Gold Rush: Alaska

[Soln]

We really should discuss this series.  linky   I really don't know whether to keep laughing or cry as season 2 starts.  Fawk.   

[Evildrider]

If I was in that group of guys, and there had been no camera, "Dakota" Fred's body would never have been found. 

[Abagadro]

The Soup's take on this show is hilarious.

[KallDrexx]

Onwards towards the glory hole! 

[kaid]

They are the biggest bunch of stooges ever. Seriously he has to know that dakota douche wants to screw him over and he lets a lease payment slip. He gets a second claim and does not bother to get the water rights squared away till the last second. Sad thing is they spent all last year getting their crap together found the gold and now the other guy can just move right in and take it from them.

If there is indeed a sucker born ever minute these guys are those suckers.

[Sky]

Yeah, it's an amazingly amateurish attempt. I like the show and I hope they do well, but they only have themselves to blame for their problems. The whole last season was a train wreck of unprofessionalism and ignorance.

Bringing in the quarry guy is the best move they've made. Unfortunately for him, he's signed on with a bunch of bumblers. Kaid, you forgot losing the big investors, too.

[kaid]

Honestly its probably better for them to have lost the investors. Given how badly they keep getting screwed or screwing things up by inattention or bad business sense I have a feeling that any big time investor would take them to the cleaners and molest them badly.

[Soln]

I honestly have told family and friends who have been considering a start up to watch this show, plus any restaurant make over show, and Storage Wars on A&E.  Better than an MBA.  What-not-to-do.


I can not get over the incredible, death defying failure of these guys.  Even in s1 I was sympathetic, appalled,  , and  and  as the series went on.  Being in business is not about digging holes to effectively waste money.  Being in business is not about spending money.

That Dakota Fred guy I don't think was particularly unethical.  If the owner lead the Hoffmans on then there's fraud, lease payment missed or not (i.e. if he lead them on after the payment was missed).  But it was clear at the end of s1 there was no going back to that site.


Above anything else, I still can't get over WHERE THEY KNEW TO DIG!   It really seemed like the old guy just wandered around, took advice of another old guy and then spent their life savings making a mess.  Where's the geology?  Where are the test holes or anything to hedge against failure?  O.M.G. madness.

[Abagadro]

Finding gold is probably secondary at this point. These guys want to be the new Hilstrands/Sig Hansen.

[Evildrider]

Above anything else, I still can't get over WHERE THEY KNEW TO DIG!   It really seemed like the old guy just wandered around, took advice of another old guy and then spent their life savings making a mess.  Where's the geology?  Where are the test holes or anything to hedge against failure?  O.M.G. madness.

The owner of the claim dug in that area and found gold years before, they just went after that.  That's why "Dakota" Fred also wanted the claim.  Even the area they were going to dig in the Klondike was someone else's claim. 

[Slayerik]

Finding gold is probably secondary at this point. These guys want to be the new Hilstrands/Sig Hansen.

I keep telling my GF that no matter what happens, they will always have some funding from who knows where (Discovery) now that the series did well.

The ethical thing for Fred to do would have been to allow them to mine it one last season, with something like a 50/50 cut. But, hell I don't blame the guy. Todd fucked up. Again.

What I don't understand is selling off all your gear just to have to rebuy it, while helping your nemesis while you're at it. You know all that shit works. You have experience with it, something they did get out of a horrible first season.  Let's goto the Klondike with our 400 only and tear it up... WOOO

Discovery loves Dakota, how many of these shows truly have a villiain???

[Evildrider]

They have equipment already at the other site.  The thing I wonder is why they didn't divert that stuff to Porcupine Creek when they didn't get their water rights up in the Klondike.

[MournelitheCalix]

Where Can I watch the episode I missed, any idea?

