Digging for Gold Operation Gold Rush with Dan Snow

A remote corner

of the North American continent.

A subarctic wilderness,

unchanged for millennia...

..until gold was discovered here

at the end of the 19th century.

News of the find triggered a global

stampede - the Klondike Gold Rush.

And for two brief years,

this place was utterly transformed

as tens of thousands of gold-seekers

from around the world

raced from the Alaskan coast,

600 miles north to the Klondike

gold fields,

hoping to strike it rich.

Now, 120 years later,

a team of adventurers are here

to take on that same journey

in search of their own gold,

and to experience what it was like

to be a Klondiker.

The team are led by historian,

Dan Snow.

The amazing thing about

the Gold Rush in the 1890s

is it's just luck.

It was the guys who got here first

and then dug in the right places.

He's joined by medic and engineer,

Dr Kevin Fong.

We need to stick it into the stream

and just wait to become rich,

that's how that works.

And polar explorer and scientist,

Felicity Aston.

The theory is that all the gold

is so heavy

that it sticks to the bottom.

So nothing running out

will be valuable.

They'll need to survive

icy torrents...

Quick, quick, quick, quick!

That's cold!

..dangerous descents...

Whoa!

..and surging rapids...

That was...an experience.

Nice work!

..before they reach the Klondike,

where they'll mine for gold

the old-fashioned way.

Oh, my God, look at that!

Dan, Felicity and Kevin

are on the Yukon River.

They're three weeks into

their month-long expedition,

following in the footsteps of

the original Gold Rush stampeders.

The sail's filling nicely,

we are making good progress here

towards the gold fields, everybody.

After five days on board their

handcrafted 19th-century-style boat,

they're nearing the end

of the punishing 600-mile trail.

Since arriving on the coast

of Alaska,

the team have travelled deep

into Canada

by climbing towering mountains,

swimming freezing rivers

and navigating enormous lakes.

Now they're just over 70 miles away

from the gateway to the gold fields,

Dawson City.

They've been joined by wilderness

guide and wildlife expert,

Chris Morgan, who's been charged

with looking after their safety.

You can see how easy it would be

to miss stuff, can't you, you know?

I mean, imagine a bear,

or a wolf, you know.

They're tough to spot when

the undergrowth's this thick.

So far, their journey

along the mighty Yukon River

has been smooth sailing.

But this is no place

for complacency.

Gentle! Gentle!

Gentle! Gentle! Gentle.

As the storm builds,

the team decide to head for shelter.

Felicity, hard, Felicity, hard,

Felicity, hard!

Boom! Yes!

But that means rowing across

the fast-flowing current...

Other way, other way!

..entirely dependent on

their crudely-fashioned oars.

Push away! That's right.

Oh!

Dan's oar has snapped clean in two.

It's fine, we're good.

We're good, we're totally good.

With only one oar, there's a danger

of being swept away by the current.

They resort to paddles

and fight to get to shore.

And two strokes hard!

Two strokes hard!

Soaked through and exhausted,

they eventually make it.

Whoohoo!

That was pretty epic!

That was great. Well done.

It was funny, because...

Thunder, lightning.

..otherwise we wouldn't

have made it.

We've got 120km to go

until we get to Dawson

and we no longer have

one of our two oars.

At least we got into camp safely,

we didn't get swept down the,

er...the river.

That is very annoying.

At camp that evening,

historian Dan reflects on

what motivated the stampeders.

Gold is just that one

four-letter word, isn't it?

And it meant wealth and comfort

and status and power.

Reading all those diaries,

you can't help but just think,

"Is this gold all it's cracked up

to be?"

To better understand what

the Klondikers went through,

Dan has been reading Gold Rush-era

diaries.

First-hand accounts of those

who witnessed the stampede.

Men became excited,

giving up good jobs and leaving

their wives and children.

Often mortgaging all they possessed

to get enough to buy outfits.

For what? For many - disillusion,

hardship, poverty, death.

You feel sorry for them,

because of what they had to endure

and because of how unlikely it was

they were going to realise

that ambition.

This was a story about people

looking for

a better life and a better future.

Especially in the middle of

a depression,

which there was

in the USA at the time,

it was their lottery ticket,

it was the way out.

The next morning,

the rain is still pouring down.

It's wet, it's miserable,

we've got 120km to go to Dawson

and we've lost an oar.

To truly experience

what the stampeders went through,

the team are using Gold Rush-era

technology,

with one or two exceptions.

Beautiful.

Yes.

Let's have a look...

Shall we have a go at it?

ALL:

Ohhh!

We have an oar.

Kevin, you've just saved the day.

Back on the way,

and the weather improves.

But before they leave

the wilderness behind,

there's a surprise encounter.

There it is.

It looks like a bear.

Think it's a black bear.

