It doesn’t matter what you do, life is full of surprises, and so is gold mining.

With just a month and a half left of the mining season, king of the Klondike Tony Beets is running at limited capacity.

We had a flying start this spring, had three plants going, and now all of a sudden, bingo, we’re down to one.

So we’re still going to get the 5,000 ounces, you know, you have to sluice in order to get that, and right now we’re doing the Indian, but we got the frozen ground to deal with.

He’s plowed through all the ready-to-sluice ground on his Indian River claims and now has to wait for the sun to thaw the frozen pay dirt.

That’s not really any good.

That’s no good at all.

Mike should have seen this, because the culvert right now is the same level as the silt in the pond, and that doesn’t give it any time to settle.

We look at a pond on this side that is still dirty, and you can’t put dirty water in the creek, that’s not how it works.

Running the trommel so hard has filled the 30-acre settling pond with silt, and if dirty water spills into the nearby creek, environmental authorities will shut down Tony’s operation.

Hey Mike, shut the plant down.

Tony has no option but to stop sluicing.

Paradise Hill has a series of three connected ponds which clean the trommel’s dirty sluice water, silt settles on the bottom, and the clean water above flows through culverts back to the creek.

But the top pond is full, and silt is clogging the culvert, creating muddy discharge water.

The Beets crew needs to build up the dikes and raise the culvert to make the pond deeper, giving the silt space to settle so clean water can flow through.

It’s late in the season, and the pressure’s on.

But it’s better to shut down for two days and do the work proper than it is to risk being shut down for the rest of the year.

First time I ever had a truck flip here, and I wouldn’t stand anywhere near the front of the truck because it could all come over.

The back tire caught the side of the dyke and it just slowly started pulling it in, and by the time I stopped it, it kept moving and then it started grabbing the truck.

The 10-ton side dumper is hanging off a 15-foot drop.

The job of raising the dyke is on hold, and Tony’s trommel can’t sluice.

I’m annoyed, because somehow it’s my fault when they do something stupid.

After shutting down his only running plant to rebuild a dyke road, Tony Beets hasn’t caught an ounce of gold in over 24 hours, and this truck crash is adding to the delay.

After nearly two days, the truck is finally rolling again, and the dyke repair is back on track, but the pressure’s still on.