18x05 - A Tale of Three Miners

[bunniefuu]

It's good ground?

Air compressor shut off.

In gold mining, striking the mother lode

is a fabled dream as old as time.

Yeah, there's, like, $5,000 right there.

And in the fleet's quest
for those untold riches,

there's a lesson to be learned

in every ice mining tale.

Price of gold is skyrocketing.

Can't complain about that.

It adds up quick.

At the end of the day, it
adds up to be thousands.

I'm excited to get down there.

Gold's looking really good down there.

Hell, we're ready to rock and roll.

Nome's resident king

is ready to get back to mining,

and score big at just the right time.

We're almost at the
end of our free royalty,

so if we don't put gold in the box,

then we lose 15%.

Hopefully, it will be a smooth day.

We got seven more days
before our royalty-free window

closes with vern, so it's time
to make every minute count.

We were on hot gold the last dive,

before the pump engine quit on us.

Now we have a new one.

I'm ready to pound this pay streak.

And today should be the biggest
payday of the season thus far.

Beautiful day to go diving.

Let's do this.

Damn it!

Get this water nice and hot,

pile this umbilical up
in here to thaw it out.

They don't pay to be up top.

We gotta get down below.

Hopefully sooner than later.

There she goes.

Got hot water.

One step closer.

Get the box set up, get the pump primed.

Wow.

Mother nature's chandeliers?

Yeah.

Yeah. There's all these
nice big rocks here.

Lovin' it.

Beautiful-looking material here.

I'm gonna find the
nozzle and get it over here.

Let's fire this pump up.

Got suction now.

I see a few little pieces here and there.

Hasn't turned into anything yet.

When we move into this rock
a little bit, see if gets any better.

Well, we're running out
of days off free royalties.

I want to put some gold in the box.

While the king looks to fund
his empire across the ice...

Wilson. Thanks for coming.

And I think the trick is, we'll just...

Get rid of the smudge and snow.

And then, I'll thaw out
the carburetor with the g*n.

Nome's young g*n Chris mccully

has added some firepower to his armory.

We'll just fire everything
up and with the box in there,

the heat of the muffler will...

- Saturate the stuff.
- Yeah.

Bringing on a trusted friend and diver

to get his team back up to full strength.

The box should go over this motor.

It fits.

Sweet. Now we just
gotta cut the window.

I started the winter with hot gold,

but things fell apart real quick.

I put the spark plugs in here last night

and the threads are stripped.

Look, you guys don't even
know how to put a spark back on.

Idiots.

I've dove solo once,

but this is not gonna
work out in the winter.

I need a full team for the rest of the way.

And I lucked out getting Wilson.

He's a great diver,

and a great tender,
and that's what I need.

I got a lot of dramas lately.

It's time for me to make money now,

and I got the good diver.

This is for the better.

We're on a hot pay streak right now,

and the deeper it
goes, the better the gold.

So today we're gonna go
deeper than we've gone all season.

Almost 40 feet.

All I gotta do now is
just get on my wet suit

and go get some gold, man.

All right, g. It's showtime. Yeah.

Most guys out here would
only go 15 to 25 feet deep.

'Cause it's super dangerous
to go under the ice this deep.

But the gold is so good,
I'm gonna take that risk.

Whoo! Yes!

All right.

Whoo! Yeah, dude.

Time to get some gold, baby!

Divers build up nitrogen
gas with every dive.

The deeper the dive, the faster it builds.

Too much can cause
decompression sickness,

known as "the bends."

So, for dives over 33 feet,

divers are limited to three hours.

And on the way up, they
perform a three-minute safety stop

to eliminate excess nitrogen.

Too quick of an ascent...

Can cause tissue damage or even death.

Comm check, comm check.

Yeah, I can hear you.

Yeah. Don't wanna push it too hard.

Okay, I got to the bottom.

Nice, Sandy bottom.

Yeah.

All right. Copy that.

How's the ground?

It's good ground?

Yeah. Chris just got down
there, first dive of the day.

But we're at, like, almost 40 feet.

Air compressor shut off.

Come up. We're having
air compressor issues.

We're having issues
with the air compressor.

We just need a new spark plug.

Should be able to clean it up.

Whoo!

This is why diving deep is so dangerous.

If you're at 20 feet and your
air compressor goes down,

it's a lot easier to get to the top.

But when you're at 40 feet,

it's a long ways down there.

But the part is, I have a
three-minute safety stop,

so I wasn't able to complete that.