FELICITY:

Oh, I can see him.

I can see him, yeah.

There are two bear species

native to the Yukon.

The grizzly bear, and this...

the American black bear.

Wow, he just crossed

the Yukon River.

That is amazing.

What an incredible swim.

What on earth would

make a bear do that?

They have pretty big home ranges,

and his home ranges might

encompass both sides of this river.

Starving after winter hibernation,

the priority for the thousands of

black bears who live in the Yukon

is finding food.

Must have been terrifying

for the stampeders.

Yeah. I mean, for British

stampeders that came over,

seeing these creatures

for the first time, I mean,

and then landing ashore

and trying to find somewhere

to camp among them,

it must have been

completely bewildering.

Swept along the enormous river

by the current,

the first signs of civilisation

begin to appear.

It's a house.

Yeah.

You know, when I first heard

about this trip

and someone said

there's a 400km rowing bit,

I genuinely thought it was a typo.

Walked over a high pass...

You've reached the top. Well done!

..rowed along a long river...

..all to get to this place.

After a gruelling 600-mile journey,

they've finally arrived at

the gateway to the goldfields -

Dawson City.

I genuinely feel

a little bit emotional,

getting here, to Dawson.

Yeah.

Oh!

Come ashore.

Let's go find some gold.

Today, Dawson City still lies

at the heart

of gold-mining operations

in the Klondike.

But with a population

of just over a thousand,

it's a shadow of its former self.

During the Gold Rush,

it was transformed from

a small indigenous settlement

to a bustling hive

of around 40,000 stampeders

in less than a year.

One of Dan's favourite diarists

of the Gold Rush,

a British aristocrat and adventurer

called Frederick Stephen Wombwell,

arrived in Dawson in 1898.

"No attempt seems to have been made

"to lay out a town.

"The people live in tents

and shacks,

"scattered-all-over creation."

"The one street consists entirely

of saloons and dance halls

"and, of course, a few shops.

"Everything is covered with dust

and very filthy."

But the thousands of stampeders

weren't here for the distractions

that Dawson offered.

They were here for gold.

And now it was tantalisingly close.

From Dawson,

it's just a short journey

into the Klondike goldfields,

a 1,200-square-mile area

of creeks, hills and wilderness.

It's here that the team's

hunt for gold will begin.

Their destination, Dominion Creek,

lies about 40 miles south

of Dawson City.

It was at Dominion Creek

that Frederick Wombwell

started mining in 1898.

"Passed a very sleepless night.

"Thinking too much, I suppose."

"I often wonder

as I write these notes

"with what sort of a story

I shall conclude them."

"How many disappointed

souls will there be,

"and shall I be one of them?"

Like Wombwell, Dan, Felicity

and Kevin will be attempting

to find gold here

using 19th-century

methods and technology.

And they've had a team

at Dominion Creek

recreating a Gold Rush-era

mining camp.

Carpenter Peter Buntain

has been overseeing construction.

He's been helped

by local miners, Reid Gaven...

..and Aaron Mendelsohn.

Oh, look at that.

The gold mine!

It's going to be fun, isn't it?

So this is our very own mine.

This is it, we're going

to find gold here.

Good to see you.

How you doing,

Peter? Good to see you, buddy.

Nice to see you.

Hey, how you doing?

Hey.

The team have enough supplies

for just five days.

Hi. Felicity. Hi.

During this time,

historian Dan wants to experience

the same physical hardships

faced by the stampeders

who mined for gold.

I'm happy to do that, if you guys

want to do that. It's up to you.

Polar explorer

and scientist Felicity

is keen to use her geology expertise

to help find the gold.

Whilst trauma medic and engineer

Kevin wants to get hands-on

with the technology that

the gold-rushers employed.

The first challenge stampeders faced

was establishing a camp

in this inhospitable

subarctic environment.

The team have arrived

in late spring,

just like many stampeders did

in 1898,

joining those

who'd braved the winter.

But even in early June,

conditions here can be harsh.

This is great.

This looks like

a proper Gold Rush-era,

19th-century prospector's tent.

Ah, it's beautiful.

A wave of warm air hits you.

Home away from home.

I've got my great little stove

to keep me warm

and my bed up off the floor,

so I'm happy.

And, Peter, you could camp in this

through the winter, could you,

even with temperatures

way below zero outside?

I think the coldest

I've been out is minus 48.

When you have a little woodstove

and a little tent, it's everything.

Temperatures drop to about zero

here at night still.

Dan and Kevin decide

they need a stove of their own...

whilst Felicity tries her hand

at another skill

the stampeders had to master.

He knows where he's going.

So shall I try giving this a go?

Timber was one of

the very few vital resources

in plentiful supply

for the stampeders.

It was used for construction,

mining equipment and as fuel.

