After months of delay, Parker's Alaskan crew is finally on the gold banking 14 ounces from
easy to mine old timer tailings in the drift cut.
It looks like the drift tailings.
They'll be worthwhile running, but kind of just barely.
Really, what we're here for is the good ground that Liam drilled by the square foot.
It's like, five times better than what we're mining in the Yukon.
On the other side of the claim, Parker is chasing a pay streak in the four acre Wolfe
cut, which he hopes will deliver 1000 ounces this season.
We can get a nice sized pit down.
The goal should be really good.
It's kind of late in the year, so we've got to get going on this.
To get to paydirt 30 feet down, the crew must haul out 100,000 yards of overburden.
So we'll take like four more feet off this and get us down to water level.
And then it's like 30 feet to bedrock.
From there, we want to sluice the bottom six.
Working right next to this pond.
Water is going to be the number one problem in here.
The perfect situation is partially frozen mud because it keeps the water out.
Cuts getting muddy.
Vegas thing is just trying to keep from getting stuck.
A guy can sit in one spot for very long.
Kind of like I am now before the track started sinking away.
Kind of like dealing with a bad custard.
Hey, Parker, you got a copy?
Yeah. What's up?
This cut's getting pretty wet.
I'll come over there.
The more area we open up, the worse the mud gets.
And and we haven't even gotten like a fifth of the cut out.
The wolf cut sits alongside an old dredge pond with just a narrow berm separating the
two. As the crew dig down, they expose frozen permafrost, holding back the water.
Now it's thawing, allowing the pond water to seep through the berm and flood the cut.
There's going to be a lot of water soon.
Yeah. The best thing to do is get us something there.
Yeah, I'll give it a try.
We'll put a pump sitting right there.
Right with a discharge going up there?
Yeah. Perfect.
Parker's plan to conquer the water, dig a sump pond at the deepest point in the cut.
Hopefully we'll have a deep enough hole here pretty quick where all the water can collect.
And install an eight inch pump to drain it.
Can you get at it? Yeah.
It's really cool to see Parker being hands on and wanting to get this cut opened up as
bad as the rest of us.
There you go.
Now all that's left to do.
Thanks, Mark. I'll see you tomorrow.
His weight.
Oh, where is our pop?
I stayed out late last night because we, like, had our pump in and everything was
going very good. And then the pump stopped pumping and we have a lake instead of a cut
now.
Overnight, the pump system failed, flooding the cut and submerging the pump under four
feet of water.
That's.
And we just put half a million dollars into this.
Probably would have had better odds just going to Vegas with all the money.
The pump was like completely underwater and I couldn't get out to it to walk to it.
I got a little kayak over here, paddled out there with a chain on the excavator, get it
up on dry ground so we could work on it.
It must have shut off or the silk got in there and plugged it up.
Foreman Mark Forbes thinks the suction filter at the end of the hose became blocked with
debris causing the water level to rise and submerge the engine in an attempt to get it
running again. He's taken it completely apart.
She's all dried out.
The next step is to get that big basket in there.
It was kind of buried in the brush.
This is kind of a gift from the old timers.
To prevent the pump from clogging up again, should it fire up?
Mark plans to Bush fix an extra filter for the suction hose.
We're going to weld this old trommel screen on the top of this thing so we have a lid so
sticks and debris can't get into our pump.
With the customized filter underway, Marc comes up with a plan to stop this from
happening again.
Hopefully this bed of old pontoons will float it.
In case it does flood again and we don't have to worry about it.
I think it'll work.
Have you drained the fuel?
Drained everything.
I took all the fuel lines off Turbo.
I took the manifold off.
You were a mechanic.
I mean, I did everything but rebuild it.
So hopefully it lasts.
To have any hope of getting down to Wolf cut paydirt.
Let's get a pump back in the spot.
It needs to be.
Marks Bush fixed floating pump needs to work.
I think this will take care of our water problem.
Hey, hey, look at that.
Ready to fire it up.
The pumping.
Yeah, it's pumping.
Pump back in service.
Good job.
We definitely have to keep an eye on it tonight.
Hopefully we can get our cut dried out and get back at it.
Cuts looking really good this morning and then kind of keeping an eye on it all night.
So, yeah, we're all up and running here.
At Cleary Creek.
Mark fours.
Bush fixed pump has successfully drained the flooded wolf cut.
Feels good. We got it down to a point where we can actually get something done in here
again.
So it feels good to finally get back and get a wolf cut so we can get down to that fresh
virgin pay here.
Yep. I can almost smell it.
And I can't wait to see what it looks like.
Smell.
What does gold smell like?
If you've never smelled dry and gold, you're missing out.
There's not much time here this season for learning the ropes.
But, you know, I think this crew is great getting the job done.