- 6/14/2025
#ShowMovies
#goldrush
#goldrush
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00I love gold. Always have. And it's the most recycled element on earth. What we've got here
00:14is 10 ounces of really fine placer gold. Right now we're just gonna melt it down and make it
00:21into a bar before it's sent off to the refiner. Gold is addictive. More miners than ever jump in
00:28head first. No experience. No knowledge. But what people need to remember is there's
00:33a lot of pitfalls to look out for along the way. Well let's hope we've got a
00:38beautiful bar here. There's Juan-o. How's it going Juan? Come on buddy. Melting a little gold?
00:47Here's what I was doing Juan. Whoa let me see that guy. It's a good-looking bar Fred. Even ugly gold's pretty.
00:53It still doesn't matter. Yeah gold's gold. Beautiful either way. Gold has always been a
00:57motivator to make people do extreme things. That's made a lot of people a lot of money
01:03and it's taken a lot of money away from a lot of people. How's it going? Freddy. Cory.
01:09Every year expert miner Freddy Dodge. You pan this one. See what we find. And master
01:16fabricator Juan Ibarra. I'm gonna spin it. Heed the distress calls of miners struggling
01:23to find gold. Oh hey. And the numbers of them are growing. Whoa whoa whoa shut up. As the price of
01:28gold soars to new highs. It's better than anything we could have hoped for. Fever-filled fortune seekers
01:34take bigger risks. We got a guy. And face much less reward. Nobody's getting a paycheck unless we see
01:40some gold. On this episode of Mine Rescue. Don't dig where they tell you to dig. Been there done done.
01:46Yeah been there. We both have. Freddy and Juan reveal the pitfalls of gold addicted miners. I know
01:53there's big big gold in here. I know it. Whether it's hot. Whether it's cold. Gold defines on where
01:59you're gonna mine for gold. How to overcome the tracks of the trade. There's so much that needs to be done
02:04here. Holy cow. Just the amount of labor that's going into it. And uncover a golden payday.
02:19Right now Fred you know gold's at an all-time high. Yeah it's way up there. Yeah. 2,300 bucks plus an
02:25ounce. Yeah. You know that's going to drive a lot of people to to go out and try to do a little more
02:29mining. Gold is one of the most valuable commodities on earth. In the last 30 years
02:37its value has risen over 400 percent. And experts predict that gold could reach as high as three
02:44thousand dollars per ounce in the next five years. This means more amateur miners than ever
02:51will flood gold regions looking to strike it rich quick. But most will fail if they don't heed the
02:59hazards. There's a lot of pitfalls when you get into the mining industry. People may think that
03:04gold mining it's a get rich quick scheme. It's not. You got to work hard to be able to make it
03:08profitable for yourself. Well what do you think one of the biggest pitfalls is one? Really the biggest
03:13pitfall Fred's going to be location. Agreed. The actual mine what you're mining the material you have
03:18there. Because if there's not enough gold in the ground you're going broke fast.
03:22Fundamental to any miner's success is the ground they mine. The material that he's
03:31running is super sticky. And with over 50 years of combined gold mining experience
03:36Freddie and Juan have seen it all. That clay layer there if gold mining doesn't work out
03:41far you could start a pottery store. From ancient river gravels. This whole pit right here in my eyes
03:47is played out. To hard rock deposits. Hey guys don't take any of the film crew any farther than
03:53that. Making sure there's enough gold on your claim can make or break an operation. Location,
04:00location, location. It's a tough one. The pitfall is people go to a new mine site they see one or two
04:07flakes in the in the pan and they get excited and they think it's going to carry through the whole area.
04:11They keep thinking that they're going to strike it rich and that point never comes. One of the situations
04:16we ran into last year were Ryan and Nolan Merritt. Yep. You know they had all the intentions but
04:20unfortunately on their property they didn't have enough gold. At the Mammoth Mine in Oregon,
04:25Freddie and Juan answered a call from father and son miners, Ryan and Nolan Merritt. What I do know
04:32about gold is it's in the ground but I'm having a hard time getting it out. If we can't make something
04:37happen this year then it's probably be the last season we mine. To identify Ryan's problem, Freddie and Juan
04:45test the pay from the cut. Oh god, Juan's got a gold pan in his hand. That makes me nervous.
04:51Let's see what you get in this pan. Not a spec? Nothing. This creek's completely mined out.
04:57This is all tailings. Every bit of it's tailings. Tailings are waste rocks previously mined.
05:03I always wanted to buy a mine and ended up up here with the realtor and they said this is for sale and
05:09there's rumors that there's really good gold so we jumped on it. Pretty consistent ground. Pretty
05:15consistent garbage. Well I've seen claims for sale though. Selling because of health reasons. Yeah,
05:21the lack of gold's got your blood pressure high probably is the health reason there. Well you hope
05:27people have the best of intentions but sometimes they're just trying to drop it on you and get
05:30their investment back. Yeah, in gold mining there's been more scams than maybe any other industry. And we've
05:36seen them with our own eyes. Oh yeah. Over the years. One big deal is uh you need to do some
05:40testing on your own. Let's say you want to buy this piece of property. The owner's got all this
05:46paperwork from years past. From the 1800s, yeah. Don't trust what they've got wrote down unless you
05:52really know the people. Trust what your own eyes tell you as far as testing that ground. Get in there
05:58and do some sampling. I think you shut them down. Shut them down and it's just burning fuel. I think
06:03the old timers hit it. Hydraulic it and it was probably mined in the 1930s and then probably in
06:09the 80s. Only halfway through the test, Freddy and Juan called time on the run. Everything here is
06:17tailings. It's not virgin. It's been run multiple times. This whole 13 acres as far as placer goes.