That's starting to go now

a little bit.

Yeah, and it's going

to go that way. Watch out.

Whoohoo!

That's how you do it.

We are digging a pit

for this stove to go into.

So we can get the chimney

to go out of that hole there.

Looks pretty good.

But Peter's spotted a problem

with Dan and Kevin's handiwork.

It's going to need to be higher.

It's too dangerous.

If the wind's blowing,

we'll put the fire

straight on the roof of your tent.

The dangers of these

particular stoves

are the obvious ones,

if the canvas hits the stove,

it can catch fire -

they're well known to,

which is why they earned themselves

the nickname "hippy-killers".

To avoid burning down their tent,

the chimney needs to be moved

further away from the tent wall

and extended higher.

These days, extra sections

of chimney come flat-packed.

And, as Dan discovers...

This is ridiculous.

..they're a devil

to bend into shape.

What a piece...

of junk.

With the camp feeling

more like home,

it's time for the team

to head down to the claim.

There's a cut right here.

Nice!

What are we looking at here? This

is the mine, this bit here?

Yeah.

Why would you choose this area?

You would aim for a natural

depression in the ground like that,

and this is right across from it,

so...

So that's exciting.

It is exciting, yeah.

Even in gold-rich areas,

most of the gold

isn't found near the surface.

You need to dig for it.

As gold is one of the heaviest

substances found in nature,

it works its way

down through the soil

until it settles in the gravel layer

above the bedrock.

These gold-rich layers

are known as pay dirt.

Old-timers were pulling, like,

half an ounce to their gold pan

out here, back then.

A day.

A day, yeah.

A day?!

Yep, 15g a day.

Yes!

There's lots of potential here

for us.

Right!

I think it would be really good

if we had a go with the pans

just in the creek, to know that

there really is something here.

Sure thing.

So we're really lucky

to have some virgin ground,

but it's such a gamble.

When you see the size and the

quantities that you're dealing with,

you realise just how small

your chances are

of striking that absolute sweet spot

that has the gold.

The tried and tested method

of prospecting for gold

has remained unchanged

since the Gold Rush.

Take a pan full of dirt

and wash it out in the creek.

Felicity is the only one of the team

with experience of panning,

so she gives the others

a crash course.

The idea is that

you use loads of water

to wash off

all the dirt and soil.

And then you start

making circles with the pan

so that the big stones

drop off the edge,

so you have to keep the pan tipped

and you have to

keep lots of water in there.

I'm getting nervous about throwing

away the gold that is in here.

Well, the theory is that

all the gold is so heavy

that it sticks to the bottom,

so nothing running out

will be valuable.

Small flakes of gold found

in the soil near the surface

are a good indication

of richer gold deposits

near the bedrock below.

It's this telltale surface gold

that our team are looking for.

Come on, goldy-goldy-goldy.

What does gold...?

"What does gold look like?"

were you about to say?

I think, if you don't know that...

..then we're in a bit

of trouble here, mate.

That looks a lot like gold.

It looks more silvery, doesn't it?

That's probably

sort of mica or silica.

Does silica have

an enormously high value?

Yeah, it would be nice if it did,

because we'd be rich already.

There's a lot of shiny stuff

in there, but no gold.

This doesn't seem to me

to be a foolproof system

of gold-discovery.

As there's been 120 years

of mining in this area,

most of the easy-to-find gold

has long since gone.

Yeah, I don't see nothing in here.

The same technique.

Same level of success.

How've you done, Peter?

I'm down to my black sand,

but I do see a little bit of colour.

That's definitely gold, man.

That's how it shines, right?

You can really see it.

That's definitely gold.

That is exciting.

Nice work, Peter.

Yeah, great!

First gold.

There's gold in them there hills.

We've just got to get it.

Just got to get it out of there.

That's right.

They've found

their first piece of gold.

Trouble is, they need

a magnifying glass to see it.

This is a genuine piece

of placer gold.

They call it placer, don't they?

Placer, they do. Yes.

The tiny flakes.

When you look at it close,

it's got lumps and bumps on it

like a very small nugget.

As the day ends, the team have

had their first taste of gold.

They now have only four days

to find more.

It's 5:30am.

And someone's already

stirring in camp.

It's now a beautiful morning.

Sun is out.

Before everyone gets up,

I can't resist going back down

to the mine site

and doing a bit of digging.

Ice on the handle of the blade.

It is cold down here.

Dan is determined to single-handedly

dig his way down to the pay dirt,

the gold-rich layer

close to the bedrock.

A little part of your brain,

every single shovel,

is just scanning for gold.

It's a kind of madness.

I think I'm going down with it.

Maybe the most exciting thing

about being here

is knowing that Wombwell,

one of my particular heroes

of the Gold Rush,

it was here that

he put his shovel in the ground

and started looking for some gold.

