Brendan Jesus
Welcome back, fellow treasure hunters! I missed you all last week! The only interesting Ufology news I have is nothing but hearsay. While I believe everything I have read, I would prefer to keep Lie Elizondo’s lawyers out of my DMs. So, let’s get right to the bottom of this week’s episode to see if it gets us any closer to getting to the bottom of the Mystery…at Blind Frog Ranch. (Blind Frog Ranch: Drain The Pond!)
Dam Trouble
We ended Season 5 Episode 5 “Detonation Threat” with Duane Ollinger, Charlie Boy, Chad Ollinger, and Josh Feldman building a dam and catch basin near the Water Pit. Duane tightropes his excavator from one end of the dam to the other and barely makes it over without flipping it.
The next day, the water pump arrives at the Water Pit. It’s brought by someone named Reeves Washburn (and it feels like we’re supposed to know who this man is, but I don’t think we’ve ever met him before). Reeves brought a six-inch Pioneers Trash Pump, which can pump about 2,000 gallons per minute. Duane gets in the excavator and uses it to move the pump into place.
Duane gets the water pump to the edge of the water. He then uses the excavator to move the heavy pump pipes and tubes. As he’s doing this, we see a few moments of wincing pain in his face. Nonetheless, he continues. They need to get the intake hose into the middle of the water, but it’s too heavy to take out by hand. So Duane attaches the intake hose to the excavator, and Chad gets into the bucket to release it in the proper spot.
As they prepare to set up the lay-flat hose, Duane calls a producer over. He experiences a sharp pain in his right arm, and then it completely goes dead. Chad and some producers assist Duane with exiting the excavator, and Chad rushes him to the hospital. There’s a distinct difference between this issue and what happened to Duane, Chad, and Eric Drummond in Season 2 Episode 8 “Darkness, Danger and Death”. It’s a truly harrowing moment in this series, and everyone at 25YL wishes nothing but the best for Duane and his family.
The Show Must Go On
Once back on the ranch, Chad says his father would want them to continue at any cost. Chad, Josh, and Charlie Boy attach the lay-flat hose and begin pumping water from the Water Pit. The Water Pit has drained four feet within just an hour. While that’s incredible news, Charlie Boy notices the dam is starting to crack. They decide to halt the pumping temporarily.
Chad ends up getting in the excavator and extends the catch basin reservoir. Chad seems to be having a little too much fun with the excavator and causes it to slam up and down many times. He even refers to it as a bucking bronco. Thankfully, Chad doesn’t hurt himself…or anyone else.
With the catch basin extended, they start the pumping back up. Two hours into this second pumping, they have even better results. They’re roughly six or seven feet away from the cave entrance. Could we really be getting positive results for once?! That’s when the water pump makes an awful clanking sound. It’s clogged.
No big deal! When you’re pumping up thousands of gallons of muddy, silty water, that’s bound to happen. They stop the pump and pull the intake hose out of the water. Chad shoves his arm inside to clear the blockage and is taken aback when he jams his hand into something sharp. Whatever it is, it’s not a rock.
Chad pulls out three different skull fragments. One quick look from Josh reveals there is no hide left on the skull. Charlie Boy even says it looks like it was picked clean. It’s an animal skull of sorts, but that’s all we learn for now. With the blockage cleared, the pumping resumes.
The Dam Hospital
We meet up with Duane in Vernal, Utah. He’s at the hospital and very vulnerable. Not once in his 40-year career has he left a work site in the middle of a job. You can feel the emotional pain in his voice. His EKG revealed nothing, so he will be put through a series of neurological tests.
That’s A Dam Problem
Back at the Water Pit, the team is greeted by some of the titular blind frogs! With as much progress as the pump has made, the team has to move the intake hose to a lower part of the Water Pit. Success is nearly on the horizon!
They set up a ladder and Chad descends into the [nearly] Water[less] Pit. he maneuvers the intake pump back into the water, and the pumping gets back into gear.
The next day brings trouble.
When Chad, Charlie Boy, and Josh come back to the Water Pit, they find that it’s nearly filled back up. Josh is confused because his calculated refill rate was nowhere near what they’re looking at. Something had to have occurred under the ranch to cause this.
To try and figure out how this could have happened, Chad and Josh head out to Bead Site: Borehole, where they initially realized there was some underground connection to the Water Pit. They attach a camera to a long rope and slowly feed it down the 100+ foot hole. Originally, they struck water in this hole at 90 feet, and now hit water at about 100 feet.
Not only are they hitting water, they’re hitting an extreme current. Josh likens the weight of the current to that of wrangling a large fish. Josh also wonders if draining the pond could have triggered this current surge.
They meet back up with Charlie Boy at the Water Pit and attempt to start pumping again. But two hours of pumping come and go, the water level stays the same. Josh thinks the aquifer is self-stabilizing. Charlie Boy seems to think it could be an Aztec water trap. If there is one thing this show has drilled into my head, it’s that the Aztec people were master craftspeople.
One thing is for sure: Josh has never seen anything like this.
Later in the day, Chad and Josh meet up with Charlie Boy at the Miner’s Shack. Charlie Boy is cleaning the skulls from the Water Pit. He says the skulls appear to have been chewed on. Could these skulls be the result of the large snake-like creature that killed a deer last season?
So, What’s Next?
Chad is at The Hideout and calls his father. Duane seems to be in better spirits, but wishes, more than anything, to be out of the hospital. It’s clear from Duane’s demeanour that he wants them to continue their work, with or without him.
Chad meets with Charlie Boy, Josh, and James Keenan at The Hideout to discuss their next steps and to update them on Duane. At this point, draining the Water Pit is off the table. It’s become too dangerous and time-consuming. Chad thinks their best bet will be to focus on following the ranch’s fault lines and checking out the Open Pit Mine.
Final Thoughts
I was hoping that draining the Water Pit would have worked! Could you imagine how beautiful it would be to even see part of this open cave system? We could barely see through the murky water the few times Chad dove down there. And it seemed like the safest way to go. Fingers crossed that the Open Pit Mine yields positive results.
And on the Duane thing. I’ve discussed time and time again that Season 1 Duane and Season 3, 4, and 5 Duane are two totally different people. It’s clear that something medically happened to him in the later seasons, but watching him get rushed to the hospital is very difficult to watch. Whatever happened to Duane, I hope it’s not life-threatening. Get well soon, man, we need you!
(Blind Frog Ranch: Drain The Pond!)
Catch Mystery at Blind Frog Ranch: Drain The Pond! on Discovery or with a Max subscription.