[fuser]

I love this show its comical how unprepared they were the first season. The first episode comments on facebook are glory hole waiting to be explored

[Sky]

Dakota Fred is the smartest person on the show. Interesting they've (successfully) poised him as a hero. Genius, actually. How many people do you guys know that continually screw things up and then blame the person not screwing things up for your problems? Everyone should hate Hoffman but they hate Fred instead. Amazing. Now that I think about it, I hope he gets their next claim out from under them, too.

I think the highlight of last season was giving the lynchpin shaker table project to an utter moron. If you can't even bring in someone who has the slightest clue of what to do, what do expect the results to be?

Storage Wars, we should have a thread about that.

[kaid]

Fred is a bit of a douche but frankly he seems to be smart and was dotting his I's and crossing his T's. I think he will probably do very well at PP creek. The guys have only Todd to blame for the state they found themselves in just horrible business sense and lack of attention to detail. Maybe they can get the quarry manager guy to ride shotgun on the new klondike deals to try to have somebody who maybe possesses a clue.

As for why they sold off the gear which helped out fred they had already purchased new gear which was I think at their klondike claim. The existing stuff was older and frankly probably would have cost a ton of money they did not have to move and bring up to the new location. This way they got rid of it got a pretty fair deal on it to give them more seed cash for the new claim they are trying to locate.

[Sky]

Hey, we bought this new linchpin for our operation..let's start it up for the first in time six years....ten days into the short mining season.

What a bunch of clowns. I do love the lame pep speeches, though.

[devildog]

Todd is a screwup. That pretty much sums up my feelings for season 1 and the beginning of season 2. Dakota Fred was fed up with their cluelessness early on last season, so it was no surprise he took it out from under them when given the opportunity. Unethical? Really i don't think so. The guys were morons and had every chance to make something of the claim. They missed a lease payment and then cry about it afterwards? I guess i have a different mentality than a lot of folks. I would not expect a hand-out, especially when my mismanagement of the operation was tied up in video footage. I actually think they are lucky no one lost a limb or turned over a heavy piece of equipment on themselves. I feel most sorry for the people that actually seem capable workers that are following Todd and his dad. The speech this season....priceless. I would not trust Todd to stencil my address on the burn without jacking it up, much less run a mining operation.

[Soln]

well said.  Particularly where they are so "RAWR CAPITALIZMS"


This week?  More fun.  1) let's sign a contract without any assays being done, so 1.1) we don't know if there is real gold on the property (there may have been once, but fuck we DONTHAVETHETIME to do socialist research, so we don't know how much was taken out), and of course 1.2) we don't know really where to dig, except where no one else did so that much work.  FAWK YA!


Very happy they included new format with Fred and Schnabel Jr.  I wouldn't want to work for Fred, but I like watching him get.shit.done.

[Abagadro]

Its fun to watch a 16 year old out-manage all of these guys.

[Sky]

Its fun to watch a 16 year old out-manage all of these guys.

Yep. Was kinda upset his guys were giving him a hard time, but looks like it paid off for them. Not sure how much long term viability he's got going on there, that pile of tailings is pretty finite. But I like the new format with some non-clusterfuck participants.

The Hoffman disaster continues to be simply atrocious. Jack continues to dick around and now he's guilt-tripping Todd with his little temper tantrum. If I was the guy about to lose my house, I'd wring Jack's neck for playing diva with my livelihood like that. But...the guys should know better.

Pretty enjoyable for the most part, but I could live without the constant 'either we make it or we don't' commentary. Yeah, we got it.

[Abagadro]

Yea, that stuff is lame particularly when you are BEING PAID TO BE ON A TV SHOW.

[Slayerik]

Yea, that stuff is lame particularly when you are BEING PAID TO BE ON A TV SHOW.

These guys Todd is bad enough to lose all the Discovery profit trying to mine. You know eventually they will start making money, though.

I, too, like the new dynamic because I don't think I could just watch Todd fuck up over and over for a whole season. Oh, wait. I did make it through season one....