"There must be gold

in all these creeks

"but, really,

finding it is mostly luck.

"Experienced miners will search

all over a strip of country

"and not even find colour.

"While a cheechako, who does not

know gold when he sees it,

"will scratch about in some

unusual place and find it."

That's the amazing thing about

the Gold Rush in the 1890s -

it's just luck.

It's the guys who got here first,

it's the guys who got

the good areas to dig,

and then dug in the right places

once they got to those areas.

But times have changed.

Today, the gold is much more scarce,

and modern gold miners

can't rely on luck alone.

While Dan's been digging for gold,

the others have just

started their day.

They've been joined

by local mining and geology experts

Astrid Grawehr and Jim Coates,

who they've called in

for their knowledge on

where best to find gold.

But when Jim and Astrid

take a look at the claim,

they suspect the team

might have a problem.

Layers of silt that look like

they've been...

..more recently laid down

than ancient times.

Oh, Astrid...

So if this has been dredged,

there's not a huge amount of sense

in digging any further

into this hill.

OK.

Astrid suspects the bank

they've been digging into

has been previously mined.

If that's the case,

it would mean any gold

has already been removed.

She wants to see more

of the cut exposed.

Right here?

And it's not long before

her suspicions are confirmed...

Watch out there, guys.

..by a rogue rock.

That didn't get there naturally.

No.

So, looks like

we've got proof now

that this is previously-mined

ground,

because that great big quartz rock

should be sitting on bedrock,

where the gold is,

but instead, it's...

It's up here at the topsoil.

Yeah, like, five metres up.

There's really no point

in digging in pre-worked materials.

It's probably been mined.

OK.

Do we look for

somewhere else to dig?

Let's go take a look up the creek.

With their first location

proving to be a bust

and only four days of mining left,

the team splits up to search

for a viable gold prospect.

Dan heads for the hills.

Felicity ventures further up

the creek to try to find

some unmined ground.

While Kevin wants to come up with

a more efficient method of

extracting gold from pay dirt,

if they find any.

Look, I'm terrible at this,

and if I'm being honest,

I don't think any of the three of us

is any good of it. Not really.

It's craft skill.

But there has to be a better way

of getting the gold out than this.

The key to finding gold here is to

know where it might be concentrated.

One way that gold gets concentrated

is when small flakes are

washed down streams and come to rest

in areas where the water slows,

such as in bends.

Over time, these streams

change course,

leaving large gold deposits buried

under thick layers of topsoil.

The art of successful

gold prospecting

is in reading the landscape

and recognising small depressions

that might indicate

the presence of an ancient riverbed.

The spot's right there.

Yeah? In this depression?

Why do you like this depression?

It's a natural trap for the gold.

This depression here. So we go on

that flat spot right there.

You're excited now.

Oh, yeah.

This feels like virgin territory.

Dan is hoping that Reid's experience

will lead them

to one of these ancient riverbeds.

But the only way to know for sure

is to dig down, deep down,

to the bedrock,

where the stream would have run.

That's nasty.

I see you're hitting permafrost

right here.

Permafrost already!

Oh, yeah.

It's, like, five inches down.

Even in late spring, the Klondike

is so close to the Arctic Circle

that the ground is permanently

frozen just beneath the surface.

That's just a block of ice.

Oh, yeah.

Gold miners would have to break

through this permafrost

in order to reach the gravel

and bedrock beneath.

"A strata of frozen black muck

about 15-20 feet in thickness

"has to be picked through

with a pickaxe.

"This is very slow and

tiresome work,

"and usually takes about ten days.

"Below this lies

the gold-bearing gravel.

"This is frozen hard as flint, and

against it, the pickaxe is useless."

Dan and Reid have been

digging for over an hour,

but have only managed to get a few

inches down into the permafrost.

Just gives you an idea what

the old boys would go through.

Sometimes they wouldn't even find

anything, they'd have to go over,

move right over there 50 feet,

dig another shot.

You can see why men either left

the goldfields rich or broken.

Yeah. Or broken is right.

It's clear this plan isn't working.

Meanwhile, Kevin has headed over

to a nearby claim owned by

traditional mining expert

Jerry Anhart...

Jerry!

How you doing?!

..in the hope of finding a more

efficient way of processing

pay dirt.

Although Jerry's claim isn't big,

he's had some rich pickings.

Looks fantastic.

When I go to town on Friday nights,

this is the one I wear.

This is the most important

nugget I've ever found.

I panned this one. It is exactly

a one-ounce nugget.

Wow!

A lot of the old-timers are

still saying here that I faked this,

cos they wouldn't believe it,

you know?

And the half-ounce one my wife

wears was two metres away.

The gold is impressive,

but what's of real interest to Kevin

is that Jerry mines his claim

using traditional methods.