06:22Dead. It's dead. In Ryan's defense, you know, unless you're really experienced at it, you've seen it a
06:28lot. It's sometimes it's hard to differentiate what's tailings and what could actually be pay.
06:32And unfortunately he thought it was pay. It was pay 100 years ago. Nolan! In a bid to give Nolan a
06:41master class in prospecting, Freddy takes him to the edge of the claim. You guys thought it was virgin
06:47ground. Up here, right. Right. So if it was virgin material, you'd have layers of material, right,
06:52that have rhyme and reason to them. And reading the vegetation. Yeah. There's more clues than that
06:58too. How old the trees are. That let you know when that hole was dug. Looking at the tree growth,
07:04everything we're walking on, everything you see here has been ran. Well, how can you tell by the tree
07:08growth that it's been mined? Because all the trees in the valley here, where the placer gold was,
07:14they're all younger trees, you know, 30, 40 years old. Right. You got old growth up on the hill
07:20where they didn't mine the gold, right? Right. It's always a fear for both of us, right? That whole
07:24area had been gutted out. There's still some good gold here. Just got to search for it. To keep the
07:31Merritt's gold mining dream alive, Freddy goes in search of mineable ground. The old-timers hit this.
07:38Yes. But coming up dead. You can see all the tailings here. Right. Freddy has a radical solution.
07:45How's it going? Good. How you doing? Doing all right? Yeah. How you doing today?
07:49Jim? Downstream from the Merritt's claim, he finds a farmer who has some land he'd like to lease for a royalty.
07:57So how deep is the bedrock under here, Jim? It's about probably another four foot farther down. Okay.
08:03So most of this up here probably won't contain much gold. Now we get farther down, you see how we got
08:10tight material, right? Yeah. Compact. So this is a whole different ball game compared to what you got.
08:16This is all virgin. Yeah. After looking at this. Completely different. Completely different. Yep.
08:21Mine's man-made and I'm seeing it now. But if there's good gold here, it's a second chance.
08:28Proof's in the pan, right? You guys were able to go out and find a different piece of property that was a
08:32little bit better for him. That it was going to be profitable. It had gold left in it. Yeah.
08:37It hadn't been mined. Well, I've seen a piece of gold there. Look at that. And a couple of them are
08:43decent size too. What's that mean, Freddy? That means mine it. All right. Live and learn, right? We got them
08:50at least headed in a direction where they have a chance to succeed now. Ryan and Nolan run a two-hour
08:57test with the new ground. Packed. Packed. Packed. Packed. Nice. That's a nice lake. Nice little flake.
09:05I think we found the silver lining, you know, at the end of the tunnel. In our case, the gold lining.
09:10You know, it just shows that the merits, they didn't have the experience
09:14that they needed to read the ground that they were on. Yeah. Well, the simplest way to not go broke,
09:20gold mining is a gold pan and a lot of testing. Yeah. If you're going to mine, make sure you test,
09:27test, test, test. And keep track of that material so you know it's a ton or a yard.
09:32Where it came from and everything else. Flag it. You want to make sure that the ground's going to be
09:36able to sustain that operation. Exactly right. So do your own testing. Trust your own eyes. And don't
09:41don't dig where they tell you to dig. Been there, done done. Yeah, been there. We both have. Oh yeah,
09:46we'll dig right there. Coming up. You. You. He didn't want his son to mess up. How many times have I
09:54ran? All the way from the context. You got to give him enough rope to be able to go out and try things
09:59themselves. Back to forth. Back to forth. He may hang himself, but you got to give him the rope. For you.
10:14Smart dog. With mining season ramping up. He's a good dog. He's only 10 months old. Freddie and Juan
10:21reveal the traps of the trade and how to avoid them with some extra encouragement from Doc the dog.
10:29Pretty amazing. Just the other day it was snowing. Now look at the weather. Yeah. It's just beautiful
10:32weather. It is. And it's supposed to maybe snow tonight and tomorrow night. Really? Yeah. It's just
10:36like mining. You don't know what the weather's going to be. No. It changes on us all the time. Yep.
10:40Fetch it up.
10:44Gold defines where you're going to mine. The weather's going to have a large impact on that.
10:54Some of the best gold deposits left on the planet are in the most inhospitable
10:58places. We've got an awful lot of rain that's coming down with this storm. Tricky access. Come
11:04out. Extreme temperatures or unpredictable weather. I'd rather be snowing than raining. This is one of
11:11the wettest springs that I ever remember and we're already a month behind schedule of mining. To know
11:16the impact the environment has on the mining season. The weather sucks. It's hard to weld in the rain.
