Original subtitles

Do you reckon he's awake yet?

He's probably awake, but he's probably not super enthusiastic

to see us this early, but he's probably awake.

- All we can do is ring the doorbell and... - See what happens.

- Yeah. Okay. - Here we go.

Good morning.

I just wanted to try the doorbell.

Good morning.

- Come on in. - Thanks very much.

After you.

On this gold rush,

Parker schnabel tests out a next level piece of new equipment

I just spent $5,40,000.

Decides whether to make a game-changing business deal

500 ounces of gold, that's a million dollars.

And hunts for new gold rich land.

Really, we're looking for old shafts or piles of tailings.

Cause there was no machinery mining up here.

Be ready.

It's 9:00 A.M.

Parker's crew has been working for two hours...

But he... Is just waking up.

I'm not really a morning person.

I take after my mom.

She's a night owl, as am I.

Usually I just, you know...

Peruse the equipment auctions for a little bit in the morning.

Anything good on the auction?

No.

I putter a little bit in the morning,

and look at equipment and look at gold prices.

Any gold price movement is directly on to our bottom line.

We try to... we breathe into the crystal ball what's going to happen.

I'm not very good at it.

So you know, with a project this size,

it's like, every $100 swing in the gold price is millions of dollars.

I am horrifically bad at and selling gold at good prices.

I sold like... A 1,000 ounces

the day Hamas attacked Israel...

The morning,

before anybody knew what had happened.

And gold prices went a lot, up a lot in the next, like 10 days.

In 2024, gold prices hit an all-time high

at over $2,500 an ounce.

We'll probably go down to the office, have a coffee.

Let's do it.

Parker's dominion crew is spread out over 7500 acres,

stretching six miles long.

It can take half an hour to travel from one end of the claim to the other.

My day is probably going to be fairly busy, but I never really start

the day, running.

I'm gonna go to the office first.

Drink some coffee.

What else? We have a fun new piece of equipment showing up today.

I have a business meeting lined up

and I usually do the rounds of the mine site at some point

just to see what's going on.

And Liam's around, so I'll probably go look

at a piece of ground that I was thinking about drilling.

If I'm doing some exploration on with him, that would be good.

Coffee? We have a big coffee budget.

Only the best.

- This is like maple pecan. - Ooh.

Good morning.

So we go from sitting on a couch to sitting on a desk.

And I'm a very fidgety person, so...

A deck of cards is my...

Fidgety... tool of choice.

Can you show us a trick?

I don't have any tricks.

I think one of the most difficult things that I find

is like, running a good business with

the film crews on site.

You know, that's a very weird dynamic, and...

Nobody's used to...

That kind of a atmosphere at a...

At a place they work, right?

Since the gold rush began in 2010...

Come on, get out of the way.

Over 200 different camera crew have filmed Parker's every move...

Parker.

Would you like some coffee?

Eggy toast?

There's a camera in my face every day!

Capturing the highs...

Yeah!

Nothing wrong with a 400 ounce a week.

- And lows... - Parker! - Get out of my way.

In over 60,000 hours of footage.

For the most part, we're pretty full access,

but there still is things where it's like, okay, this is like...

A very big issue on the mine site.

The risk of messing up and your boss getting mad at you

it is one thing, the risk of messing up your bag,

your boss getting mad at you

and it all getting broadcast worldwide on TV,

is a super weird thing

that... is arguably not very healthy.

Speaking of things that need to happen off camera,

I need you guys to leave...

While I take this.

Next to Parker's office... Nona. Hi.

Mine manager, nona loveless, drives Parker's operation.

Parker, kicked us out.

So we thought we'd come and check in with you.

I am, well, busy trying to move buildings

and keep people going, and we've got to go into town,

and do some books.

That's a typical day.

My days are never two the same.

A veteran klondike miner,

nona joined Parker's crew six-years-ago in 2018.

Yeah, the last couple of years have been... Really crazy with expansion.

It's been good, but it's also a lot of work

and a lot of organizing, and, yeah, trying to keep, I guess, the equipment.

We're getting more equipment.

We're getting more ground.

We're getting more people.

We need more housing.

It just keeps going and going and going.

Nona helps Parker run one of the biggest mine sites in the klondike,

managing over 40 crew and a fleet of big iron.