[Sky]

I think the way we made it through the first season was that we didn't realize there was no end to the Hoffman fuckup train. I thought they knew what they were doing and the editors were maximizing the moronity to make the payoff bigger when the 'average joe' struck the big paydirt.

Nope, they're just dumbasses.

[Slayerik]

Let's clear off land that's ALREADY BEEN MINED.

How bout next time, call the old dude BEFORE you start pouring thousands in gas into your dozer....

[Sky]

That was hilarious. Guy shows them the virgin ground, they put someone who is not their new heavy machine expert on it and 'waah it's haaaard'. No shit, that's why it's still virgin ground during a gold rush.

Not to mention Schnabel is doing pretty good with tailings from that vintage.

But the best part was the clear indicator Jack isn't firing on all cylinders: turning around Fred's bet in the most juveniley retarded way possible "Oh yeah? I'll get more gold in ONE DAY than you'll get all season." Based on their extensive geological survey, I'm sure. When they left Fred with what they know is a producing mine. Derp.

[Slayerik]

Seems like the Schnabel kid is looking for easy gold instead of finding his own niche there.

I was very bored at the last episode. What happened? A flood, an entire episode to drill 12 holes, and the kid digging up some old buckets for no gain. ZZZZZzzzzzzz

[Sky]

It was nice seeing a real mining operation for a few seconds (the scandanavian or whatever he was). "Hey, you guys should probably dig exploratory holes."   

Don't know what Parker's long-term strategy is or if he's just dicking around until he has to go back to school.

I don't care about Fred's damn house.

[Abagadro]

Gotta love how the concept of digging test holes was some big revelation to Todd. Der.

[Slayerik]

Gotta love how the concept of digging test holes was some big revelation to Todd. Der.

I seriously think with my current level of common sense and google fu, I could out-mine Todd any day of the fuckin' week. Though, that puts me up there with like 99.99999% of the population.......

[Sky]

I used to test drive heavy equipment back in the 80s, I could run the gear for you! 

[Slayerik]

Gotta love how the concept of digging test holes was some big revelation to Todd. Der.

"I gotta gut feeling there is gold here...."

"Yeah, that was mined 60 years ago. Dredged out, ain't shit there."

"I meant over there!!!"



The best is the old dude. "JUST KEEP FUCKIN' DIGGIN' !!! RAWRRRRR" or

"This is grade A, killer claim right here!" - Here's a clue, shithead: You don't know anything about gold mining. Everyone is done listening to you after last season.

[devildog]

Couple of things after watching some episodes this season. First off, i believe f13 could probably put together a better crew than the Hoffman crew. In fact, i'm starting to think this was just a random pug put together with the LFG(looking for gold) tool. The tank doesn't know shit and is wearing mismatched cloth gear(Todd), the healer doesn't know shit, but has decided he is being disrespected, so has to constantly have his ego stroked( Todd's dad), and what we are left with is a couple of middle of the road dps wondering if they should hit the recall button.

The last episode i saw was the flood of the house and the test drilling. I was also pretty amazed that Todd actually went through with it rather than using his mad instincts. This is like watching a car pile-up. I have to admit i am mainly watching this show for the episode where the old man either dumps a loader 50 feet into a ravine or somehow pins himself under a 20 ton piece of equipment. Other entertaining sideshows could be the "mechanic" torching off a finger(he has 9 more and lots of pain pills), or someone else taking over when Todd decides he is going back to managing at Burger King.

[kaid]

Gotta love how the concept of digging test holes was some big revelation to Todd. Der.

And how it took the serious miner guy had to tell him just drill it like 5 times before Todd stopped blathering his life story and just realized hey the money you spend drilling is a tiny amount compared to what it costs in fuel to clear off permafrost over ground with no gold in it.

[Sand]

I generally have a low tolerance for stupidity.
I watched last season and watched the first episode of this season.
Thats when I figured out, as many of you have, these guys dont have some knowledge and just very bad luck, they are simply fucking clueless.
I couldnt watch it anymore after that.