This spring’s been a bit of a fight. You know, we’ve dived into this property just head first and in a massive way and are spending, you know, way more money than we ever have.

100 miles from the Kino Mountains, 2 weeks into the season, 29-year-old Parker Schnobble is in an unfamiliar situation. Gunning for 10,000 ounces of gold worth $25 million, he’s only brought in 5.66 oz and has no wash plants running.

“We don’t really know… like we know what we’re doing but we don’t know this property. You know, a rough line of like here’s where it’s profitable for us, where the pay really starts.”

Parker’s bet everything on starting the season opening his 20-acre long cut, but the cut has proven unpredictable. “This cut, it’s the only thing making any money and there’s a lot of money getting spent. We’re just trying to fight and get enough thaw every day to keep the plant running. So, it’s just a challenge for everybody.”

At Parker Schnobble’s long cut, Roxan is finally on the go sluicing ditch pay dirt. “Now we’re running rock sand back up to snuff. Parker wanted us running it faster, so that’s what we’re doing.”

“Oh yeah, look at that. You can see all the sediment on this. You can see everything on the outside. It does have some exposed, but it created enough suction that it pulled the one screen in on this side. That’s why all these sticks are now in our wash plant.”

Thick mud in the water has caused a section of the suction basket to implode.

“What the hell was that? For sakes, man.”

On top of everything, a loader operator hits the radio stacker that feeds the plant.

“Yo, our radio stacker just got run into.”
“By what?”
“A loader.”
“And one of the radio tires exploded.”
“No way.”
“Way. Couldn’t make this up if I tried. I’m telling you. And it just… it almost dropped. Hit the pre-wash. That’s why it didn’t flip.”
“Wicked.”
“Right. We don’t have any spare of those.”
“That’s sure. Come on, Jarv. Let’s go. Come on.”

It’s early in the season here and people are not on their game yet. Mitch and Tyson now have to fix the suction basket, the spray bars, and the radial stacker before Roxanne can get back on the gold.

“Everybody wants to be a gold miner until it’s time to do gold miner. Look at that. Soon as that’s welded up, we’ll get this thing back in the water. We’ve lost so much time already this season and we’re falling further behind.”

Suction basket back in the water. Next, the spray bars.

“Hey, Mitch. How’s it going, buddy? Now, what we’re going to do is remove these fittings. We’re going to pull these spray bars out. We’re going to get all the big stuff out of here so that we can get back up and running and have full water flow.”

“This tire shot, and this one’s almost got eaten. It looks like she came in, hit it, and then backed out and tore this.”
“Oh, yeah. Well, what we can do here is we can jack it up high enough that we can just take the tires right off and block it underneath.”

With no replacement tires on site, they improvise using wooden blocks to level up the stacker.

“Looks good. Hopefully nothing else is up on this thing when they hit it with a loader.”
“We back level. All right, here we go.”
“Let me know when you want water.”
“Send it.”
$Applause$

“We were down for almost 3 hours. It’s about time we fire this thing back up.”
$Music$

“Here’s the water. Time to add some dirt.”

Roxan’s red light is back to green, and the team are closer to seeing what kind of gold the long cut holds.

“Uh, right now everything’s doing what it should here. Plant’s looking all right. We got good flow across everything. We got the right amount of water flow. So, let’s keep her going.”

“Yeah, man. Nice to have Roxan back up and running finally.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah. About time we get to sluice, huh?”
“Yeah. Took us a bit to get there, but yeah, we’re finally there.”

Parker’s about to find out if his bet on opening the long cut first this season will pay off. If the gold doesn’t live up to expectations, his plans for the season and his quest for 10,000 ounces could fall apart.

“Do you think he’ll be able to keep up with that plant?”
“Man, it’s hungry. Like, you know, Big Red can get through some material, but Roxan is definitely a very hungry wash plant. Hopefully we can keep it running.”

“Bank started washing away a bit there, but yeah, that was a little scary for a couple minutes. Little mad scramble.”

“Well, how did we do? Did we get anything? Are we rich?”
“Man, you’re holding that like there ain’t a lot in it.”
“I already got strong over the winter. You ready, Mitch?”

To have any hope of hitting his target, Parker needs over 475 ounces a week.

“15… 20… 25… 28… 30.8.”
“80. That’s it. That’s all of it.”
“That’s it. That’s all we get out of that little beast. Worth just over $77,000.”

“We did a lot more sluice than what’s sitting there.”
“Yeah. Well, you can’t get to 10,000 without getting to 31 first.”
“Oh, don’t say that number around me.”

“I expect a bit of calibration problems on this ground, of like our process and figuring out the most efficient way of doing things, right? Like I expect those problems.”

“Well, should we go see if we can find a little bit more?”
“Yeah. I’m like really hoping that this is not going to be a theme, you know, and you get in some good material, it can turn around. It has to turn around. Really? Yeah. It’s not ideal.”