11:22Or its destructive power over a claim. I need to go. I need to go. It's everyday life for a miner.
11:30You all right, man? Yeah, I'm not feeling real good. I'm dizzy and I have a bad headache.
11:35That's the first sign of heat exhaustion out here, man.
11:40It's f***ing hot. You know, some of the pitfalls that you can't navigate, Fred, are one of them being
11:46weather. Planning your operation. It's going to have a large input on your mining season. You know,
11:51we've seen it in Arizona where, you know, you have to truck water in. It gets too hot, you evaporate
11:55all your water. Yep. Or if in July, it's way too damn hot to run, maybe you wait for the months where
12:00it's a little cooler. And in colder climates with plaster mining, 99% of everything you do is with
12:05water. Yeah. So when it starts going below freezing, you know, first of October, you're done. Yep.
12:11Then maybe you've got to figure out what your season looks like. Maybe try to plan your season
12:15accordingly. One that really stands out that we had an issue with the weather was the Nybergs.
12:20Yep. Healy, Alaska. Yeah. Man, that mountain beat us. It did.
12:24Three years ago, three generations of Nybergs were battling the thawed out mountains of Denali,
12:31central Alaska, in the hopes of a huge payday.
12:34Guys, what's going on? What's going on? What's going on? What's Freddy? Paul.
12:37Paul. Paul. That's my dad, Beetle. The weather is our biggest time constraint.
12:42It's a battle against the clock in the elements. This remote area of Alaska is frozen solid for six
12:48months. As it thaws, the family strip topsoil, known as overburden, to reach a pay layer below.
12:56The overburden's either frozen or mud. It takes so long to strip it. The season usually ends up being
13:03weeks long. Well, in the Nybergs situation, their pay was extremely sloppy, Freddy. Oh,
13:07the sloppiest I've ever seen. When you have mountains, you have difficult weather. You know,
13:13it makes it harder to mine. You want to go up on the hill and see into that hopper a little bit.
13:18You almost always never want to run wet pay. Well, you know, every time you grab a bucket full,
13:23you're agitating that material and that gold is sinking further and further down. When you're digging
13:28it too, gold's falling out because gold's heavy, right? Gold always wants to try to get back to the
13:32center of the earth. It thinks that's its home. Freddie and Juan are no strangers to wet pay.
13:39Sounds like a little thing. So your dirt's got water in it. Well, it's a huge thing. They solved
13:45this problem in British Columbia by letting it dry in the sun. Sometimes it's the little things. If we
13:51can keep the material dry, it's going to make a huge difference here. Or drying damp pay in Arizona
13:57for the heated trommel. Holy crap, that's hot. Frickin' hot, boy.
14:04But a fix like that would be in vain in Alaska's unpredictable climate.
14:09You want to pile it up, let it dry if it's wet, right? But in that situation, there was no choice.
14:15They had to run it that way. They're getting all that material brought down here, and they're losing
14:20good pay material off the side of that hopper. Sure slopping a lot of material on the ground,
14:26like feeding a milkshake. Yeah. Poor PJ's in there, you know, in six foot of muck putting in the hopper,
14:32and that hopper was just way too tiny for what they were doing. They weren't lying about this weather
14:36changing quick. Man. Hey, PJ! Last bucket! Talk about a mud hole, huh? Yeah. Holy cow.
14:47In the boggy pay dirt, the Nybergs run 65 yards an hour less than they need to turn a profit.
14:55The environment they were working in was extreme. Between the storms that were coming in to the hard
15:00access, it was really a tough situation. Well, let's see your gold. Here we go.
15:10Exactly a half an ounce, .50. I think we need a lot more than that. There's room for improvement,
15:15I'm sure. As far as the repairs of the plant, we want to redo that hopper, put some real grizzlies on
15:20it, make it a little wider and a little longer. We're going to be a little limited on the time it
15:24takes us to get in here, and if it keeps raining like this. We got a problem. Winter's coming, you
15:31know. We got a lot of dirt to move in a short amount of time, and hopefully they can help us
15:35get it through with better recovery. To increase the yardage of the sloppy pay to the plant,
15:41a new four-foot steel hopper will need to be fabricated.
15:44We can go ahead and start cutting. But with the plasma cutting trailer unable to ascend the mountain,
15:54Juan and PJ will build the bigger hopper in the boneyard below.
16:05Day three of the build, and in true Alaskan style, the weather goes from bad to worse.
16:11We got snow today. Just going to add that much more work to everything we already got going on.
16:17It was a snowstorm in the middle of the summer that popped up.
16:21Snow and rain. Yeah, snow and rain, and it just totally screwed up our passage to the mine site,
16:25and there was no way we could get our trucks in there.
16:28But the bad weather conditions cause more problems than just soggy pay.
16:35We're not crossing the creek, we're driving in the creek.
16:41Whoa. Whoa.
16:44Got a little sideways. Yeah.
16:46That's a horrible road.
16:47It is wet, yeah.
16:50If mother nature says, hey, I'm going to dump snow on you tomorrow, we can't control that.
16:53Just got to live with it.
16:55Mountain road scaled.