It's three and a half feet, about

one metre down there to the perma.

This is my sluice box here,

popularly called a Long Tom.

In 1898, the stampeders used

every ounce of their ingenuity

to make the process of

gold mining more profitable.

One of the most widely employed

innovations

were handmade sluice boxes.

How does this work?

What you are doing is really

imitating Mother Nature.

Down there is the ancient creek bed

that was laid down

a half a million years ago or so.

So the heavy gold worked its way

down these valley sides

through alluvial action.

What we're doing here is

compressing that time

by making it more efficient.

Down here we have what are called

Hungarian riffles.

When this box is set up right, they

will be tilted at a 15-degree angle.

The lip over the top will create

an eddy current,

where below is a low-pressure area,

and the gold drops out

and gets caught in the mat.

And then the lighter material

goes out.

It's like artificial bends

in the river,

places where the water slows or...

Very good, you're learning.

..or is turbulent.

By separating gold from

lighter elements,

the sluice box does

what panning does,

but far more efficiently,

and on a much bigger scale.

Wish us luck.

I think we're up against it.

We've only got

a couple of days here.

Well, there's an old saying

about luck, you know -

the harder I work,

the luckier I get.

Back at the Creek, Felicity

and the geologists have been

prospecting for gold

further upstream.

But so far, no luck.

There's no gold in there, is there?

After several hours,

the search for a good site to mine

is beginning to look futile.

No gold.

Nothing there.

Until Jim chances on what looks

like an unpromising pile

of gravel and rock.

It could be another layer of dirt

that's already been processed,

but because it's still piled up

in a heap,

he suspects it might be

something else.

This is it. We've got pay.

What have you got?

This is the, probably,

bottommost metre

that is sitting right on bedrock,

that has all the gold in it.

The people who mined this previously

would have scraped the bedrock up

and piled it, intending to

sluice it, and then they never did.

So this is a pile of pay dirt

that was originally mined,

but not processed.

But why would anybody go to all

the time and effort of digging out

all this dirt, and then not

process it to see what they've got?

Sometimes people forget or they find

a better area somewhere else

and just leave this.

So this is fantastic news!

Rather than us having to dig down

to get this stuff,

somebody has already dug down

to near bedrock,

scooped up that exact layer

and put it on the banks.

Let's be scientific

and double-check.

Before they get too carried away,

it's worth panning the pay dirt pile

to check there's some gold in it.

So, we found some gold.

One little nugget.

Yay!

At the end of their second day

mining, the team are back on track.

I just really want to get stuck

into that dirt pile.

I just so want to go back to Dawson

with a little pot of gold.

I feel like I need that last bit

of connection with the story,

with the history,

with the original stampeders.

That feeling of going back

and cashing in what we've found

from the ground.

It's day three at the mining claim.

With the discovery of the pay dirt,

it's time to stop prospecting

for gold, and time to start

extracting it.

But the team won't get very far

with hand panning.

It is going to take a century

of Sundays before we can get

through all that dirt unless we

have a more efficient process,

and that process has to be

the same principle as panning,

but just on a sort of

semi-industrial scale,

and that needs a sluice.

We need quite a lot of water,

don't we?

Got to dam the river

for a source of water

to wash the dirt

to sort the gold for us.

I never said it was going

to be easy.

I said we needed to do it.

So we've got to find some wood.

You know what they used to do 120

years ago, the original prospectors?

They broke up their boats.

That's where the wood came from.

No. We're not breaking that boat up.

The good ship, The Bloody Nose

carried the team

through frigid waters

and fierce rapids...

..over 200 miles of

the mighty Yukon river...

..named after Dan was wounded

in action.

Kevin grew very attached

to the boat.

I always loved this boat.

This is a great boat.

I genuinely don't want

to hack that boat up.

I genuinely, genuinely,

genuinely don't.

I don't think we've got

another choice, to be honest.

I've seen some kit lying around

that could saw planks.

How hard can it possibly be?

They're planks.

Kevin's not prepared

to saw up The Bloody Nose,

so he's going to try to make planks

the same way the stampeders did.

Right, Peter, what are we doing?

Well, guys, I guess here we have

a wood saw stand.

Where the men become men and

where the Huskies may be nervous.

OK, so, the fellow on the bottom

pulls, the fellow on the top pulls.

Fellow on the bottom pulls,

fellow on the top pulls.

Fellow on the bottom pulls,

fellow on the top pulls.

Bottom pulls, top pulls.

This was the only tool they had

for making the planks for lumber

for the sluice boxes or

buildings or boats

or whatever they needed to build.

This was the early form right here.

Before the mills came in,

you were the mill.

Peter, have you used

one of these before?

Oh, Kevin, to be honest

with you...no.

"Everybody hates this hand sawing.

