tony believes this early technology
only caught half the gold.

And he's eager to discover
if there's a fortune buried
in the discarded rocks

at the end of the sluice runs.

[TONY SPEAKING]

MAN: At least check it out.
See what's in there.

[TONY SPEAKING]

KEVIN: Shaker's turning on,
everyone clear.

Shaker's on.

WOMAN: Here we go.

This is the first bucket
of old timers that Tony just found.

[TONY SPEAKING]

Tony runs the plant for 60 hours.

Hi, guys.

To turn a profit
and prove his hunch is right,

the tailings need
to produce 60 ounces.

[TONY SPEAKING]

RUBY: Ten...







Well, it's nice of those old
timers to leave us some, eh?

Can't [BLEEP] about that.

Tony's plan to prospect gold
in the old timers' tailings

proves to be one
of his greatest decisions ever,

delivering over 400 ounces

worth more than three quarters
of a million dollars in gold.

[TONY SPEAKING]

PARKER: This season,
we're definitely having
to take some bigger risks.




gambles his reputation on a hunt
for his biggest bonanza ever

from a single claim.

He toils for four months
and spends over $4 million
getting down to pay

in Mud Mountain, a 60-foot deep cut,

four times richer than any
of his other claims.

Success, failure, genius, insanity.

It's all a fine line, right?

Mud Mountain is the deepest
cut that we've done
so far to date,

and we've put a lot of money
and time into it.

We're gonna need to have
consistently good clean-ups here

and some really good
ones to pay for this.

But in the first two weeks,
running...

MITCH: 190.45.

..Mud Mountain fails to deliver.

We need a lot more gold than that.

Pulling in just 356 ounces.

Send Mitch back to Dud Mountain.

A month before winter hits,

Parker faces the biggest failure
of his mining career.

PARKER: Have we figured out
where any of the gold is yet?

I just want to pick
nuggets out of the [BLEEP] thing.

How the hell?
Is that too much to ask?

And this is pretty much
all bedrock, huh? Yeah.

You might find some gold
in the bedrock
if that's where we're at.

I really don't want
to be sending bedrock up
to the wash plant there

cos we're trying to keep that thing
in one piece.

Yeah, I get that.

But for me, it's just
making sure that we get as much gold
out of the ground as we can.

In a desperate bid to find the gold,

Parker decides to run the hard,
heavy bedrock
beneath the pay layer.

If this is what Parker
wants to do,
risking tearing things up

and breaking [BLEEP] ,
this is what we're gonna,
you know,

send through our wash plants here.

FRED LEWIS: This gnarly
bedrock that we're pulling out,

it's definitely not easy
on our equipment.

It's banging and crashing hard
on the shaker deck.

Whoa.

[BLEEP] Holy [BLEEP].

Oh.

PARKER: What the [BLEEP]
is going on here?

MITCH: Well, as you can see
this motor's jumping
all over the place.

The reason for that...

this right here,
this is the tensioner.

This keeps this motor isolated.

And you can see it's broke.

The extra stress of running bedrock
has broken a bolt,

holding the shaker
deck's motor in place.

MAN: What do you think, guys?

Can we just pull this thing down?
Is that bolt gonna be long enough?

[PARKER SPEAKING]

MITCH: Yeah.
Get this thing going again.

[PARKER SPEAKING]
Perfect.

We're gonna have
to pull this back into place,

re-weld this,
see if we can get it fixed.

MAN: Watch your eyes.

Thirty seconds or 30 feet.
That's my warranty.

Man, I think that's solid.
Let's get her fired back up.

Sounds good. Let's try her out.

Yeah. That's what I'm talking about.

Crank it up.

Four days later,
the crew gather to see

if Parker's gamble to run
bedrock was worth it.

CHRIS: 30,





Keep going, 300, 350,



Keep her coming.

So this is on top of 300 and change.

We got another 50,
another 70, another 84.45.

You must know what those add up to.



MITCH: No way. Yeah.

A massive $870,000.

Sweet, man. That was definitely
worth the struggle.

That's got to be the best
clean-up Big Red's ever had.

CHRIS: Yeah. Yeah, it is.

Over the final
weeks of the season...

CHRIS: Well, you wanna
see what we got?

..Mud Mountain breaks record.

A total of 596.6 ounces in one week.

MITCH: That's incredible.
PARKER: Wow.

After record...
CHRIS: And in this one...

So, for Mud Mountain,
we got 3,058 ounces.

..delivering over $5.5 million
in gold

and helping Parker to his best
ever season haul.

We have 8,309.75 ounces.

[ALL CHEERING]

Cheers, guys.

[ALL CHEERING]

In 12 seasons of mining,

the Hoffmans, Dakota boys,

Tony, Rick...

..Fred and Parker,

together have banked 83,173 ounces,

a mind-blowing 2.6 tons of gold,

in 2022 numbers, worth $150 million.

CHRIS: You guys are the best!

Best [BLEEP] crew in the Klondike.