16:56Made it.
16:57Freddie and Juan set to work installing the bigger hopper to process the sloppy pay.
17:03Am I good over there, Juan?
17:05Hoping to increase production by a hundred percent.
17:08Just keep our fingers crossed that there's lots of gold in this next four hour run.
17:13First bucket, Freddie.
17:14I love this new hopper that Juan built in.
17:17It's catching all the big rocks that aren't supposed to go through there,
17:20and I'm not spilling any.
17:22He's got such a big area now, he's getting every bit in the hopper.
17:25That's a lot more efficient, so in my book, that's a win.
17:28Hey, PJ, how many buckets?
17:31125 buckets in 45 minutes.
17:34106 yards an hour.
17:37That's awesome.
17:37It was a really tough situation, but considering all,
17:40I'm really happy with what we were able to do.
17:42You know, and from what I remember, it was a pretty decent increase.
17:45How's it look?
17:46Looks better.
17:47Well, let's weigh it up.
17:48It's a half ounce last time.
17:51There you go.
17:521.07.
17:54Over a 100% increase on the first test, worth roughly $1,800.
18:01That's great.
18:02That's great.
18:02There wasn't much we could do to their pay.
18:04Yeah.
18:04I think a lot of it had to do with,
18:06now we were able to put that much more material through the plant.
18:08That's exactly right.
18:09You know, I can see how you guys have a really short season out here,
18:11so now it's not time to play around, it's game time.
18:14Oh yeah, we got to watch as much as we can, as fast as we can.
18:18If you're looking at a mine site, you know,
18:20obviously you're going to want to try to find something with the best weather,
18:22but you can't let that be your business plan because you need to go where the gold is.
18:26Whether it's hot, whether it's cold, gold defines on where you're going to mine for gold.
18:40Well, I want to show you something pretty cool, Juan.
18:43The hunting blind.
18:43Yeah.
18:44On a scissor assembly.
18:50Perfect.
18:51That thing is awesome, Fred.
18:52It's one of a kind.
18:56Very cool.
18:56Instead of taking days to set up a blind, it takes you minutes.
19:00This is a perfect example of efficiency, Freddy.
19:02Even in hunting or in mining, try to keep it simple, try to keep it efficient.
19:06Yeah.
19:07Unfortunately, we've been around Bosch plants over the years that
19:09really weren't planned very well.
19:10Mm-hmm.
19:11From the spring decks and trummels.
19:20My electric motor's kind of worn out.
19:22To bowls and the sluice.
19:24These are worthless ripples.
19:26The equipment miners use.
19:28Spray bar broke off, 11 seconds in.
19:31And how they use it.
19:33All right, Miss Kitty.
19:34Forward, ho.
19:36To make or break an operation.
19:39Don't start the conveyor.
19:40It's bound up.
19:45An easy pitfall to fall into, Freddy, is buying too much equipment.
19:49Overthinking a plant.
19:50Yeah.
19:50And we've seen that.
19:52A lot of times.
19:53If you see a plant that has sluices, then jigs, and then spirals, and then this, and that,
19:58and the other, usually it wasn't because they were losing that much gold, but they think they are.
20:04Yeah.
20:05But sometimes simplicity is actually the key.
20:07Remember in California?
20:09The Gretzners.
20:10That hard rock mine.
20:11They fall into that pitfall of plan your plant.
20:13Yep.
20:14Two years ago, Freddy and Juan ventured to the Mojave Desert, California,
20:20in a bid to rescue a failing hard rock mining operation.
20:24When it comes to liberating gold from hard rock, do you have to be crazy enough to go and get it?
20:28Yes.
20:29You guys want to fire up your mill?
20:31Let's do it.
20:31Let's do it.
20:32Chad and dad, Greg, along with a crew of part-time weekend warriors,
20:37operate a huge mill which frees gold trapped in rock by crushing to a powder.
20:43Well, remember when we first showed up at the Gretzners?
20:46I'm like, holy cow.
20:47You know, just the amount of labor that's going into it.
20:50I hate those chain falls.
20:53Those are painfully slow.
20:54Four and a half minutes to pick the first bag up and up at the hopper.
20:58Right now, it's not really efficient.
21:00It takes four guys to load the plant.
21:02When you set up a plant like that, every time you got to touch it, it costs you money.
21:05Yeah.
21:05You know, so they were having to manually lift up those bags with a chain hoist,
21:09which took time.
21:11You just have to feed it by hand with a shovel up there.
21:15There's a lot of wasted time right there, Freddy.
21:17A lot of wasted time.
21:18Then it gets into the hopper.
21:20Yep.
21:20The hopper should be able to feed by itself.
21:21That's the whole point of having a hopper.
21:23It didn't.
21:26Is that on?
21:28It does nothing.
21:30We've got a bunch of issues going on here.
21:32It was a little overwhelming, honestly, just because they didn't plant their plant.
21:36That screen right there, we need to do something better about that.
21:38The vibrating screen that sorts the rot lacks enough power.
21:43I know he's down there with a hammer.
21:45So Chad's crew must do it by hand.
21:47You could hire a trained monkey to do that one, though.