That's kind of dangerous too.

So our manager selected to call it.

And...

Yeah, and then we'll have
Wilson back down there.

It really sucks that I
had to come out so fast

and I was not able to do
my decompression stop.

So it's not safe to dive again right now.

But even though we're diving
deep, Wilson can handle it.

He's got the experience.

That's why having him on the team

is a game changer.

Yeah, we'll just keep
the ball rolling from here.

I feel pretty confident for
him to go back down there

because everything is running smooth.

The compressor just had a little issue,

but I got that fixed right away.

He's gonna do just fine.

Get money.

Got to the bottom?

Copy that.

All right. He's ready. Ready!

And there we have it.
Wilson's back in the water.

And we're making money, baby!

Whoo!

That's the greatest feeling.

Seven miles east.

Okay, let's break in the action.

The plan right now is to get
Andy in the hole as fast as we can.

We're on gold, we're following in a line,

and now we've got to track
it down like wild hounds.

Since the beginning of the season

I'm gonna, like, concentrate
on keeping it cheap,

making our dollar holler, you know?

Like, I'm not spending any money.

And I don't want to hear any complaints.

Captain kris has concentrated
on keeping it thrifty.

John, status report.

And after a rough start...

Yeah!

The threadbare
operation finally bore fruit.

And this is where the
skill comes in. We got this.

Now, reaper nation is ready

to finally rack up big numbers.

Okay. You ready to rock and roll?

Arms out.

I took a gamble on this
claim nobody else cared about.

It looked like a dumpster fire at first,

but we tapped into a hot pay streak.

Okay. You ready?

Let me look. Hold on.

I need Andy to feed on it.

We're way behind at this point.

All right!

You know the job.

You know what to do.

Make that money at all costs.

Andy's like a whale. Terrible on land,

but underneath the water,
that mother can move.

Okay.

Idle up.

I know you just got down there, homey,

but what do you think we're
seeing for a dollar figure?

Okay. Well, keep up the good work, then.

Okay, that's good.

I like a little bit more of a chipper attitude.

So I can hear you're in a good mood.

Andy's in a good mood.

That means he's seeing a lot of gold.

So, you see we're on some gold?

Yeah, baby!

He's in a really good mood
because if he wasn't on gold,

he'd be in a whiny b*tch mood
and he wouldn't let me talk to him.

But right now, everything's going good.

Everything okay?

Andy's on great gold, so we
should be raking in the ounces.

But I don't really know if we are

because the sluice box sprung a leak.

Some of the material isn't
processing through the box.

It's just flying out the front.

And I'm sure gold is in it.

Maybe it's a lot, maybe it's a little.

There's no way to tell right now.

We're leaking holes
out of the front of the box.

Right now, though, we're not gonna pick.

We're gonna run the rest of the day

and just see where we
come out at the end of the day.

I'm not into catch and release.

But you lose more money
when you don't mine.

You know?

If we try to fix that box right now,

we'd have to shut down

and it'll cost us a couple of hours.

As a captain, I'm making a judgment call.

It's better to work with a sluice box

than try to take the time to fix it.

I'm guessing the leak isn't too bad

and we'll still make money.

I hope the gold gods are with me.

When you come out,
John jumped straight in.

I don't wanna around
and waste any time.

Okay.

Gold looks good down there.

I hope we have something
to look at in the back.

Hey, Shawn.

Yeah, go ahead, Joe.

What you see down there?

I, I'm seeing a piece here, a piece there,

trying to sniff it out right now.

After long hours under the ice,

the king's confidence is slowly fading

along with any sign of gold.

We're making just
enough to cover expenses.

That's no fun.

We might have to move.

You're not seeing it, you're not making it.

All right.

But I've had enough for one day.

Get the hell out of here.



I think we'll find it somewhere nearby.

I thought today was gonna be massive.

Easily our best day

to start setting this season on fire.

But I was totally wrong.

Instead, we probably need to move.

We only have a few days
of royalty free mining left.

So, I don't wanna waste time right now.

We'll see what the scale says.

But it doesn't look good.

That's the way it goes.

You win some, you lose some.

It's not going well at all.

As the king humbly retreats...

Talk to me.

So, how much money
are you making me?

That's my dawg.

Go sniff that out.

Despite the loose sluice,

the thrifty miner still feels

he's on the winning side of the ledger.

I really need this gold
to build up my crawler

and keep making my empire bigger.

