The weather’s closing in on us here.
It’s been snowing a little bit.
It’s been cold.
You know, it’s that end-of-season push.
And everybody’s doing a really good job.

From coming across a potentially massive gold vein to the challenges of making their way down to it.
Here is how Parker Schnobble and his team hit a $75 million gold vein in a collapsed Yukon shaft.

As ever, the search for gold persists in the Yukon — and pretty much every other place on the planet where there is gold.
Forever searching for gold, the likes of Parker Schnabble and Tony Beets lead their mining crews out to some of these gold-fertile regions, hoping to extract all the valuable gold from the earth.
That way, they can justify the costs of going out there before enriching themselves and their families.

Apparently, the Widow’s Cut was a shaft that was too dangerous to dive into.
It was believed to be too deep to dive into.
And to be honest, this belief didn’t seem to be unfounded.

First of all, it’s believed that the cut was covered in permafrost.
This means that the ground all the way down was frozen stiff.
This made any attempts to excavate it too risky, as it could cause massive chunks of ice and rock to collapse into any excavation site built in a bid to reach the rich gold vein located in the shaft.

“It’s frozen stiff.”

Then there was the fact that there was a huge potential for flooding.
Any kind of flooding had the potential to compromise the stability of the pipes.
To make matters worse, it could put their mining equipment at risk of damage.

With all these factors coming into play, Parker and his entire crew were forced to realize that if they were going to get their hands on the gold in this mine, they would have to go down what was essentially a death trap.
Considering the magnitude of this challenge, it wouldn’t have surprised many viewers if Parker and his crew decided that this mine wasn’t for them.
Sure, there was a ton of gold for them to extract down there — but surely it wasn’t worth the risk.

The problem with this logic is that Parker didn’t think that way.
In fact, rather than seeing the risk, it’s almost as though Parker just saw another challenge.
Perhaps even more importantly, Parker saw this as a challenge he was not going to run away from.
No — they were going to make their way down the shaft.

That said, the acceptance of a challenge doesn’t make that challenge any easier.
What could make it easier was the modern-day tech that Parker and his crew had at their disposal.
Aside from their tractors and their sluicers, they had the tools to survey the area — and that is exactly what they did.

“Just coming to talk to you about this exact problem.
It’s called permafrost for a reason, right?
Because it’s permanently frozen.
I mean, it would help us a lot if it was more than like 35° for at least four hours.
We need some warm weather.”

After all, if they knew the best way to make their way down the mine, then they could very well achieve success when it came to excavating this mine for all the gold it was worth.
With that in mind, the boys got their state-of-the-art LiDAR out.
With this and some drone mapping techniques, they surveyed the entire area to see if they could find any safe way down there.

Indeed, this may have been their best option — because the next thing on their mind was to dig a new way down there.
And with all the challenges we mentioned earlier, that could prove to be too dangerous for them to embark on.
Sure, they wanted to get all the gold that was down there — but at what cost?

Furthermore, the team had to work quickly.
The more time they spent looking for how to get down there, the more their resources were being used up on endeavors that didn’t actually involve extracting gold.
If they didn’t want to finish this season at a loss, they had to make sure they were successful with this project at the Widow’s Cut.

Thankfully, they were able to pair their LiDAR with drone mapping.
Whoever came up with the combination of these tools must be a genius — because this led to a breakthrough that many miners had been trying to achieve since the 1980s.
Thanks to the LiDAR and the drones, the team found a way down that shaft.

This breakthrough came in the form of a collapsed vertical shaft that could help them get down there.
Their measurements told them that although it had been hidden under an overgrowth several decades old, the collapsed shaft was more than 40 meters deep.
With some good work, this collapsed shaft could be used to get the gold out of the deep mine.

After some work, the team realized it was best to stabilize the collapsed shaft.
Thanks to reinforced steel, Parker and his men created a safe enough way to make their way down that formerly collapsed tunnel.
You can imagine how reinvigorated these miners were now that they had a safe way to reach the gold.

It didn’t take long for them to break through an untouched gold vein — one that had the potential to give their season a much-needed boost.
The untouched, quartz-rich gold vein was so clean that Parker’s geologist described it as the “richest natural deposit” they’d seen.

Once the team was done admiring the vein they had found, they quickly got to work.
After all, they didn’t want to waste too much time down there — other miners could hear of this and decide to come for some themselves.

With that mindset, the team worked endlessly.
It proved effective.
In just a little over 72 hours, they extracted more than 4,000 ounces of gold from this rich vein.

It was a powerful experience for the team.
After extracting all that gold, they found it was worth more than $10 million.
That covered the costs of diesel, transportation, and most of the season — and then some.

This was great for the team — especially as this was just the beginning.
After examining the gold from the vein, they realized it was much larger than they thought.
In fact, they figured it extended another 2 kilometers underground.

After some calculation, the team estimated they could get another $75 million from this gold vein.
If they could pull that off, it would mean a successful season beyond anything they’d imagined.

But they had their work cut out for them.
Not only would they have to keep working hard to get their hands on the gold, they’d also have to fend off competitors drawn by the news of this quartz-rich discovery.

Thanks to the rapid rate at which word spread, everyone — from rival miners to the government — wanted to see the vein for themselves.
Thankfully, Parker had the sense to hold the claim for himself and his crew.
No way he was going to share this place with others.

To him, this could very well be the discovery that makes everything before it look small.
Whatever the case, we’re all watching keenly as Parker and his team go to work.

Whether Parker’s success was due to luck or instinct, there’s every chance he may have just made the biggest Yukon gold strike of the 21st century — and had his most successful season yet.

From coming across a potentially massive gold vein to the challenges of making their way down to it.
Here is how Parker Schnobble and his team hit a $75 million gold vein in a collapsed Yukon shaft.