21:50Essentially, it's become a manual screen, even though he has a vibrator on it.
21:54They got time killers all down the line.
21:56Unfortunately, every step of their process had a bottleneck.
21:59It's a bottleneck.
22:00It was.
22:00They should have called that the bottleneck plant.
22:04Let's weigh it up.
22:07All right, here we go.
22:08Chad and his team need to make $700 a day to break even.
22:130.03.
22:160.03, yep.
22:18Nine-tenths of a gram.
22:20Almost a gram.
22:21Almost a gram from one ton of ore.
22:24That's a tremendous amount of work for that small of a payday.
22:27Yeah.
22:30They were working their butts off, but work smarter, not harder sometimes.
22:34It needs to be all the time.
22:35Freddie and Juan, with the crew's help, set to work to make the plant less labor-intensive
22:42and more efficient.
22:43I'm just setting up this new hoist, electric hoist.
22:48It's a hell of a lot easier than pulling on that chain.
22:51We were able to put airbags under their hopper to be able to get that material to feed properly.
22:55These are just really simple.
22:57They're actually an automotive airbag, and they work good.
22:59Well, awesome.
23:00Very, very cool.
23:02It'll work.
23:03Before they had a little tiny vibrator on the back here
23:05that wasn't doing anything, but we're actually doing an eccentric.
23:09By spinning heavy weights on a bar below the hopper,
23:12the eccentric vibrator will pulsate a steady supply of rocks into the jaw crusher.
23:18It took five guys to feed this.
23:20So what we're trying to do is trying to eliminate all that extra labor
23:22to make it one smooth transition where it feeds itself into the jaw,
23:26and you catch it on the other side.
23:27That screen that you built on top of that conveyor dropping into the second feeder,
23:34you were able to build that to be able to get it back into a wheelbarrow so they could rerun it.
23:39Before, oversized rock collected under the hopper and had to be removed by hand.
23:45Now, Freddy's new screen will divert oversized rock down a chute ready to be rerun through the crusher.
23:53It's getting the rocks screened out where all the material going into the surge hopper is the size it needs to be,
23:58and it allows them to re-crush that material on the same circuit with the same ore,
24:03so they aren't watering down another batch of material.
24:06It ought to work up.
24:07Really, there was a lot of fixes we did there, and every one of them sped up their process.
24:12Every fix we did made a difference there.
24:16I'll set a timer.
24:17Yeah.
24:18The fix is complete, but Gretzner crew run another two-hour test.
24:22First bag!
24:30Freddy, it's working good.
24:31I don't have to rake anymore!
24:33But the real measure of their fixes is the second gold way.
24:38If you're a mine, you do the honors.
24:40To make the mine viable, Chad must produce at least a quarter of an ounce of gold.
24:47Point two-six.
24:48Point two-six!
24:49Woo-hoo!
24:50Just over a quarter of an ounce.
24:51Yeah!
24:52That's awesome.
24:53So it's dang near ten times the amount of gold in that pan with a lot less work.
24:58Whether it's placer or hard rock, really it boils down to you got to have the right equipment,
25:03you got to plan your plant.
25:04Yep.
25:05Just like any other thing, you got to have the right tool for the job.
25:08Yep.
25:09You know, I've worked underground not as much as you, but I think I'll stick with the placer gold one.
25:14Yeah.
25:18Boom out.
25:29Boom out.
25:30Boom out and boom down.
25:32Okay, coming straight down, Juan.
25:34At his home in Colorado.
25:37Coming down.
25:38Freddy and Juan reflect on the mining traps of the trade and how to avoid them.
25:43Perfect.
25:44It's all yours, buddy.
25:47Thank you, Juan.
25:47No problem.
25:49You guys want to bolt her in and we'll finish it up and get on the road with it.
25:55Well, you know, something as simple as this, with the wrong crew, would have been a nightmare,
25:59Freddy.
25:59It takes a team to do things.
26:01It takes the right team, like Mitch and Cameron. You can jump in there and do anything we just did.
26:06You know, the right crew of guys.
26:07And mining, you need more than rich ground and sturdy equipment.
26:20I'm not a psychiatrist, just so you know.
26:23I don't expect you to be, but if you could do some work between me and my brother, it'd be great.
26:27That's only half the battle.
26:29Stress levels are high. I mean, I know them. I raised them, right?
26:32True success comes with picking the right crew.
26:36Somehow, I got to get my bucket in that feeder. I am a bit nervous about that.
26:41Who have the right skills.
26:43The guys are behind on their wages, so they're going to be wanting some cash soon.
26:48Screaming, yep.
26:49For the job.
26:50I feel like I'm obligated to have to come out here.
26:57If you're going to run a successful mining operation, you got to choose your crew properly.
27:02If you don't have a welder and a fabricator and a mechanic on site,
27:05you don't have a mine.
27:06Mm-hmm.
27:06Because really, that's what it boils down to.
27:08It's the right people for the job.
27:09Yeah, yeah.
27:10Me and you get along well.
27:12Yeah.
27:12Right?
27:13We work good together, but there's a lot of people that butt heads.
27:16Yeah.
27:16And that can be a huge distraction on a mine.