The board behind you, there, that has not even all of our equipment now.

We're going to be having three of these in the near future

because we are growing exponentially very fast,

and it just tells the service date.

What needs to be serviced the hours on the machine.

Mechanics are really good at keeping it filled in.

We... we're just growing, growing, growing, growing.

As the theme is growing around here.

Are they bothering you?

Well, no, I'm trying to get some work done, but no,

that's not what they're doing at all.

We were just... we were just in there talking about the company,

and how far we've come,

and thinking about that stuff makes,

it brings a lot of memories back.

It does, for sure. Like, it's just crazy hell... We've gone

every time I think about that stuff,

it makes me incredibly thankful

that you came here and have stayed here.

- Honestly. - Well, I love being here.

It's been good. It's been a good journey.

Okay, I'm gonna go.

Bye.

So now we're just gonna head over to the stripping crew.

For the most part, they're just like, dealing with things

that nobody else has time to deal with.

And, see what happens.

So this is the stripping crew.

They pretty much operate, like totally autonomously

from the rest of the mine site.

Three or four of them usually, but it's my favorite part of the whole operation.

Maybe other than the gold room,

so I usually like to check in with them fairly regularly.

Parker's crew is gunning for a record $25,000,000 season.

- How's it going? - Good. How are you?

Good. This weather's not doing us any favors, is it?

Definitely not.

After today, pretty much the whole cut,

other than the center of it up there, will be on frost.

Wash plant boss, Tyson Lee,

has worked with Parker for nine years.

- Yeah. Let's do it. - All right.

Thanks, man.

You guys are good, Tyson?

- Yeah. - Okay.

You know, what you see of Parker,

that's the real him. That's the real deal.

You know, I definitely see Parker as a friend.

But there's that, you know, level of respect that's there, too,

cause he is my boss, and you know,

he does have hard decisions to make, and...

You know, I respect those hard decisions.

You know, he's definitely stepped down to the seat

and kind of stepped into the office a little more nowadays,

which is needed 'cause... There's a lot of bills to pay, and...

A lot of ground to find, and you know,

he's always looking for the next best thing.

I try and put myself in his shoes a lot.

Cause, you know, we're six, seven months apart in age-wise.

You know, most guys my age, they worry about do I have enough money to make my,

you know, $400, $800 vehicle payments and my $1000 rent

at the end of the month.

Parker, he's got, you know, millions of dollars of debt,

and you know, he holds it very well.

Looking to diversify his business,

Parker heads to a meeting.

A good friend of mine, Bruce schindler, who is a

I mean, it's kind of a Jack-of-all-trades

when it comes to like artistry and jewelry making.

He does a lot of things with mammoth tusks,

and now he's working with gold.

And we started working together years ago on some personal stuff for me,

like he made a gold ashtray for Chris doumitt.

Like a five-ounce gold ash, cigar ashtray.

And so that kind of set off a chain of events

that have led to him taking a bunch of gold from us...

Last year or the year before that,

and he just started making stuff with it.

And he just showed up to give me an update about what's going on, and...

Talk about... Talk about where that's at.

We normally sell our gold just basically wholesale to buyers,

and we get charged 1%.

So if we find 5,000 ounces of gold,

like, we lose 50 ounces to the buyers.

So, you know, when you start to do big volumes of gold,

it does start to become a pretty big expense, and...

Basically, you want to sell your product for as much as you can, right?

In the gold room with Bruce

gold cleaning expert, Chris doumitt...

- Hey, youngster. - Gentlemen.

Bruce.

Glad to be here again. Thank you.

Parker has given Bruce a 100 ounces of his dominion gold

to make a sample batch of jewelry.

I've made some pretty fun stuff.

- I'd like to show you some of it. - Yeah, that would be great.

Hold your hand out.

And feel this.

That is so cool.

- It's silky, isn't it? - Yeah

so, you gave me a 100 ounces of gold.

Those are cool. So you got earrings, rings, chains.

And I've made a bunch of pieces for you and your friends.

I've made some wedding rings for a few people, which has been kind of sweet.

I made doumitt's cigar ashtray.

Hey, man. Happy birthday.

My gosh. For me? Thanks.

It's an ashtray.

