It's been a rough season for the stars of "Gold Rush," but one miner's luck looks like it's about to change as they hit paydirt that is almost guaranteed to reveal a treasure trove of gold!
Rick Ness, one of the stars on the Discovery show, is highlighted in the upcoming episode of "Gold Rush" as one of his heavy machine operators struck an area of the dig site and immediately called over the boss to reveal his potential payday.
While digging into the cut, Rick's crewmember, Gene, found a wet part of the ground that eventually revealed fresh clay. The water traveling over the clay leads the prospectors to believe the stream could not have washed away gold deposits over the years, due to the clay's impervious layers. They deduct that there could be a considerable amount of gold sitting on top that would be ripe for the picking.
"This should be the best trail right on top of it," Gene explained, suggesting to Rick that they just follow the gold trail all the way back up the natural water stream.
Faced with possibly the biggest payout of gold since starting his difficult season, Rick agrees that the best thing to do is focus on mining everything out of the fresh clay.
"This is the first water I've seen in here," Rick said, adding, "It might be a lot of gold here, this could be our best ground."
The stroke of good luck is a change for Rick, as he's had a very rough gold mining season plagued with location changes and heavy rains.
Earlier in the year Rick and his crew faced a season-ending issue when mother nature brought a downpour that flooded the drainage ponds they made for the water they use during the mining process.
The heavy rain caused the discharge pond to burst and feed directly into the lower ponds, overflowing them with dirty water. Contamination of the natural waterway is illegal and could have cost Ness huge losses in fines and license suspensions.
Luckily, they were able to fix the drainage ponds without polluting any of the Alaskan waterways, and now that they were able to stay in the game they are looking for a worthy payout.
"Gold Rush" airs Fridays at 9 PM ET/PT on Discovery.
