I’ve never fired anyone before.
We got to figure out who’s going to make it and who’s not.
One of them has to go.

One month into the season, Parker Schnabble’s foreman, Tyson Lee, has his hands full to hit a 10,000 season goal.
Parker’s pushing Tyson to mine as much gold as possible on his Dominion Creek claim.

“Normally, it’s been move that wash plant, get it set up, have a month to breathe.
This year, it’s move that wash plant, get it set up, move to the next.
Get that wash plant set up, get it running, move to the next.
And somewhere in between there, I have to find the time to go through all these operators, and one of them isn’t going to make the cut.”

Letting someone go, getting rid of someone—it’s not a decision I’m taking lightly.
They could have come up here like myself 10 years ago, hoping to stay for years to come.

Just a decade ago, Tyson arrived in the Yukon.
“Pretty green at the mining aspect of things.”

Parker saw something special in the rookie miner.
“I’m letting Tyson run Slooifer. See what he’s got. And hopefully this doesn’t bite either of us in the ass.”

“Let’s get her going.”

And Parker gave him a chance to step up to the plate.
“Nice job.”
“Thanks, man.”

“Back when I first started for Parker and up until now, I’ve seen this company go through a lot of growth, a lot of changes.
Every year I get thrown more and more, and this year more than ever, Parker said, ‘Find your weakest operator, send one of them packing.'”

“So, right now we have Charlie up top who’s doing fine in coarse tailings.
Then we have Michael down below who’s loading trucks.
Two new truck drivers—there’s Lauren and Julian.
And then upstream we have Kaden loading Mary.
And who the hell is with Mary?
It’s a lot of new people, man.”

[Music]

Concerned with Charlie’s performance, Tyson tasks operator Sandy Dubois with keeping an eye on him.

“So, how did you get the job here?”

“I used to work as a software developer and systems engineer and I’d spend my days in front of computers, and I just got sick of it.
I’m like, man, I need to get out—get into gold mining—and get out in the wilderness.”

“I don’t really know what to say, man.
Oh, what is he doing?”

“I’m hoping to be able to get him to go a bit faster cuz he’s going to have to take care of this on his own.
You’re not always going to get the best bucket, but you need more than a cro.”

“Hey Charles, you got a copy, Charles?”

“Hey Sandy.”

“If we’re not utilizing our whole bucket, it’s kind of just a waste of fuel and a waste of time.
Where am I? Did it again.”

“Oh yeah, Charles.”

“Yeah, let’s go for Charles.”

“I can see that your bucket’s not fully curled in—making a mess over the road.
So just make sure your bucket’s curled all the way up.”

“Okay, I’ll do that next.”

“Uh, cuz yeah, at this point I can’t leave him alone.
It would not work out.
He would fall behind.
If that plant washes out, then we’re not going to have a happy Parker.
And that’s what I’m trying to avoid right now.
And he’s starting to slowly get it.
One bucket at a time.”

“Yeah, that looks a lot better.”

In the Golden Mile, new hire Caden Foot digs out pockets of pay from a section of the cut.

“I’m a very driven, motivated person.
I also like to think of myself as a little bit of a perfectionist.
I like to do things right the first time and I don’t like to come back and do them again.”

“We have a lot of new people and a couple of them are struggling here.
Kaden’s one of them.”

[Music]

“Yo yo, how’s it going?”

“Pretty good, yourself?”

“Oh, you know, just fighting water.”

“The ditch needs to be lowered and then you’re into pay here.”

“Into pay right here.”

“Lower the ditch, then you can carry on with what you’re doing.”

“Okay.”

“Does that make sense?”

“Yep, that makes sense.”

“Any questions, comments, concerns?
Like, I can jump in there for you and you can watch me for 5 minutes if you want.”

“Up to you.
I don’t want to take up more of your time than necessary.”

“No, it’s all good. I just want to make sure what I’m saying is what you’re understanding.
And the best way to do that is for you to sit and watch me for 5 minutes.
Jarf, come on.”

“So far so good.
Just have a few little things I need to get adjusted to.”

“Right now, I’m trying to show Kaden how to go about ditching.
He seems to be struggling with a lot of water flowing down.
What we need to do is get that water under control.”

Tyson makes the ditch around the cut deeper and digs channels to funnel water from the center cut down to the ditch, exposing the pay dirt beneath.