- Is it real gold? - It's our gold.

Are you kidding me?

- No. - Holy cow.

Where's your ashtray?

It's at home.

- It's at home. - Yeah.

Yeah. It doesn't come back here.

I never put a cigar out in it.

I put the ashes in it.

Dump the ashes out and clean it.

Put the ashes in it.

There you go.

I can see that being on a baseball player at the world series.

- How do I look? - And he's up to bat.

I'm, like, too skinny of a white boy to have gold jewelry,

- I think. - -No, that looks good on you, Parker.

And the fun thing about it is it's not just that it's worth a bunch of money,

but it's, it's unlike anything else, any other element on earth.

It is so malleable.

It is so creamy and high karat.

And it wants to be manipulated.

Pure gold or 24-karat gold is naturally soft.

To toughen it up, jewelers often mix it with other metals

to create a nine or 18 karat alloy.

But Bruce has another method to strengthen Parker's gold.

Do you want to see how this stuff works, a little bit?

Yes, I'd love to.

So what we're gonna do, we're gonna do two things.

One, it's a little bit square, we want to make it round.

And two, we're gonna make it longer. We're gonna squeeze it down.

So let's pull this.

Is this how you make spaghetti?

Wouldn't that be cool?

A plate of gold spaghetti.

- Damn, buddy. - Ooh.

You're much too rich for my blood.

Ooh!

So this is four. This is a drop plate.

And the idea is you pull the gold through a hole.

And then you take it to the next hole, it's a little bit smaller.

And what that does is it squeezes it down, make it longer.

Here. Let me hold this.

This should be interesting.

That's it. That's it. That's it.

Yeah, that worked.

Holy cow.

We just compressed it...

Two-tenths of a millimeter.

We made it a little bit longer

it's firmer than it was before.

So as you're working this

because you're putting all this pressure on it,

it's making it harder.

It's getting it harder.

So, I need my glasses.

I need my glasses.

I want to be just like Chris.

Look, they even look the same.

Yeah -my!

We're twins.

I'll work on that.

Give me a few more years.

Watch this.

- Like that it's spooling itself. - Isn't it?

So now we have the first stage of making a chain links.

And so now we got to do is we just take, take a cut...

On top of this, they all fall apart into individual links.

So now we have... These jump rings,

but they're all the exact same size.

They're all the exact same size.

So someday I'm gonna come back to you and say,

"hey, I need a machine." I can't do this by myself.

So I need about $1,50,000 to buy a chain making machine.

It actually kind of makes me want to start making stuff.

Can we take 50 ounces and make stuff and sell it?

I like, when we're making it for ourselves.

Right.

Yeah. We should.

We should be trying to sell it.

I'll give you all the gold you can sell.

- That sounds amazing. - Yeah.

But then once I can move that 50 ounces of gold,

I'm gonna need another 50 ounces.

So are you willing to give me,

say 100 ounces at a time in the future?

I'll give you 500 if you can take it.

I mean, 500 ounces,

that's a million dollars worth of gold.

- Yeah. - And you would give that to me to work?

Yeah. I mean, you're not going to run off with it, are you?

I don't know where I'd go.

But that is a lot,

and that makes me feel excited and a little anxious.

500 ounces.

And what that's gonna mean is I gotta up my marketing.

I gotta up my website.

I'm gonna need help with my books

cause I'm not so great on books.

- Join the club. - Me neither.

Can I... Can I borrow nona?

- No! No! - Please. She's amazing.

She has five jobs as it is.

But, you know, I, I've got stuff to ramp up.

We can scale this up.

I've got to run. I'm sorry.

And you're... You're welcome here anytime.

- Thank you. - Yeah. No worries.

- All right. - See you, Parker.

- You're good? - Good.

- Are you good? - Good.

Okay.

That was awesome.

That was beyond what I thought could possibly happen.

And I'm a little stunned.

In fact, I'm a little intimidated.

I asked for 50 ounces.

He's gonna give me 500 ounces of gold.

That's a million dollars!

So now we're just gonna head over to the wash plant yard,

check out our new toy.

A very integral part of the mine site.

Right now we're going to look at my new toys.

I just spent...

One, two, three

$5,40,000.

I just spent $5,40,000.

These were $1,80,000 apiece.