"Of course, the teamwork

has to be very good,

"as the saw has to run straight

down the line marked on the log.

"And if it runs off, the top man

is sure to blame the man underneath.

"Or vice versa.

"They say this whipsawing has done

more to break up partnerships

"than any other one thing."

Get those knees bending, buddy.

I've just got this quite

surgical view of

a bunch of teeth that come

towards my testicles.

Yeah, cos every time you pull back,

it smashes me in the sternum.

You're worrying about getting

smashed in the sternum

by a wooden handle, mate,

I'm worried about

testicular rearrangement.

Buddy, I'm not WORRIED about being

smashed in the sternum,

I AM being smashed in the sternum.

Every single time.

Seven inches. OK, we're doing OK.

So I think we're looking at

an all-day mission

to create one plank at the moment.

Kev, I don't think it's going

to happen, buddy.

I'm not sure we can make planks

out of this enormous tree.

Yep, I am sorry to have to agree.

We're never going to get there

like this.

They need about a dozen planks,

and as the whipsaw clearly

isn't an option,

it's curtains for the Bloody Nose.

Broken oar.

My most genuine emotion about

this whole thing

is I'm really reluctant

to chop it up.

I...I think it's a ludicrous

thing to do.

And I know it is what the

stampeders would have done, but

the stampeders did a lot of things

that we're not going to do.

I know. But this boat could

help us to find gold.

That's what it's done from

the beginning,

and it's going to keep on doing it.

So let's give it the opportunity

to still be part of the story

and help us find gold.

But taking The Bloody Nose apart

proves to be far easier said

than done.

How are you doing there, Felicity?

In about 20 minutes of sawing,

I've got through one plank.

For the second time in a day,

Kevin is thwarted by a handsaw.

And I rather suspect that the best

person to tell us how to

take it apart is the man who put it

together in the first place,

so I think we're going to need to

talk to Peter,

and I'm not looking forward

to that conversation.

Cos I don't think he's going to be

very happy

about us taking it apart either.

Hey.

Peter.

How's it going down here?

Hey, Reid.

It's an amateur demolition.

It's a hell of a nice boat, though.

Yeah.

Don't start.

PETER:

Hey, I don't feel bad

about it at all,

cos I really hope the boat is going

to go to a good purpose.

What's it really going to take

to take this apart?

We haven't got much time here, guys.

OK, hang on.

All right, you guys.

This is horrific.

Hey, Kevin.

OK, one, two, three. There we go.

If you have a sluice, you need

a dam to provide water for it.

That's good.

Whilst Jim and Astrid dig out

the channel that will supply water

to the sluice,

Dan and Aaron begin

construction on the dam.

Right, let's find some boulders.

How big are we looking?

A hug's worth.

Yeah.

There we go.

Basically, we're just building

a barrier here,

like a foundation for the logs,

right?

OK.

Just throw it anywhere you find fit.

Like the stampeders,

Dan came to the Yukon

hoping to find an easy fortune.

I'm just going to roll it.

Yeah.

But the harsh reality of gold mining

is endless, backbreaking work.

And so far, Dan's exertions have

reaped precious little reward.

We want to make sure this

beefy spectacle isn't futile.

Yeah, just right there, right in

front of your foot. Yeah. Perfect.

While Kevin and Felicity have been

messing around with boats,

we've been up here doing

some hard labour

and we have achieved something.

We've managed to get a partial

dam across this river,

that provides a water supply,

coming down our little channel here.

At the end of this,

Kevin is going to build a sluice.

Into that, we're going

to put the pay dirt,

and we're going to wash that dirt

and be left with gold.

That's the plan.

And today, I think we just

achieved an important step.

OK.

Nice, bud!

Well done.

That evening, the ramifications

of Peter's chainsaw massacre

are still being felt.

Something of a sad day today.

Had to break up the boat.

We've come a long way in that boat.

And it was an incredible,

incredible journey.

But we've got to get the gold

and we haven't got much time.

They were very clear about that.

The team now has only two days left

to make their fortunes...

That's a fairly precise angle.

..so Kevin needs to get

his sluice built.

He's enlisted Jim and Peter to help.

So we now need our...

What degree again, Kevin?

15 degrees for the riffles.

15 degrees.

Yeah, so we need to cut those.

Here's your first. That's perfect.

There we go, there's a riffle.

Before the riffles go in,

sackcloth is added,

creating a mat that will hopefully

snare the finer gold particles.

With the same amount of effort,

the sluice allows you to process

probably 1,000 times more

material than just panning.

1,000 times more?

This is what you want to do.

It's worth the time that you

take to build the sluice.

It's a hazard.

When Peter decides it's

too dangerous to do

without some safety equipment...

..it's probably just too dangerous,

frankly.

The final screw goes in

and the sluice is ready.

