Flash in the Pan Blog

In show time, August has come and it’s been eighty days since our intrepid Gold Rush: Alaska participants made their way to Porcupine creek to search for their fortunes in gold. In those eighty days, we have seen lots of arguments, miscalculations and breakdowns. What we haven’t seen is any gold to show for the effort. As if there hasn’t been enough already, the pressure is now really on. If the endeavor is to continue, the cast must find gold or harder decisions must be made. The clock is ticking. Tick tock Clarisse. (Yes, I just threw in a “Silence of the Lambs” reference.)

In episode six of Gold Rush: Alaska entitled “Gold Fever”, we are treated to some interesting series of numbers. As of now, the gang has been running and estimated 1000 yards (or 1500 tons) of material from the “Glory Hole” through their washplant for a week straight. In that week, they have collected a total of 30 buckets of black sand concentrates that they are estimating to contain more than $50,000 in gold. With no real gold to show for their efforts over the past 80 days and a growing $250,000 in operation costs to date, Todd Hoffman and his father are forced to offer an ultimatum to the crew. If they cannot find $10,000 from a cleanup of their washplant and concentrates, the families will have to go back home to Oregon.

To assist them in their cleanup, they brought in a wave table – a tremendous tool for separating gold from their black sands. For those in the know, the table they used was from Action Mining a well-respected high-quality mining equipment supplier with a long history of quality products. The Gold Rush: Alaska participants not knowing their asses from a hole in the wall proceeded to destabilize, overload and in general do everything they possibly do to choke the table. Rather than understanding how to use the tools they brought with them, they blamed the table calling it “worthless”. What a shame.

Action Mining posted the following rebuttal on their website that is worth a read if not for some interesting background on how the table was obtained. Here is Action Mining’s explanation of what they crew at Porcupine Creek did wrong:

1. They destabilized the table by taking the slab out of the ground and loading it onto a floor jack. The table motion was being transferred to the ground instead of to the table top. Similar to the screen deck incident - not securing the screen down caused it to move. All the raising and lowering of the table was wrong. Once the material is screened properly, you find the correct height adjustment and leave it there. Dorsey almost had it running, and then it was sabotaged.

2. No classification - large flakes should have never even been on the table (according to Dorsey’s blog www.goldminingrealityshow.com, it probably was not even on the table). They should have been screening. A ¼” rock will always weigh more than an 1/8” piece of gold. The sample taken showing gold at the bottom riffle of the table was because larger rocks pushed it there. The table wasn’t losing gold, it was pushed there.

3. The wave table does not make gold, it recovers gold. They’ve done no proper sampling (or assaying) or processing of material with known gold. It’s like Jack threw down his hat and decided to dig there. From the onset, their desperation (and script acting) caused mistake after mistake. No professional miner would work this way.

While the first two points are technical, the last one resonates with my overall thesis of the show and captured in What I learned from Gold Rush Alaska post. In short, these guys are way in over their heads, making rookie mistakes and losing money left and right because of it. I’m not bright enough to figure out where the scripted drama stops and the ineptitude starts, but it seem reasonable to be that if you are going to work gold mining at scale, you should have experience doing it, not just the dream. Harsh words, but true enough.

Sadly, with the crew unable to figure out how to setup and use the Action Mining table, they resorted to having to panning through the 30 buckets of material under the gun. Again, not to sound like a complete wet rag, but holy crap – out of the twenty odd people in camp, eighty days after gold mining and Todd’s father is having to give people panning lessons? Really? Panning is fundamental to any sized operation. Any prospector worth their salt should have solid fundamental panning technique down cold – even if they are slow. After eighty days, everyone in that camp, wife, daughter, son and cameraman should be well versed in basic panning.

In the end, the entire net proceeds of their concentrates was about 2.7 ounces or $3500, well below what they needed to stay afloat and keep the families on site. Having seen their panning, I would pay cold hard cash for the opportunity to work their tailings.

As Action Mining stated in the closing of their rebuttal, “There’s definitely gold on this property, but 30 buckets of cons and only 2½ oz of gold total! Wrong area to work.” In this viewers mind, Action Mining is being far too kind.