New water pumps.

Just this morning...

Straight off the rack?

Brand new.

Nice.

Parker's new pumps

will push up to 7600 gallon of water per minute through his wash plants.

So we live and die by the water pump, right?

Wash plants don't run.

Cuts don't get dewatered.

It's... very...

Bad when you start having water pump problems.

I love a good water pump.

Zero hours on 'em.

And, they're gonna be the cat's ass.

I wonder if they put a used turbo on it.

Did they give us a full tank of fuel?

Bone dry.

Thanks, guys.

I spend half a million, you know, they siphoned out

they siphoned out the fuel tank.

You know, don't look too closely at the things you buy.

You know, it's just not my problem.

It's okay. We're leaving.

Parker's latest purchases will join a roster

of 22 water pumps.

But pumps are just a small part of the equipment Parker needs

to keep the enormous operation on the gold.

Over the years,

Parker has built up an army of monster machines and a fleet of plants.

Prepping sluicifer for another hard season's mining,

mechanic, Alec Kelly.

- Did you see our new pumps? - Yeah!

- They look really nice. - Yeah.

What is that?

That's our new lawn mower.

- It's a magnet! - Yeah.

What... Where did this come from?

Ordered it.

I figured we do all this metal work,

we might as well have a quick way of cleaning it up.

We can just hang it over the garbage can

and pull up on that little ...Far there.

This one?

- That's pretty cool. - Isn't it?

I like that.

Alec has come so far,

and it's just an absolute pleasure to work around.

And everything he does is like super clean

and really tidy and organized.

And he has, you know, all his orders in place.

We're pretty aggressive, like we stock a lot of parts,

probably more than necessary.

But you know, run time is so important.

You know, if there's a five percent chance

that something is gonna break

and cause six weeks of downtime,

it's like you know, several million dollars up.

Parker checks in with foreman Mitch blaschke.

- How's it going? - All good.

I was just talking to Tyson

about what's going on,

having everything on frost and trying desperately to sluice.

What... what are our options?

Well, I think the way the company has always been the most profitable

is when we can get ahead of the cut a bit.

You know, getting the mud off and getting some of the gravel

so we can get ahead of ourselves a bit.

Well, at the rate we're going right now,

we're gonna be fighting it out for our ways here.

It's very different ground,

and I hope that you guys aren't too frustrated.

- No, not at all. - No.

Okay. Well, that all sounds good to me.

I'll leave you guys to it.

You know, so I've worked for Parker

for 11 seasons now.

And... man, yeah, definitely

a lot has changed in that amount of time.

You know, for somebody to come up here

that was as young as Parker was

when he started and turned this

into one of the biggest in the Yukon here.

It's very impressive.

You know, one of the things Parker has always told us,

if one of you guys can swarm the drone out of the air

with the excavator,

he's like, "I got a thousand bucks for you in the office".

So just be aware when you're flying that drone,

that there's definitely a bounty on it.

So one of the things that probably

nobody knows about Parker

and it's something that I think a lot of the crew probably does on purpose

is he is very particular on how things

are stacked in the dishwasher.

If people don't stack their dishes

in the dishwasher properly and they're not spaced right

and if they're too close together,

he will absolutely come uncorked.

So everybody is, you know pretty good

about putting their dishes away.

But I think every once in a while

you'll see somebody just go in there

and just like, throw it in sideways.

And you can just see the smoke coming out of his ears.

I'm headed to visit a few cuts.

You can't drive, so we're gonna take the sherp.

And then going over to sulfur creek with Liam.

So we will go see what...

We can find.

So I'm just on my way to visit a few cuts.

But I'm gonna stop by camp first.

I'm just gonna pop into the kitchen and grab my lunch.

You don't need to come.

- I'm gonna. - You don't need to.

- No, no, but I'm coming. - I would rather you not.

It's flower season.

Are you the same lunch every day kind of guy?

No.

What do you got today?

Breakfast, pork wrap.

Can I ask you to do one annoying thing for me?

No.

- Yes. - It's time to go.

No, we have to do one annoying thing.

No. I wanna... I'm going.

- Look... - Get in, losers!

You guys make things so complicated.

Holy it's just so difficult all the time.

Over 14 years of filming,

Parker and gold rush TV producers

have built up a unique working relationship.

