Gold Rush Season 16: Rick Ness battles wash plant problems as the site pad starts to fail

When miner Rick Ness returned this season to stake a new claim on Lightning Creek, he did so with a bold plan — investing US$700,000 on a long shot, hoping to strike big on notoriously fickle ground.

What began as a hopeful gambit soon twisted into a race against time, weather, and shifting terrain.

By the end of Episode 5 of Gold Rush Season 16, Rick’s ambition lay shattered along with his wash plant pad.

Gold Rush: Risky claim turns into uphill battle for Rick Ness

Rick and his crew arrived at Lightning Creek with high hopes. Sluice cuts were cleared, paydirt stockpiled.

The plan: move the 25-ton wash plant named “Rocky” downstream to the newly cleared cut, hook up the water line, and begin sluicing.

With ground already stripped and fines frozen from winter, they pushed to get Rocky in place quickly — aware that delays could cost them precious days of the Yukon season.

Using a 750 excavator, crew members carefully dragged the massive wash plant 300 feet across a narrow, winding track bordered by a creek on one side and a bank on the other.

Onlookers held their breath as the team maneuvered Rocky into position. Rick warned,

“We got two things: you don’t want to bend the SL boxes, and you don’t want to put it in the river — ’cause we don’t have another one.” 

Moments later, with pumps hooked and water flowing, the hope was that gold would soon follow.

What followed was far from gold. Within minutes of sluicing beginning, the wash plant pad — built only on topsoil — began to erode.

The bank beneath Rocky started to wash away. Instead of gold, the crew watched soil collapse into the creek.

Water gushed around the plant, making the slurry thick, muddy, and unworkable. Rock and fines clogged the system. 

The team had no choice: stop operations and pull Rocky out. As one miner lamented, 

“It’s already gunky, man. The bank’s trying to wash away.”

Rick himself admitted: 

“We’ve been spending money since I got here, and nothing’s coming in.”

As night fell, hopes for a big return transformed into a scramble to salvage equipment — and morale.

Gold Rush uncertainty grows: No gold yet, morale fading

By the end of the day, Rocky sat idle. Z — one of Rick’s trusted crew members — packed up and left early, saying regretfully that “going home this early sucks.”

For Rick, the loss was not just financial. It was a blow to trust, momentum, and goodwill following a major investment. The gamble on Lightning Creek looked more fragile than ever.

Remember: Rick had shelled out $700,000 based on a small pan test — barely a gram of gold. Moving that much money and manpower hinged on the hope that the ground would pay off.

Instead, the wash plant failure exposed a bigger problem: inadequate planning, unexpected terrain instability, and perhaps too much haste.

Now, Rick faces a critical question of whether or not to rebuild the pad correctly.

That means adding rock, reshaping the bank, rebuilding drainage — all of which will cost time and money he doesn’t have if he wants to salvage the season.

The wash plant “Rocky” — meant to be his ticket back to the top — now sits sidelined and idle. The cut is stripped, the paydirt stockpiled, but the sluice remains silent.

Stay tuned for more updates.