27:20Remember the Morels?
27:21Oh, Greg.
27:22What a family affair that was, huh?
27:25Five years ago, Freddie and Juan head to the western slopes of Colorado to a struggling
27:32operation run by father and son, Greg and Trevor Murill.
27:37I'd always told my wife when I retire, I'm going to have a gold mine with heavy equipment.
27:42Gold will always be worth the money, so the main motivation is my family.
27:46The relationship between me and my dad is pretty good.
27:50When we're working together, that's when it gets hard.
27:53You can't tell him that he's wrong, so you just kind of sit back and let him go with it.
27:58Well, one of the biggest things, you know,
28:00is taking them around four days to clean up their gold after they ran the plant for one day.
28:05Yeah.
28:05Right?
28:06And if they do that every week, you know, basically they run two days a week.
28:08Yep.
28:09Would you run down in my trailer and grab a bunch of my gold pins?
28:13Okay.
28:13Yes.
28:14Thanks, Greg.
28:15Uh-huh.
28:15So we'll just take a break for a second.
28:17It's a lot easier using the snuffer bottle.
28:19You can move all the black sands up.
28:21That's why I carry it with me right there.
28:22You didn't grab a bunch of them?
28:25Oh, you said give me a gold pan.
28:27I thought you were.
28:27No, some gold pans.
28:28Some gold pans.
28:29A bunch of gold pans.
28:30Your turn.
28:31I've missed enough of this.
28:32I am the mine owner.
28:33I need to know.
28:34No, we stopped.
28:35We didn't do anything.
28:36Yeah, we stopped.
28:36This is a break.
28:39Why'd you always go down there for one?
28:41You'd chew my ass for that.
28:43The tension between those two, it was stiff while we were there, boy.
28:47That was a tough situation.
28:48You know, me personally, I don't necessarily mind having family work with us.
28:52If they got a good attitude and willing to learn and a good work ethic.
28:55Yep.
28:55I don't pick sides, but, you know, they both have faults.
29:00Never seen that technique of you.
29:02It's the same way that I do it.
29:03You keep telling me that I'm losing gold that way.
29:06Bull.
29:08Okay.
29:12Hold it just a second.
29:13Don't you forget who owns this mine, who invested every penny in this mine.
29:17You are a hired hand at this point.
29:19I should be learning it from him.
29:21You may want to learn what Freddie has to teach.
29:23I have to if this is going to survive.
29:26Don't overstep your position, son.
29:28I don't know what's going on between them personally.
29:30I'm hoping they can work past it.
29:32The biggest logistical challenge to this is putting up with my dad.
29:37I am in charge here.
29:38It's my money.
29:38It's my investment.
29:40He can have his way when the day comes.
29:42Right now, I'm just concentrating on getting this thing going so there will be a someday for him.
29:48I understand where Greg was coming from.
29:50He didn't want his son to mess up.
29:51Yeah.
29:51And I get that.
29:52But you got to give him enough rope to be able to go out and try things themselves.
29:56He may hang himself, but you got to give him the rope.
30:00So what's the biggest problem you have with your dad?
30:02His lack of trust in me.
30:04I think my dad has a little bit of that, too.
30:05You know, in his eyes, I'm still his little boy, and he's the one that taught me everything.
30:09That's exactly right.
30:10And if he didn't teach it to you, you don't know what the hell you're doing.
30:13Yeah.
30:13My dad and I get along great, as long as we're not working together.
30:16Yeah, exactly.
30:17It's the same with my dad.
30:19Just don't give up, man.
30:20You guys have a great thing going here.
30:21Greg really needed to kind of let go of the reins.
30:23Trevor might screw up.
30:24He's probably going to screw up.
30:26Every one of us, you know, has failed, you know, multiple times.
30:29And it'll happen again.
30:30Yeah, but that's all the part of the learning curve.
30:34But sometimes, if personalities clash, it runs the risk of ending in disaster.
30:41They're just not meant to be together working.
30:48When they're not working together, the family life will probably be good.
31:05Yeah.
31:06Or better, anyway.
31:07Yeah, hopefully.
31:07Intervention needed.
31:10Freddie and Juan clean house.
31:12What happened yesterday, it's not good.
31:15But we want to make sure you guys are okay.
31:17Is there anything we can do to help you guys out?
31:18Throw a rock at me once in a while.
31:21Just do a full timeout, figure out what the main issue is.
31:26And I'm no therapist.
31:28And that's all I'm going to say about it.
31:29I'm done.
31:33Good morning.
31:34Good morning.
31:36How you doing?
31:36Good.
31:37Do me a favor.
31:39Since you already know how to do all this, stand back and just let me do all this stuff.
31:43You're going to have the freedom to learn.
31:46It's not in my nature to just give someone free reign, but I need to just quit micromanaging.
31:51And I'll intervene when he needs help.
31:54Feud resolved.
31:55Greg and Trevor get to work helping Freddie and Juan complete the fixes on their plant.
32:01How's the wild luck, Greg?
32:02Looks good to me.
32:08After an overhaul on the wash plant.
32:10Here we go.
32:10Freddie and Juan run a second four-hour test.
