Bering Sea Gold season 3 - 12/13/13

[Ordell]

Ok, ep 1 is over.

* Emily has her own ship, Eroica. I thought it was supposed to be Eurotica. She took The Edge from Zeke in a deal they made but it needed a ton of work. An engine blew up and that set off more Emily drama.

* Her idiot dad has a skiff appropriately named Minnow. I guess that makes him Gilligan.

* Meisterheim is working for a Christine Rose clone, a ship with a backhoe, called Au Grabber. He's not the captain, he works for someone else for once. I can't remember the guy's name, except it was a very ethnic German name.

* Zeke made a late appearance and sounds like he's losing his mind. He said during the winter he didn't shower or change his clothes for 3 months. In addition to Bunce's death, another friend of his committed suicide. I think this kid is in trouble.

* There was another guy who built the underwater sluice, but he lost it. He claims it floated off on an iceberg. I wouldn't be surprised if it was stolen.

 

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[Rdg Sluicer]

There are so many great places to mine up there. Spend your first trip on the road system traveling, plenty of places to go. Don't get land locked with a gazillion other Cheechako's, go where you can spread out, experience and enjoy what AK has to offer. There are also rivers in southwest that would be perfect for a prospecting float trip. Stay away from the Illiamna area quite the hub bub going on over the Pebble Mine. Although if you did venture that way you might get a chance at an autograph from one of the hollyweird actors they hired to oppose it. Wish I had the time and money, I'd volunteer to be your tour guide. Fair warning many a visit up there has turned into a permanent address change.

A long float trip would be cool! I was thinking in SW Alaska you can go up on a ferry and take your truck full of equip too.

 

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[mamabear]

I watch the show, but it causes me angst. I am beginning to believe it's just a soap opera for men. So sad. I think perhaps they all need to visit their health clinic & get some serious mental health help. There are drugs you can take to calm the crazies. Of course then there wouldn't be much of a show.

 

[fowledup]

A long float trip would be cool! I was thinking in SW Alaska you can go up on a ferry and take your truck full of equip too.

A great first trip would be to drive up thru BC to Prince Rupert, board the ferry and ride it to Haines. From Haines you could stop in for a visit with the Schnabels and then follow Parker on up thru the Yukon. From there go on over to Fairbanks, and explore the gold fields surrounding Fairbanks. Haven't been to Fairbanks in years but you used to be able to climb all over the dredges (some of which started life down here in California). From Fairbanks start working your way towards Anchorage, stopping in at McKinley Park. From Anchorage follow the coast down to Valdez where you can reboard the ferry and take it all the way to Vancouver, or Seattle. That route let's you see a real good sample of the different types of terrain and climate. That also covers 90% of the gold rush excluding Nome, a life time of history to absorb.

 

[artic gold]

Ak Au can u explain this

 

[AK_Au_Diver]

It's a concrete boat ramp on the west shore of the Snake River in Nome, it leads to the Port of Nome industrial area. This is where most dredges and other boats launch from.

 

[G1sammons]

What is that on the trailer ? Kinda looks like the vacume from the Telly tubbies! But a real live version ...
Lol

 

[Jason in Enid]

It's a concrete boat ramp on the west shore of the Snake River in Nome, it leads to the Port of Nome industrial area. This is where most dredges and other boats launch from.

Yeah...... I don't think he was asking about the boat ramp.

 

[artic gold]

AK AU is correct. It is the boat ramp as described. But you may also notice the RCV that is loading on the trailer. This is the toy that AK plays with on the bottom of the sea all summer. Seems he didn't notice it in the pic. lol Joystick video mining is not fair.

 

[loco oro]

now thats a bottom feeder if i ever saw one,looks heavy, i would love to see that in action, whats wrong with the producers of that show, they should have a speacial ,where they expo all the wild setups of the locals. you cant beat the ingenuity of gold miners anywhere! i am waiting for the next gold rush, the one where they have martian rovers remotely drywashing on the moon or mars ,maybe in the next hundred years!lol. i would bet theres gold in them hills as well!there you go washington,we can mine ourselves out of debt,turn nasa into a mining corp.just think ,no worry of yellow legged frogs there , or greenies with picket signs!lol

 

[AK_Au_Diver]

Joystick video mining is not fair.

That is the homebuilt remotely operated crawler of the Casa de Paga. It is an 18" suction dredge controlled via hydraulic over hydraulic with a 100'+ tether. It weighs 24000 pounds.

It has been operating in Nome for 10 years. It used to be the most successful dredge in Nome of any type since the Bima, now it has competition from the excavator dredges for that title. Our second best year was 608, it's lowest I think was 78, but it's wildly expensive to run, most of the time we would have been ahead to just use a 10", except we operate in the deepest leases off Nome. Fuel alone is more than some operation's total capital costs to put together a new dredge and buy and ship everything they need. Many have tried to copy this design, and all have failed. This one barely worked at first and had to have several redesigns of key components.

