‘Gold Rush’: Rick Ness’ Operation Comes to a Standstill in Exclusive Sneak Peek

Rick Ness is facing early challenges at his mine site as the Gold Rush star resumes his operations after taking a year off to care for his mental health. In a PopCulture.com exclusive sneak peek of Friday’s all-new episode of the Discovery show, Ness and his bare-bones crew come to a standstill with a broken-down water pump as their goal of mining 20 ounces of gold by the end of the week slips further and further away.

With the pump that feeds water to the wash plant no longer pumping water, Ness’ crew member Morgan says it’s “make or break” getting it back up and running. Ness’ first instinct is to pull up the suction basket out of the river to see if it’s gotten clogged, and it turns out he was right about the basket being absolutely “buried” in sediment. “Right now this river’s running really dirty because [of] the spring runoff so everything’s coming down the river right now,” Ness explains. “Dirt, sediment, sand … they’re all getting caught right here in our suction hole. So all I can do is dig it out and clean the dirt off it. That’s what we get from trying to run this time of year.”

Ness adds with exasperation, “You know what pumps have to do – water pumps? One f-king job: pump water. You know what they almost never f-king do is their job.” Even with the suction basket cleared, the pump isn’t priming, with the culprit most likely being an airlock. The pump is supposed to work by sucking water from the river using a rotating impeller, creating centrifugal force that pulls water in and pushes it out towards the wash plant. Air seems to have caused a blockage in the pump, however, stopping the flow of water.

Morgan has an idea to get things going again, proposing getting a smaller second pump to force more water into the system, creating extra pressure to push out the air and allow the water to once again flow to Monster Red. “So we think we had an airlock. We weren’t getting any suction out of this one,” she explains. “So we’re gonna try use the little pump and hook up over here and just kind of start force-feeding water into it. See if we can get it flowing again.” Will this be the key to getting Ness’ operation up and running once again? Gold Rush airs Fridays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Discovery.