32:17There's a lot of repairs there.
32:18Yeah, that's something to be proud of.
32:21Well, dump her in there, Juan.
32:23Freddie and Juan's fixes increased the Murils' gold haul by over 60%.
32:30I'm very happy with that.
32:33You know, if they could just get along, it'd be better.
32:34You know, having family work for you, it can be a good thing because you know them,
32:39you know them, but it can also be...
32:41It can be a bad thing too.
32:42A bad thing.
32:43Like if you have to let somebody go or...
32:45It makes it really awkward for Thanksgiving dinner, huh?
32:48Yeah.
32:48Sorry, Grandpa.
32:55Coming up...
32:55Where's gold in that bucket?
32:58Freddie and Juan revealed the biggest trap of the trade rookie miners can face.
33:03It was rumored to be a 36-ounce nugget found up here back in the day.
33:07What is the chances that that was the only one?
33:09Holy cow, Fred.
33:14I can see your new head frame from here.
33:16It's massive.
33:17If you look on the corners, the corner gussets are my dad's old brand.
33:20That's pretty neat.
33:21What size pipe is that?
33:22It's 36-inch.
33:24Yeah, that do me, huh?
33:25Yeah.
33:25I got a little bit of entrance envy now.
33:28Entrance envy?
33:29Yeah.
33:30It's not really a ranch, but I grew up on the Dodge Ranch.
33:32I don't have enough acreage to be a ranch.
33:34Neither do I.
33:36We call it the IFR Ranch, but it's not.
33:37Yeah.
33:38I got wild kids and chickens.
33:39That's what we got.
33:40That's right, yeah.
33:49Well, Juano, that's where the magic happens.
33:52In Colorado...
33:54Get those fines, Fred.
33:55...at Freddie's mining operation.
33:57Freddie and Juan reflect on the traps of the trade from miners and how to avoid them.
34:03Looks pretty good, Topher.
34:05Yeah, very good.
34:06Beautiful yellow gold.
34:08The stuff dreams are made of, or nightmares.
34:11That little gold adds up, though.
34:13Can't sacrifice that to go after big gold.
34:15No.
34:16People get so focused on nuggets, that's all they think about.
34:18We've seen that before, huh?
34:20Yeah.
34:25Come on, big gold.
34:28For gold miners, a nugget can give them the fever.
34:31The nugget factor up here is the real deal.
34:34Look at that.
34:36There's a $3,000 nugget right there.
34:38Easy.
34:39But if you forget to mine the fines...
34:42I got a color red nugget over here, right there.
34:45A few million more of those, and we're in good shape.
34:47...you can end up in trouble.
34:49Are you sure you don't have gold fever?
34:50Your eyes haven't lost those nuggets.
34:54Generally speaking, gold fever's a real thing, but I think it gets even worse when people get...
34:58With nuggets.
34:59Yeah.
34:59Yeah.
34:59You know, over the years, we've seen several different people that have that same situation
35:03cut, you know, going on, yeah.
35:04Yeah.
35:05They focus entirely on the nuggets, then they sacrifice the fine gold.
35:08Yep.
35:10Five years ago, Freddie and Juan traveled deep into the Kootenay Rockies in British Columbia
35:17to the nip and tuck claim owned by reclusive miner, Stephen Latham.
35:22I know there's big, big, big gold in here.
35:24I know it.
35:26Stephen Latham was a funny guy.
35:27He was a character.
35:28He is a character, all right.
35:29When we drove up to Steve's place, we could see from a mile away the size of, you know,
35:34the holes on the side of his trommel.
35:35You're being literal there.
35:36Yeah, from a mile away.
35:37From a mile away, you could see the holes.
35:40I'm looking at two and a half inch holes in your trommel over there.
35:42Yeah, and I am glad that they are that big, because it was rumored to be a 36 ounce nugget
35:46found up here back in the day.
35:48What is the chances that that was the only one?
35:51I think slim.
35:52He based his entire mining plan on that story.
35:55Mm-hmm.
35:56That's right.
35:58First bucket, Juan.
36:00To assess the operation, Freddy and Juan watch a four-hour test run.
36:05Where is gold in that bucket?
36:08This guy's definitely got gold fever.
36:10Where is gold in this bucket?
36:14Look how dirty those rocks are.
36:15I bet you were losing 15, 20 percent of the fines out of the end of that.
36:19He was hoping to hit the jackpot with one piece of gold.
36:22Done.
36:23Yeah.
36:23Retired, boys.
36:24I'm going to buy Bezos out.
36:26Yeah, 35 ounces.
36:27I hit it rich, boys.
36:30No, not quite.
36:31It cost you triple to make that.
36:32Mm-hmm.
36:33Every bit of that should have gone right through that trommel.
36:35Yep.
36:36That should have been smooth.
36:37Yep.
36:37There's one, two, three, four pieces there.
36:40That's not good, Freddy.
36:42That wasn't even a full pan.
36:43No, it wasn't.
36:44He's throwing a lot of gold out at the end of that trommel.
36:47You got a piece of gold that you can barely see trying to compete against a two-inch rock.
36:51Who's going to win?