Now we need to stick it into the

stream and just wait to become rich.

That's how that works.

In addition to the sluice,

a hopper, to feed the dirt into,

and a flume, to regulate the water

flow, have also been constructed.

ALL: One, two, three.

Almost.

And there we go.

So...

The finishing touch

is an old metal grille,

which will filter out large rocks

that could block up the sluice.

It totally looks

the way a sluice should look.

It's clearly working.

We can watch it sinking out the

heavies, floating out the lights.

And what we're seeing is the

hydraulic mimic of the creek.

So, it's working perfectly.

With the sluice fully operational,

it's time to get

some pay dirt through.

Further down the creek,

Dan takes charge of

the hauling operation.

This pile that

somebody has chosen...

..better have

a lot of flakes of gold in it.

Otherwise I'll be annoyed.

I've come a long way for this.

They have their pay dirt,

but they won't know

if they've got any gold

until they take apart the sluice

at the end.

So it's a lot of hard work

and a big leap of faith.

This is the old-fashioned way

of getting the pay dirt to pay you.

Labour-intensive.

People shovelling.

People pushing barrows around.

People sticking stuff

through a sluice like this.

And it's horribly inefficient.

My role in this has now been

reduced to just dirt mover.

Dirt shifter.

I just do what I'm told now.

But Felicity and Kevin

know what they're doing.

Great.

Everyone appears to have left!

That's enough gold mining

for today, obviously.

Whoa!

I guess it's late.

Time for a beer.

The evening of day four

at the claim.

It's time to relax before

the final push in the morning.

Is it cinnamon and brown sugar?

I think it's a good start.

I wish we had more time out here.

Tomorrow we've got

a lot of work to do.

Meanwhile, Felicity has

headed off to take a closer look

at an unusual landscape nearby.

This place is surreal.

It feels like you're

on a vast, glacial moraine.

But I already know that this wasn't

created by any force of nature.

This whole place was created

by man looking for gold.

When the miners first came here,

they were mining on

a really small scale,

with hand tools

and small teams of men.

But within a few years,

things had evolved so that

they were using huge machines

to look for gold

on an industrial scale.

The first gold dredge appeared in

the Klondike as the stampede ended.

By then, the easily accessible

gold had all been taken.

But the dredges industrialised

the mining process.

They were able to extract

profitable amounts of gold,

even from poorer ground.

From down here,

you can't really appreciate

the true scale of the change.

So I want to get

a different perspective,

just to see how big

these workings were.

You can already see that these

are not natural formations.

They've got this very even,

regular ripple on the top,

as if some massive earthworm

has come through,

excavating behind it.

People did this to

the landscape in desperation.

They needed that gold.

They needed that money.

It stretches as far

as the eye can see.

Right the way to the end

of the valley.

We're just looking in one valley.

These dredgers went up

every creek, every valley,

for kilometres and kilometres.

It's the final morning of the claim,

and with precious few hours

left to strike it rich,

the team make an early start.

So this is the day of days.

I'm feeling the pressure a bit.

My God, this is the last chance.

I mean, are you not feeling...

Yeah.

..just a little bit anxious?

I'm desperate.

Desperate to get some gold.

But desperate Dan is going to have

to do some more desperate digging

to get any gold.

What do you call a man

with a shovel in his head?

Doug.

We should get the guys to

bring us a bit more of this dirt,

otherwise we're going to run out.

Where is Dan?

He's probably in his vest somewhere.

This creek is so cold.

It's lovely.

Everyone's busting a gut to put

as much pay dirt as possible

through the sluice.

But after hours of back-breaking

work, they're running out of time.

Oh, Dan. Please, stop!

The last shovel load

goes through the sluice.

All right, let's get

my sluice out of this pit,

and see whether we're rich.

One, two, three. Here we go.

Any gold should have

been captured by the mat

at the bottom of the sluice box.

But the only way to be sure

is to dismantle it.

I can't bear to watch.

Careful with all our gold!

The mat is washed into a bucket.

It feels a bit weird, washing

it all out into a bucket now.

But that's our only way to get it

concentrated down with our pans

and the only way to find out

how much we've actually made.

I thought we were done with panning?

This feels a lot more pressurised

than when you're just panning

on the side of the creek and

not expecting to get anything.

Knowing there's something

in there...

Yeah.

..raises the stakes a bit.

I mean, I don't know how I would

go about spotting the gold

in that much black sand. Oh!

Oh, my God! Look at that.

Look at that!

That just caught the sun then.

That is huge.

Holy smokes!

That's biblical.

I didn't think

we would get anything that size.

No.

Neither did I.

They've found a speck of gold.

But they still need to carefully

pan out every last ounce

of mud and rock,

because just as for the stampeders,

the success or failure

of their mission hinges

on how much gold they can recover.