For about $3M I could build a much improved version of the crawler and mothership, which would be able to move about 9x the material per year. But besides finding the money to build it, getting the leases on which to work is the most critical step. I can get access, but few others could.

 

[artic gold]

Here are a few more pic. of some of the great things to see in Nome that the show can't find. The story of Bering Sea Gold is so interesting and some of the machines that have been built and experimented with is huge. It is so interesting to look around and see the remnants of this stuff. There are no scrap yard in Nome so a lot of it that hasn't been reused is still laying around. Last year out on West beach we noticed some alum. sticking out of the Tundra and walked back to find a crash site of a ww11 B24. It had been picked but still a lot there. We got a prop. blade and some small stuff just for fun. I attached a pic. of the barge the Christen R. is built on. It first arrived in Nome as a poorly designed cutter head dredge. The owners would have almost given it away end of first season. They came by and offered it in parts or any way anyone wanted it. They also had a old Tub Boat and offered it for the price of the fuel still on it. Most thought Steve and Shawn P. were nuts for converting it to a digger barge. They were Placer land miner's. To bad the show doesn't get much of the real story up there. It never covers any of the history of Nome and WW11 and the many thousands of aircraft the USA handed off to Russia in Nome or the 100 + years of very successful mining done up there. There are still thousands and thousands of oz. taken every year. What they show on TV is chump change to some of the operations up there. Don't ever think Nome is a village full of idiots that don't know how to get the gold. Reality TV ,, no matter how many times it takes to get the shot lol

 

[Jason in Enid]

Great post arctic gold! One thing I noticed in a recent episode, was the comment that several years ago there were a handful of dredges at the docks and now there were more than 50.

 

[G1sammons]

Great post arctic gold! One thing I noticed in a recent episode, was the comment that several years ago there were a handful of dredges at the docks and now there were more than 50.

i agree that's pretty cool!

 

[artic gold]

Yea the harbor does have several more dredges since the TV show. The show has changed things, and imo not in a better way. At least twice as many dredges or more. Before the show it was easy to know most of the guys working there, but so many new faces and rigs it's very difficult to get to meet most of them. Several new reg's in the harbor now and the C.G. is moving in to enforce a few more regs. on safety. I think things will calm down in a season or two. There is big talk of expanding The Port of Nome to make it the main port of Western Alaska. Like Andrew said there is a lot of equipment that will be for sale when some of these guys run out of money to throw out on their personal ( best ever idea ) inventions. Me included maybe. City of Nome is in the process of building another small boat floating dock system on the Snake River very close to the Ramp the Sub and RCV is pic. on. I will try to find a pic of just one of the barges arriving in Nome and how much crap they hall in each trip and each season. I couldn't tell you how many guys and gals that I have talked to that claimed they know how to build a better rig than all the others if only they had the money to build their dreams. And who knows they may be right.

 

[AK_Au_Diver]

Yeah, most new dredgers to Nome can't even figure out how to build a profitable normal diver-operated 6" or 8" dredge. Perhaps 25 attempts have been made at novel designs of contraptions to avoid getting a guy wet. One of the biggest blunders was that awesome-looking submarine; it was a complete failure, probably $2M or more, never got any gold and is sitting there rusting away.

The TV show is pretty pathetic, not showing the interesting stuff, just showing what they know sells. We have made it very clear to them that we do not want the crawler filmed for the show, not even a glimpse; so that is why they don't show it.

My first two seasons would have made an interesting show, but by the time we had everything figured out, it is not as exciting.

The crawler took about 4 years to build and about 4 years to get most of the bugs worked out.

That submarine took about 10 years to build and only took a few dozen hours to fail.

 

[fowledup]

The last 10 or so posts have been more interesting then the last three seasons put together. You guys don't need money to build a better gold getter. You two need some backing to get you a show and a producer.

 

[Jeff95531]

I'm not kidding...the last three episodes I was unable to watch the last 20 minutes of each one. That's just not right I LOVE gold!

 

[loco oro]

thanks for the pics, and i like the insight,and behind the scenes ,the reality of it , actualy makes me enjoy the show a lil more.the dumb s t on the show doesnt bother me much, what bothers me is people like that miesterhiem, doesnt want to do anything, come on man your in NOME! he should try to make that operation hes with, a success.that crap of,(my shift is over), or (theres others to do it). *****!

 

[Jeff95531]

OMG, YES! My shift is over OMFG! That is exactly what I was talking about! Don't get me started lol

 

[loco oro]

i would love to have the oppertunity to work on gold fields such as nome, and this guy acts like hes a lumber stacker or something,hates his (job),the show had to drag this fn clown in from some rehab clinic or something,the producer must've said while casting and developing,(we need something more interesting to keep the sheeples attention,so go down to the nearest rehab, and grab the dips t standing outside bumming cigs, and b_ tching about why the world sucks and makes him drink.)..... later at a AA meeting..... hello my name is scott ,and i'm an alcoholic a hole, i drink because ,people expect me to take my responsibiltys seriuosly,can you believe it!?