[Music]

“Hey Kaden, come take a look at this cuz I can see there’s still pay out here, right?
Makes me wonder what else is under this water, right?
And you see—just listen for a sec—see that gravel seam there?”

“Right there?”

“Yeah.”

“So that’s pay right there.
I’ll point it out as I’m going.”

With the cut full of water, Kaden is leaving behind pockets of pay, potentially costing Parker thousands of dollars in lost gold.

“The biggest thing of all is to get the water out.
And if you’ve got a drain running right beside where the water needs to go, then you can see what’s there and what needs to be dug out.
Cuz it’s only been a few minutes and he’s got that draining 100%, and we’ll be off to the races.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You have to go over every inch of it, right?
Cuz if you didn’t do it, how do you know it’s done?”

“Okay. Thank you.”

“Thank you for your time. I really appreciate that.”

“No worries. Have fun. I’ll see you in a bit.
Come on, Jar. Let’s go.”

“Hopefully, he gets it now.”

“Kaden—he’s thinking he understands more than he does.”

“I would agree with that.”

“Yeah—maybe came in a little cocky, you know, a little hot.
God help us if Parker came in there and decided to dig there and found that we were burying pay pockets.”

“Yeah. No, he wouldn’t be a happy camper.”

25 miles east at Dominion—

“Parker’s asked me to find the weakest link.
Get him out of here.
So I’m going to try and figure that out cuz my deadline’s due.”

Tyson checks in on Kaden again as he cleans out leftover pockets of pay.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

“You having fun?”

“Yes. Getting there.
But I might have to do a little more ditching.
I’ll go clean it up.”

“All this trapped water back here—right.
I’ll cut a little trough here cuz then all this stuff can drain.”

“Wet pay, as you know, doesn’t like going up conveyors.”

“No, belts do not like wet material.”

“And this is soup.”

“Yeah.”

“And we can make it so it’s not soup.
So we got to get the water out.”

“Yeah.”

“Because if we dug with that trapped water, it would come this way.
All that yellow would end up back down here—which is where we don’t want it.”

“That’s what we’re after, right?
We’re after that yellow.
It’s worth something for some weird reason.”

“I’m just watching what you’re doing so I can mimic it in my own work.”

“Yeah.”

“I think Tyson will feel that I’m really trying my best to do what he wants and get it right the first time.”

“We need to get this material out of here and we need it to happen now.”

“My goal is to get Kaden spelt out on the way we do things here.
The main thing is just getting the water out, letting it drain.
You can see how the water is draining toward the ditch now because it’s sloped.”

“So you can see what I’m doing here, right?”

“Yeah. Sloping the edge, giving it a slope so water can run down into the trench.”

“But yeah, have fun.”

“I will try my absolute best to make you proud.”

[Music]

“He explained it the way we like it done, but there’s zero execution.
We have operators here who said they had lots of experience, and when they got here it didn’t show.
So are one of those people going to be the ones to leave? Maybe, maybe not.
Is it going to be due to poor attitude? Maybe, maybe not.
Not a decision I take lightly.
But these people were hired to do a job.
And if they can’t do that job, we’ll find someone else.”

“No issues with the temperature. I’m fine.”

Over at the bridge cut, loader operator Charlie is still on tailings.

“I’m starting to feel a little more comfortable.
It’s a little less chaotic.”

[Music]

“I don’t see much of Tyson.
He’s so busy.
Maybe that’s a good thing that I don’t see him much cuz trust me, if I was doing a bad job, I’m sure I would hear more from them.”

“Can you hear me?”

“Yeah.”

“Want to walk down?”

“Okay.”

[Music]

“No, there’s no panic, Charlie.
I just know the intent for run.
We’re all good.”

“Okay.”

“How’s it going, Charlie?”

“Pretty good.”

“Sorry. Can I ask you a question while I have a minute?”

“Yeah.”

“So, the part that you told me before—I did not realize that the—”

“So, we got to talk.”

“I’m training.
So you can keep going, I’m listening.”

“Now that I understand that the tailings is what’s most important to us now to manage—”

“Everything’s most important, right?
Feeding the plant’s important.”

“Yeah.”

“But getting tailings is important.
Everything’s important.
And that’s why we have multiple people doing different jobs.”

“For you, that’s making sure this wash plant doesn’t bury itself.”