I'm so relieved.

I cannot tell you what a weight

this is off my shoulders.

I was really feeling the pressure

to come up with the goods.

We have gold.

Something that I'm going to be

really proud to show the guys.

So, guys...

..I need you all to remember that

trying to get gold out the ground

was always going to be

a massive, huge ask.

Even to find one little flake

is a huge achievement.

And so, have a look at this.

Look at those babies.

I wasn't expecting to find

anything this kind of size.

Really, you were expecting

less than this?

Aw, come on, this is

a big celebration, Kevin.

Look, we have gold out of the

ground. Look at it.

Dan, what do you reckon?

I'm not going to quit my day job

just at the moment. But...

Guys!

..it's quite exciting to see

gold that we got out of the ground.

Well, in my head,

we have struck it rich.

We found gold in the Klondike.

Yeah, that's great.

We found the mother lode.

Good, well done.

If you kept it up for a couple

of days, you'd probably...

You

BLEEP.

I was really impressed with that

and you both just

BLEEP

on it completely.

Looks like you get to keep it all,

then.

Yeah, I think so.

I was impressed.

I think that's a good start.

Look,

there's little bits here as well...

The Klondike Gold Rush began

after gold was discovered in 1896.

But by the summer of 1899,

with all the easy gold gone,

the stampede was over.

During this four-year period,

over 18 tonnes of gold were mined -

worth more than half a billion

dollars at today's prices.

The team return to Dawson City

to cash in their hard-earned gold.

The first stop is the smelter's.

This freshly smelted 50-ounce bar

is worth almost $60,000.

There you go.

Wow, that's heavy.

Now, Wombwell pulled

1,400 ounces out of the Klondike.

He had to give half of it away

to the owner of the land

that he was mining,

so he got keep a stack

of 14 of those.

The really weird thing is that he

says in the last line of his diary,

he got home having neither made

money or lost money.

So the whole thing was break even.

Just getting here and getting

the gold out, then getting it back,

cost him 14 of those.

Yeah.

Is there a minimum limit

for what you can smelt?

You know, you can melt

small amounts, about an ounce,

an ounce and a half.

When you say small...

Yeah.

..how small?

Oh... Erm...

Not so much...

Oh, no!

So are you telling me

it's not enough to be worth

melting and pouring?

I... That... Yes, correct.

They may not have enough gold

to melt down,

but they can still try and sell it

at a trading post in town.

This is what we have.

Just out of interest,

how much money do you think that is?

A little bit of black sand in there,

but that doesn't weigh much.

So, you got...

0.2 gram.

I would guesstimate probably...

About $20.

I'm sorry.

Yay, we've made money!

20 Canadian dollars

is 10 British pounds.

We have just walked for a month

and paddled for a month...

Dan.

..to do a week of mining,

and we're going

to make £10 out of it.

Can I add something

to that for all of yous?

The real gold value

is in your heart.

You're right. I feel personal pride

in that amount of gold.

No matter what you say,

I'm proud of that.

The worst thing

about this entire situation

is that's the amount of gold we've

got. It's got to go three ways!

Of the estimated 100,000 people

who took part in the stampede,

it's thought that less

than 4,000 found any gold

and only a few hundred became rich.

Coming to the Yukon cost

most of them everything,

some even losing their lives.

And many of those who survived

the harsh conditions returned home

destitute and physically broken.

There is one place in town where the

team are guaranteed to strike gold.

Hello. Can we get three golds,

please?

Three golds?

Thank you.

It would have been fun to find a bit

more gold, though, wouldn't it?

I think you're forgetting

just how remarkable it is

that we found anything at all.

The gold wasn't what

I was hoping to find here.

It was the experience.

You can learn a lot from

the diaries written by the people.

But you can't ever

grasp the full picture

unless you come out here

and walk the ground.

I think I understand

a lot more about the toughness,

the resourcefulness,

the motivation of those people

who came deep into the north

of Canada with dreams of gold.

And that is very eloquently

expressed by Robert Service,

who wrote a poem

about the Gold Rush.

"I wanted the gold and I sought it

"I scrabbled and mucked like a slave

"Was it famine or scurvy -

I fought it

"I hurled my youth into a grave

"I wanted the gold and I got it

"Came out with a fortune last fall

"Yet somehow life's

not what I thought it

"And somehow the gold isn't all."

There's no doubt this was

something that people who were in

desperate circumstances threw

themselves into as their last hope.

Although I got a huge thrill out

of finding those little gold flecks

in the pan, if I had invested

my entire future,

and that of my family

in being there,

there'd be a lot more pressure

and it would be a lot different.

Like my hero, Wombwell,

I'm going home...

none the richer.

But it was brilliant.

Cheers.

Cheers.

Cheers.

Aah!