(dramatic music)
- [Narrator] The Dale Brothers have put the clues together,
and they think they know where
the entrance to the Pete & Joe number 5 mine is buried.
If they’re right, they’ll be just
65 feet away from Oly’s gold.
Now, it’s time to dig,
but the trail to the number 5
was built for pack mules, not excavators.
- We have to build a new section of road
that takes us up the mountain to number 5.
Everything we need or are going to need
is gonna have to be hauled up there.
- [Narrator] To do the job,
the Dales bring on their first contractor.
- [Paul] Marty Salusso is an old friend.
He was in my graduating class in 1976.
He’s worked in and around big mines,
coal mining operations, reclamation,
all kinds of things.
He knows how to get things done.
For being almost 74, the way he can work,
he’ll work you right into the ground.
Marty’s good on that hoe,
but he’s gonna have to be quick on it too.
We’ve got a lot of work in front of us.
- [Narrator] Marty sets a fast pace.
It’s late October, and winter can arrive with a vengeance
as early as September here.
The last place he wants to be when that happens
is 9,000 feet up on the side of a mountain.
- It’s really worrying me.
I’m gonna have to be the one that has to walk this
and all my machinery down when the snow hits.
It could snow 6 feet,
then I’m in a world of (bleep).
I got a machine I’m paying for,
and I can’t even get it out of here.
So, I’m hoping we could get in
and knock out the portals,
and get out of here before we get too much.
- [Paul] Hold up, Marty!
Holy cow, Marty, look at that.
- [Marty] That’s big, it’s big.
- That wind must’ve scooted down through here and...
And look at this mess down here, look at that.
It took out another tree,
and went clear down the hill.
- [Marty] Wow.
- We’ll, I’ll start cuttin’ it.
- All right, let’s do it.
(chainsaw buzzes)
- Paul Dale.
So, I was born July 11th of 1954,
and I am 4th in the lineup.
When you’re number four and you have three older brothers
that can be pretty strong-willed,
you learn to get along,
you learn when to keep your mouth shut.
Rick’s definitely an alpha male,
especially in his younger years.
I would say John is a peacemaker.
Tad is a good organizer,
and Kitt, he’s kind of the family historian,
and he’s pretty technical.
The chance to work together to try to do something
and actually have it come to fruition,
that’s the exciting part for me.
- [Marty] How’s that look, Paul?
- Way to go!
- Well, let’s have a celebration over it, huh?
- Shall we break some champagne?
- Let’s go get some whisky from camp.
(Paul laughs)
All right, I’m going back to work.
- [Narrator] While Marty presses on towards Oly’s gold,
the Dale Brothers set their sights on phase two
of their long term plan.
- Oly’s gold is an immediate target,
but we’ve gotta be looking down the road.
- The B&H tunnel gives us the opportunity
to access the ore body all the way through the mountain.
- [Narrator] The Dales are convinced
that a feeder system of gold
runs vertically through the mountain.
The B&H runs 2,500 feet,
and is connected to the mines above
through passages within the mountain,
making it the most efficient place
to mine the deep ore.
- Gravity always works if we develop
the bigger ore body that we know is there.
That would be the easiest haulage level
to bring everything out on.
Okay.
- We’re opened up, let’s see what we got in there.
Gee whiz.
I didn’t expect this.
The tunnel is almost completely full of ice.
- [Tad] Well, I would say the B&H is more of a refrigerator
than it is a 2,500 foot drift right now.
- When we were younger,
there wasn’t ice in this tunnel.
- As a teenager, I remember going clear back
around the corner here.
The ice has been building up there for a number of years.
That’s a tough problem to solve.
In some ways, even worse than rock.
(tense music)
We need to get that ice out of there,
because we’re gonna need to get in there in the future.
- [John] Well, that was an interesting journey.
- [Tad] That looked pretty scary.
- We’ve got our work cut out for us.
We’re really gonna have to do some engineering here,
and gonna have to put some real labor into this
to find what we need out of this mountain.