So, good job, buddy.

I'm rolling the dice here.

It's possible the sluice
box is so messed up,

we're barely making anything right now.

But we can't afford to stop mining

and Jerry-rig something,
Andy's on great gold,

so I'm feeling good about our chances.

, man.

Okay, you're done.

I'm coming up.

So, he had a great dive.
He made a lot of gold.

Everything's good.

He's... gloves breaking apart.

Andy's at risk of getting hypothermia.

We gotta get him up asap.

But I'm still not stopping to fix the box.

We're gonna get John
down and keep going.

We need to make every penny we can.

And at this point, we
need a lot of pennies.

Yeah, baby.

And that's how an orca
goes up on the ice to get...

Good job.

I tried to go as much as I could.

You did a great job.

I got the two tone.

- Yeah, you got a little frostbite.
- -Boy.

All right.

Andy found a lot of gold.

And we gotta keep going
on with this momentum,

we'll just see what you can see.

Okay, good luck.

Hey, John. How's it going down there?

Okay, sounds great.
Keep up the good work.

We got a couple of little problems.

But nothing I can't handle.

How's it going down there?

Well, that's great news.

After six hours and two dives,

kris is satisfied with mining down below.

We gotta make sure we get our goal.

But the money conscious captain's

got a plan to do a
little mining topside too.

Pj, drop that rope.

John's done for his side for the day.

Right now, we're gonna
attach the nozzle to a rope.

We're gonna bring up
the nozzle to the top,

we're gonna suck up that area,

where the holes went
underneath the sluice box.

All day long,

this sluice box has been
leaking material from the front.

So, the gold should've
poured right next to it.

And I'm not leaving a bunch
of money sitting on the ice.

We're gonna use the nozzle
to suck the gold off the ice.

I've never done this before,

and I hope this goes really good.

The truth is,

you should never use
the nozzle out of the water

to suck up anything off the ice.

It can lead to a disaster.

Like a fire hose disaster.

The risk is if we suck
up too much air at once,

it'll sh**t a rooster tail 40, 50 feet away.

Just stand by, idle it up slowly,

and don't get crazy.

The nozzle's designed to suck up water.

Our whole system is
designed to suck up water.

If you start sucking up air,

that could blast out the box

and blast all the gold out the back.

So, hopefully, that won't happen.

Idle up.

It's working!

A little more.

Idle up.

Damn.

- Are you okay?
- Yeah.

That's bad.

We probably did lose a little bit of gold

when the rooster tail happened.

So, this idea was not the
best idea I've ever had.

Definitely won't go down in
the hall of fame of great ideas.

It blasted the sluice box pretty good

and material sprayed all over.

There's a good chance
this idea cost us gold.

Hopefully, after six hours on gold,

we still have a strong cleanup.

But now, I'm not so sure.

I'm gonna turn the air off.

At least we got the gold

and hopefully we kept most of it.

It is... look, it is what it is, at this point.

Hopefully, we get money.

As the sun sets on the
frozen land of dreams...

How we doing down there?

Wilson hits the three-hour Mark.

And it's clear that today,

the mccully team was
not out of their depth.

All right, Wilson, come
up whenever you're ready.

Yeah, do your, do a
three minute safety stuff.

That's it, Wilson. It's done.

We got all our dives in.

Wow.

It's been a long day.

I knew diving deep could be risky.

And most teams couldn't pull it off.

But we are pushing six
hours and you know what?

And that box is gonna get lit up.

You gotta be in it to win it.

We're making money. We're crushing it.

And it's time for payday.

Life could not get any better than this.

Hello and welcome to another episode

of kris Kelly's secret
guide to successful mining.

Today we're gonna
be talking about safety

and cost of safety.

How much safety can you afford?

- None.
- You know, Andy, please stop.

No talking.

Here we go.

A real reliable, dependable snow
machine costs about 20 grand.

That's a lot of safety.

Andy, how do you feel about 20 grand?

Way too much safety.

That's too much safety, Andy says.

I like the $3000 safety.

Andy likes the $3000 safety,

and bless his heart for that.

Because that's the kind
of safety we can afford.

Now we're gonna talk
about if there's four of us,

we're 10 miles out of
town, the blizzard hits,

what would you do if you knew

that only one snow machine
was coming to save you?

How are you gonna get

a 1000 plus pounds back to town?

This is what we would do.

We would all get on the snow machine,

I tell you to go get that shovel,

and we would drive away
while you go and get it.