“Okay. Awesome. You all set, Charlie?”

“Thank you.”

“Okay, thanks. Okay, jump in. I got to go.”

“He came with 20 years experience is what I was told.
If I have to do that with him, then we’re going to have to let the first person go of the season.”

At Dominion Creek, it’s time for Tyson to send someone home.

“You know, this is a new role to me.
I know I’ve never fired anyone before, but I have a lot of people that deserve my time, and I’m spending it on people that should have experience.
So, enough is enough.”

“Yo yo, things aren’t really working out, man.
I’m going to have to let you go.”

“Okay.”

“Yeah.
It’s just—you let on to have more experience than you have.
So I only have so much of my time that I can spend training people.”

“Okay.”

“So yeah, if you want to grab your stuff, we’ll just shut this loader off.”

“I gave it a try.
I guess it was harder than I expected it would be.”

“To be honest, you know, Parker asked me to find someone to let go and we’ve done that.
When we’re hiring experienced operators, we need experience or sadly they’re going to have to go down the road.”

25 miles west at Sulfur Creek, Kaden has survived but been demoted to loader operator.

“Right now, Parker doesn’t have enough guys to run loader.
I’m not sure if Tyson had anything to do with me coming out here, but it ain’t my fault that Tyson’s not around to give me guidance.
Hopefully, I can go back to digging pay because that’s my happy place in my big sandbox.”

“We don’t have time for people to not be good at their job.
We only have so much time up here in the Yukon to get as much gold out of the ground as we can.”

“That was a busy week.”

“You must have been busy, Chris.”

“Very busy.”

“What’s up, Ty?
Heard you had some weak links kicking around.”

“Yeah.
Well, Parker wanted one of them to go, so had to let Charlie go.
He said he had more experience than he had when he came here, so just had to pull the plug there.”

“Too bad cuz he was a nice guy.”

“He was really nice.
He was really trying, but yeah—he just kind of oversold, I guess.”

“This is definitely jumping off the deep end.”

“Yeah, for sure.
When I was driving him back, he’s like, ‘I thought it would be a lot easier than this.'”

For the first time this season, Parker has been running three wash plants all week and is hoping to blast past last week’s 527-ounce haul.

First up, Roxan at Sulfur.

“Well, I hope you had fun with the Roxan here.”

“Roxan?”

“Yeah, come on.
Roxan’s a little bit unique, Mitch.”

“Why is that?”

“Because I didn’t have a thermos big enough.
My scale doesn’t go high enough.
So this is—this is Roxan.”

“Starting off with a full pan there.”

“All right, we got 50, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300.
Right on the dot.
Right on the dot.”

“But we got to move this aside because we have a thermos coming too.”

“Wow.”

“Now what’s crazy—it’s doing 150 yards an hour right now, too.”

“That’s what I was just thinking about.”

“So we got 300 plus 10, 20, 30, 40, 50.70.
So, 350.7—worth 1.4 million.
Holy, that is sick.”

“At 150 yards an hour?”

At 3 oz per 100 yards sluiced, Sulfur is some of the richest ground Parker has ever mined.

“Cleanups like this make my job fun.”

Now it’s Tyson’s turn.

“You want to take a look at what you got? Let’s see.”

First up, Bob from Dominion’s Bridge Cut.

“Bob’s been running pretty consistent lately.
Good old Bob.
Chug Bob.”

“Right. Here we go.
10, 20, 40, 80, 100, 120, 160.
We’re going to beat two.
195.”

“Not quite.”

“196.2.”

“Yeah.”

“And then just up the creek from that—Slucifer’s got the big thermos too.”

“All righty, here we go.
Slooifer has been running all week at the Golden Mile.”

“Here we go. This is Slooifer, buddy.
Here we go.
20, 40, 80, 100, 150.
So there’s 200—220, 240—keeps coming—boom at 261.25.”

The Golden Mile is living up to its name, and Tyson’s two wash plants have banked Parker another $1.6 million.

“Last week we had 527 and a half ounces.
This week we have 881.5 ounces in one week.”

“To give you an idea of what’s going on—this time last year we had 288 ounces.
We now have 2,043 and a half ounces—worth 7.1 million—which we did over a third of this week.”

“Yeah, man. If it’s like that all the way through, it’s going to be great.
So we just need to do that ten more times.”

“Yeah. And then like—some more times after that.”