WATCH THE SHOW? KENNE-DVR IT’S.
Here we go.
We’re at the raise.
Holy cow.
All good?
Oh yeah.
We’re about to head up to the number five
and prove Ole’s gold.
Hold up.
We need to be monitoring the air for sure.
We head outside to get our air monitors and boom,
the snowstorm hits.
Well for Pete’s sake.
Let’s pack up and get out of here.
The speed of this storm coming over the pass
and the wind started blowing.
And the snow was starting to stick on our gear.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Oh [BEEP].
I slide around pretty good.
We knew that that was it.
Okay Marty.
Got her.
We’ve got no choice.
We got to get this operation off the mountain right now.
We’re done.
We need to get the heck out of here.
This means that our whole season,
it’s, it’s worth nothing.
I don’t know what we’re gonna do.
Two weeks after the first blizzard of the year blows
through Bear Gulch, winter beats a temporary retreat.
Temperatures hover in the fifties for six straight days,
giving the Dales one last shot to find Ole’s gold.
It’s a lucky break, ’cause it could have socked in
and been just total winter from then on.
And allowed us enough time to try to make it back up,
which we desperately need to do.
The brothers hope to finally send two men up
the raise to the Pete & Joe number five,
where legendary miner Ole Fossnes claimed
he hid a gold vein worth millions.
Oh.
John volunteers to lead the ascent
and finish what he and Tad started.
We were close.
We were damn close to Ole’s gold.
If we don’t get up this raise
the question just hangs there.
And that’s not where we want to be at this point.
We want to prove something one way or the other.
First the brothers face a ten-mile trek up old road.
A single-lane switchback carved in the face of APA mountain,
that climbs to 9200 feet.
Old Road is the brother’s only path
to the Pete & Joe mines.
But they fear the storm may have made it
impassable until spring.
This road hasn’t improved any.
We’ve brought lots of iron up with us today.
Everybody’s got their four-wheel drives with chains,
got the Army trucks.
Got side by side with tracks.
Everything we’ve got we’re gonna try to make it in there.
But we spent all summer working to get to that point.
We’re not gonna give up.
Forecasts call for more storms in the next 48 to 72 hours.
Leaving the brothers precious little time.
We think maybe we still could get in and get some
definitive answers before the winter sets in earnest.
And that could happen literally any day.
It already happened once.
Ooh, now we have some snow.
It’s starting to build up here.
That storm let off a little bit but you could,
we could see where the wind is with these
snowbanks and like that snow bank there.
So, this snow, as long as it’s pretty soft
we can probably push through it here.
A little bit of speed helps these.
Ooh.
Get the chainsaws out.
Tree down.
Where did this Baby Huey come from?
I think that storm blew it over.
Oh boy, look at that [LAUGHS].
That happens a lot up here.
You can have some ferocious winds up here
and they can be very localized
that just like that encounter.
There was one tree out of a whole stand.
It slows the day down quite a bit.
We have to stop and get the saws out
and decide how we’re gonna remove it.
All those are delays.
You only have so much daylight
up here this time of year.
So you got to get with the program [LAUGHS] and get going.
Okay, we ought to be able to get through there, huh?
There we go.
We’re gonna get up into the shade now.
In the timber on the road,
and it doesn’t catch that southern winter sun.
And the sun sets so far in the south in the wintertime,
you don’t get a lot of melting.
Because some of that never sees the sun during the day.
We’re gonna get into some snow banks.
We know that.
Now it’s gonna get interesting past
the Pete & Joe cabin.
If there’s any heavy drifting it’s gonna be
from here on up.
The Pete & Joe cabin marks the boundary
of the Pete & Joe claim.
Designed for life at 7800 feet,
the cabin’s survived 120 winters.
But the identities of the men who built it
have been lost to time.
None of us know who Pete or Joe was.
We’ve done some research on trying to find out
who Pete and Joe really were.
But we really...
it’s kind of a dead end.
It was probably somebody’s relative when they
went to the process to patent or get the claim deeded.
They named it the Pete and Joe.
Like I live on a claim called the Giant.
So it could be any name, so the name,
that name is somebody, whoever located,
that was special to them.
Ha.
Looks like the end of the easygoing.
Who’s going first?
Maybe Paul can chew through there with chains.
Yeah, let’s give it a try.
Paul’s 1982 M37 was a mainstay of the United States
Armed forces in the Korean war.
And has been Paul’s vehicle of choice
for the last 50 years.
I was weened on driving old military trucks.
’Cause my dad had one and that’s, that was family
vehicle for a while.
I went on dates in it, went on keggers in it.
It was ideal for that.
And historically the enthusiasts say that
this was one of the best vehicles the Army ever made.
It’s a pretty formidable machine.
It’s heavy.
I have big, aggressive tires on it.
And when you chain it up with the clearance that it has,
it’s ideal for this country.
Got the chains on the front.
Give her hell but don’t slide against the trees.
As Claudie used to say,
go just enough that you don’t break something.
[LAUGHS]
There it goes.
I guess not.
Um, that didn’t go so well.
Well, too much snow.
If there’s too much snow you’re done,
you’re dead in the water.
You know, I don’t have to paint you a picture
more than that.
We’re not gonna get up there with the, with a truck.
If mine wouldn’t make it chained up,
we’re definitely not going in there
in a wheeled vehicle this year.
Well I think we’re done with vehicles.
I’ve got the snow machine.
We’ll give that a try, if it’s soft snow,
I don’t know how it’ll go.
But at least we’ll see what’s up above.
We know it’s only gonna get worse from here.
So this is, this is our last shot at it.
So I’m gonna take the snow machine and see what I can do.
See what it looks like up above.
So that’s where we are.
All right.
We’ll see how it goes.
If I don’t come back, come a looking.
The new Sensodyne Repair and Protect