I really don't see a whole lot.

Pretty clean pan?

A little bit of fine stuff, but

I wanna see more gold.

As the king braces

for the looming unwanted
royalty payments,

his once high hopes have turned dim.

Let's see what we got here.

One, two, three, four, five...

Six point one.

Not good.

Could be way better.

Six point one ounces
brings in at over 14 grand,

far from what Shawn was after.

And the confident king learns,

never to count his
chickens before they hatch.

Well, just have to get back
out there and get after it.

Well, I think I got ahead of myself.

We're at the end of our royalty free days,

and the gold's drying up.

We're gonna have to move.

And this time, I have to
make sure we're on k*ller gold.

Otherwise, I'm not gonna
hit my goal for the season.

We got a long ways to go.

There's still a lot of
gold left in that ocean.

Down the road...

Are you seeing gold?

Lots of fines.

The thrifty miner is hoping
the gold was so good,

he made the right call,
not fixing the loose sluice.

Okay, this is what we got.

The problem is, I don't
need a scale to know I got.

But that's not gonna happen.

I knew I was getting gold.

Andy, man, Andy gets me all pumped up.

John gets me all pumped up.

Everybody's hooping and hollering.

We're all seeing it.

Yeah, well, it's not in the box.

I kept telling myself, "I
hope it wiggled in there."

So, I know gold.

And I'm looking at this pile of gold

after two long days of working,

and it kinda blows.

The leak in the box probably k*lled us.

And honestly, so did
my plan with the nozzle.

Let's see where we end up.

Here we go.

We're working hard.

We're moving a lot.

That's two ounces.

There's three ounces, come on.

Gold just went up 10 percent.

This is our chance.

I got a lot of bills this summer.

My baby needs new toys.

A little over six ounces.

Like I said, we can do better.

Let's just keep grinding away.

Six ounces is worth a little over 14 grand,

likely less than they would've pulled in

if they'd fixed the box.

And the thrifty miner
finds the true meaning

of penny wise and pound foolish.

We know we were on gold though, right?

We saw it. Everything was going decent.

I thought it was.

The hunches I was on
paid out pretty good...

We gotta do something
about the box, right?

- Yep.
- Box?

New sluice box is, like, $68,000.

You're gonna get it
sent up from California.

It's a nightmare,
especially this time of year.

The good news is we're on great gold.

And that's the hardest part of mining,

and we've accomplished that.

The bad news is we can't
afford a new sluice box.

So, we're gonna do a quick fix

and see if that does the trick.

But we might be stuck

in a "need to spend money
to make money" situation.

We'll see.

Anyways, let's go to work.

Well, that was a kick in the nuts.

By the harbor...

All right.

So far, it's looking good.

I wanna see what we have today.

With the push into deeper ground

and the addition of Wilson,

the young g*n's deep dive
may yield deep pockets.

I'm diving deep.

Not a lot of people tap
into the deeper water,

because you need to
really be experienced,

and, you know, you really
need to know your stuff.

You know, I, I lucked out

because I got Wilson right now.

And I think we're gonna be golden.

All right, let's lay it out on the scale.

There's 200 grams.

Three hundred grams.

Three hundred ninety
eight grams divided by 31.1.

What do you got?

Ooh, 12.7.

Wow. This ground's really good.

Really, really good.

Twelve point seven ounces
cashes in at over 29 grand,

proving sometimes the greater risk

comes with a greater reward.

And the young g*n vaults
to the top of the gold count.

Yeah, it's such a relief, you know,

like, all that hard work,
all that risk that I've taken,

now I'll pay you off.

The sky is the limit.

All I gotta do now is
just fine tune everything,

you know, and my
numbers will go up from here.

Gold price is skyrocketing.

And wow, yeah, I'm just,

I'm excited to go out
there again tomorrow

and just sweep that ground up.

All I gotta do is just go out and get it.

Wow.

There's a new leader in town,

while Mr. Gold falls to second place

and kris Kelly inches up.

Next time... We got
neighbors closing in on me.

On Bering sea gold...

This claim's starting to get real small.

Maybe vern's gonna have a heart attack.

Whoo.

Are you ready to suck today's gold?

Yeah!

It's working. It's working!

It looks like this could
be the end of this motor.

- We're in the money.
- -Nothing's gonna stop us.

Yeah!

Time to get some gold, baby.

Seven, eight... Nice.

Looks like a nice pile there.