There are a lot of wildfires right now.
They’ve all been lit quite recently by lightning.
There’s one that’s maybe like three or four miles from our camp,
which is, um, a problem.

Mining maestro Parker Schnarble is on the path to a record thirty-five-million-dollar season,
but intense wildfires threaten to scupper his whole operation.

Oh.
Oh wow.
Big fire, dude.
That is a rager, huh?

[Music]

Right now, film crew safety is telling us that we have to get out of the truck.
You can feel the heat.

Yeah.
Really?

I think we gotta pull our crew now.

How come?

We’re looking at a wildfire,
and I just don’t think this is a good idea to be in this situation.

Obviously, you have a job to do,
but the fact that we can see it means it’s not moving fast toward us.
If it was moving fast toward us,
this would be all black smoke where we’re standing.

What’s the plan?
Are we going to go?

I’m just going to Sulfur.
Just going to go check in with the boys.

When you can’t see it
and all you can see is smoke,
that’s when it’s really sketchy.

Okay.
Well, let’s carry on then.
Let’s go.
Come on.

Over the last week, the Yukon has ignited into a violent inferno.
Ninety-three wildfires are ablaze,
covering an area of over two hundred and fifty thousand acres.

With strong winds,
they can travel one hundred and fifty miles in a day.

Worryingly, there’s one raging just two miles from Parker’s Dominion Creek operation,
and another only one mile from his Sulfur Creek claim.

You know, we’re on a mission right now
trying to get to this ten-thousand-ounce target,
and it seems like things might heat up a little bit on us here.

We’ve got some fires burning just down the creek.
They’re heading this way,
but hopefully we can keep everything motoring along.

The water license on Sulfur runs out in just two weeks.
Mitch has spent the entire season racing to strip and sluice every last ounce
before the cut is starved of water,
wrecking their plans.

How’s it going?

Good.
How are you?

Not too bad.
A little slow.

Did you see the fire on the road?
It is raging,
and you could see the line of fire.
It’s pretty impressive.

I don’t think it jumps the creek though,
so I think you’re fine.

The worst thing that can happen
is the road gets engulfed in flames.

Okay.
I mean, as long as we’ve got a way out.

Yeah.
As long as those fires don’t get too close
and cause us any grief,
we should be sluiced
and moved out of here by the end of the week.

This is such a bad time for me to leave.
I’ll be gone for like five days.

Okay.
You guys have a good handle on things.
You’ll probably be moved out of here by then.

We’ve got all the pay at the plant right now,
so it’s just a matter of getting that sluiced.

Brandon can head down to Ken’s
and start getting things sorted there.

We’ll get this finished,
pack it up,
and roll it down.

Okay.
Sweet.

With Parker gone,
Mitch and his crew must sluice the last of the stockpile pay,
then move the wash plant Roxanne
twenty-five miles to Kenan Stewart’s at Indian River,
and have it up and running before Parker returns,
all while dealing with the wildfires.

What we’re seeing right now
is it’s not just one fire burning.
Everywhere you look,
when the smoke clears,
there are fires all around us.

All it takes is the wind to change direction.
Not ideal by any means.

I’m hoping that by the time I’m back,
they’ll have the plant down at Ken Stewart’s,
and I hope the place hasn’t burned to the ground,
which not too often do I mean literally.

You look at the weather today
and the rain coming down,
and it’s really helped us out.

Blessed by a night and day of rainfall,
the wildfires are quenched.

Looks like we’ve got about two more scoops of material here
at Sulfur to go through Roxanne.

We’re going to get this wash plant shut down,
cleaned up,
packed up,
and on the road to Ken’s.

Hopefully we’ve got her fired back up
before Parker shows up.

Mitch will race to finish sluicing Sulfur,
then reclaim the land
and move wash plant Roxanne
to Kenan Stewart’s at Indian River.

All right, Mitch.
That’s it.
Last scoop here.

Roxanne, buddy.

I’ll come in right now.

Yeah.
Sounds good, boss.

In a slick operation,
the crew quickly clean out the sluices.

Here at Sulfur, the last cleanup.
We’ve had a lot of gold coming out of this ground,
so it’s been a huge success.

Next, they lash down Roxanne
for the twenty-five-mile journey
to Kenan Stewart’s.

Right now I’m going to send Jack the shaker deck first.
We’ll grab the sluice runs
and get them down there.
Then we can put everything together.

Roxanne is transported in two loads.
The shaker deck heads out first
on the back of a lowboy.

Mitch holds the oversized sluice runs in a second truck,
and Brennan leads the way in the pilot car.

All right, here we go.
They’re going to see us rolling with this one,
that’s for sure.

[Music]

You can see just how narrow this is.
We’re already rubbing trees here
with the loose runs.

The million-dollar question
is whether those sluice runs
will clear the bridge
without having to jack them way up.

The bridge is going to be one of our big pinch points.
We measured it up.
Looks like we should have about half an inch of clearance.

We won’t know
until we get there.

A bridge with a width restriction of just twenty-one feet
must be crossed by a lowboy
carrying twenty-seven-foot-wide sluice boxes.

The outside edges of the sluice runs
need to be raised high enough
above the bridge structure.

I’m going to keep creeping it ahead.

Yeah, but you’re going to need to be down here eyeballing it
and tell me when to stop.

Worst-case scenario,
we try this,
get stuck in the middle,
and there’s no working on it.

Okay.
I’m going to do this.
You guys need to get way back.

The sluice runs clear the bridge railings
by just half an inch.

[Music]

Keep coming, buddy.
Come on.
Come on.
Don’t snag.

Oh man.
That couldn’t have been any closer.
You couldn’t have fit your fingers
between the bridge
and the bottom of those runs.

There it is.
We’ve made it into the cut.

[Music]

I’m heading to see Mitch and Brennan.

They’ve got a wash plant running.
They literally just fired it up.

Thanks for getting this going.
I appreciate it.

You guys make this look easy.
At least from my standpoint.

I left while you were sluicing in one spot,
and I came back
and you’re sluicing in another.

Mitch,
you’re getting a big gold star.

I should have Chris pour a big gold star.
I just might do that.