36:52Yeah.
36:52The rock's going to win every time.
36:55Test run complete.
36:57Steven begins to clean the box.
37:00I was hoping to see a couple 30-ouncers in there.
37:02Oh, you and me both.
37:03That's a little cutie.
37:04It's not the 30-ouncer I wanted to see.
37:07I guess if we're to learn from that, don't base your mining plans solely on nuggets.
37:11Might as well get the small gold out, too.
37:13Yep, exactly right. Get it all.
37:15We totally get why you want a screen so big, you know,
37:18the chance of being able to catch that bigger nugget.
37:19But we're really worried that you're losing a lot of that finer gold.
37:23To modify Steven's plant to capture fine gold as well as nuggets,
37:28Freddy gets to work on a secondary circuit.
37:31We're going to try to get that smaller material going down this sluice box
37:34instead of trying to compete with those monster boulders that are going down the other sluice box.
37:40Meanwhile, one's priority is to adapt the trommel.
37:43We're going to cut a series of slots here,
37:45and what those slots are going to do is going to allow that fine material
37:48to drop through the trommel into the new sluice.
37:51We didn't want to take away his dream of catching that big nugget.
37:54But he's also catching his fine gold now.
37:57Time to put our money where our mouth is, don't want to?
37:59Yeah, that's it.
37:59The fix is complete.
38:01Steven with friend James run a second test.
38:05Eat the beast, Steve.
38:07First scoop in the new system.
38:09You can see it, Freddy. Look at the difference.
38:18No water coming out the end.
38:19That's pretty awesome. I'm happy with that.
38:22If there is fine gold, it should be dropping through one slits and catching in the new sluice.
38:30Bigger nuggets can still come through the two-inch punch plate and collect in Steve's old sluice.
38:36Those sluices are both running extremely well.
38:38And we've got those slit cuts for the finer gold and the smaller pieces.
38:42Now they don't have to compete with those big-ass rocks going down that other sluice box.
38:46I know we've improved this gold recovery. How much, I don't know.
38:49Check that out, Freddy.
38:51It's a lot cleaner. I mean a lot cleaner.
38:55I'm happy with that.
38:56Juan's baffles have slowed the water enough to clean the gold off the rocks.
39:01Freddy, look at that. None of these are smaller than two inches.
39:06Yep.
39:07So everything two-inch and smaller is making it to the sluice run.
39:10I'm happy with that.
39:11Nice. I'm happy with that.
39:14After four hours...
39:15Hey, Steve! Last bucket! Last one!
39:19...they called time on the final run.
39:22Hey, Steve!
39:31Hey!
39:32So what do you think?
39:32See anything in there?
39:34This box is running awesome.
39:35Yeah. Oh, look at all. Oh, yeah.
39:37Those riffles are doing exactly what they're supposed to.
39:39Yeah.
39:39They're running good.
39:40Beautiful.
39:40You know that if there's any great big nuggets, they're going to fall right in off the...
39:43probably be in the top mat there.
39:45Yeah.
39:45Now you actually have the chance of catching that 35-ounce nugget you've been bragging about.
39:49Dude, I don't know what to say, guys.
39:51It looks good. I'm happy about it.
39:52I think at the end, he was kind of impressed with how much that small sluice picked up,
39:56because it actually recovered quite a bit.
39:58More than he was expecting, for sure.
40:01Anything over 0.15 ounces will be a success.
40:06Look at that, 0.22.
40:070.22.
40:08Nice!
40:09That's awesome.
40:10Proud of that, bud.
40:11Yeah, me too.
40:11Wow, I cannot believe that, guys.
40:15And look at all the fine gold in there, too. Damn.
40:17A massive increase of 70%.
40:20I knew I was losing gold, but I never knew it was that much.
40:24Gold's at a high.
40:25More than ever, it's important for everyone that is mining to focus on all gold,
40:29whether it's nuggets or fine gold.
40:31Don't sacrifice that fine gold.
40:32Catch it all.
40:33Make sure you catch it all.
40:33You know, to sum it all up for new miners out there, to me, the number one thing they need
40:38to do is do their homework.
40:40Yep.
40:40Do their homework on the ground before you throw all your money at it.
40:44Agreed.
40:44For years, I didn't really like putting out my, you know, secrets or tricks.
40:50Yeah.
40:51But, you know, the older you get, that's what you do is you pass on knowledge from
40:56one generation to the next, right?
40:58So it's not lost.
41:00I feel the same way.
41:01You know, throughout the years with my business and everything else I've done,
41:05I've gotten a lot of help.
41:06So it really does feel like it's a chance for us to give back and help people avoid the pitfalls
41:12that we've encountered.
41:13I think it's our responsibility to do that.
41:16It's a lot easier to learn off other people's mistakes.
41:20That's for sure.
41:21Well, Freddie, gold's through the roof right now and there's a fortune to be made.
41:23So let's go help some miners.
41:25Let's do it, buddy.
41:25All right.
Recommended
43:37
|
Up next
41:25
58:51
41:31
9:49
47:26
51:31
27:28
27:25
41:25
34:21
48:47
55:09
57:11
41:31
55:37