It's very weird 'cause I've spent my whole adult life

plus some non-adult life on camera, right?

It's a bit of a love-hate relationship

with, like filming and film crew, you know.

And when I first started the show, it was just like

this amazing, crazy, super cool, super fun,

really interesting process, making a TV show

and having film crew on a mine site

that I grew up on.

You know, being from a tiny little town in Alaska,

it was like a group of people that I would have never.

I spent time around people like that.

Honestly, it was like, it was amazing.

I was super happy, felt super lucky

and like was scared to death of it ending.

And now I'm scared to death of it never ending.

Having bought 7500 acres of ground at dominion,

Parker needs to explore every inch for gold.

You don't need to work very hard to find a reason to use the sherp, you know?

To get him where he needs to go.

Parker is hopping in a brand new toy...

The sherp.

A Ukrainian built four wheel drive,

55 horse power amphibious beast,

should be able to explore all his ground.

- Come on in. - All right.

So this pit, this one here,

it's not very big, but we took all the brush

and whatnot off of it last year

just to let the sun start thawing things out.

It looks like it's like draining really well.

You know, we might get six to eight feet of fog

off of it and not do any ripping.

And so it'll be a really cheap cut to strip.

But the time line will be really long.

It will take years to get down to the pay,

but we won't spend any money doing it.

So supposedly it's amphibious.

How deep is the pond that we're looking at?

This one is very deep.

Like it's probably 30 feet.

With a very soft bank.

Parker hasn't put the sherp to the test on water yet.

Here we go!

Now I know why we're in the show.

Nice!

So we know it floats

but now we don't know for how long.

With massive 63-inch adjustable pressure tires,

the sherp powers across the pond.

It doesn't go very fast, does it?

I mean, I don't see any water coming.

No, I don't.

I don't see any water coming in,

so that's a good sign.

So we might actually have a hard time

getting out of the water.

Okay.

Cause that bank looks really soft over there.

All right. We're close to the moment of truth here.

- Okay, what's... - -I'm just gonna keep her pinned.

We just gotta hit the beach and stay moving.

Right.

We've got contact.

We're getting stuck.

Keep it going. Keep it going.

Push her.

- No! - We're not lifting.

We might be.

Do you want the good news or the bad news?

Bad news.

We might be stuck in the pond.

What is the good news?

We have a case of beer.

Nice!

A few yards down, the bank firm's up.

Come on, baby!

Yeah!

Okay. We only have to do that one more time.

I thought we might just stay in the pond for a while.

- Should we hit the water in fifth gear? - -Yeah.

Are you ready?

You got this alright?

I think we're okay.

Do you have water in the back?

No, we're good.

I think that went underwater.

The camera's wet.

So we went that far underwater.

- Beaver dam. - Yeah.

For real?

Yeah.

So the last thing on the list for today

is going over to sulfur creek.

And I want to go have a little walk around

it with Liam who does all our exploration.

So we will go see if we can get eaten by a bear.

This is episode one of Parker's mine site

nature documentary mini-series.

Ravens are very smart,

if you have food in your truck

and you leave your window open, right in they go.

And they in your truck.

Not cool. Not the part of nature that I enjoy.

As you can see behind us, we have a nice swallow hill.

One of my favorite birds.

It's kind of interesting, actually.

There's quite a bit of strategy into

where you put your home.

Because if we sit here long enough,

the ravens will show up.

And the ravens will sit on top of the bank

and they'll kick their way down

so that they can reach down

and like, open up the holes in the top houses

and steal the eggs out of them.

It's actually pretty interesting.

It would be great for me if you stayed here

and filmed the birds,

and I'll go do my thing without you.

Today, Parker's crew

is sluicing two cuts on his dominion creek claim.

While they catch gold, Parker heads up

to scout other pieces of ground

and determine where to move next.

So I'm gonna go find Liam, who should be by his truck.

Yeah, there he is.

To help him find the best gold rich ground

there's just one man for the job...

- You want to go take a cruise down sulfur? - -Let's do it.

Drill expert Liam Ferguson.

All right.

Looks like you've already been washing rocks?

Yeah, we got a few done.

Over the years, Liam and his million dollar Sonic drill

have prospected ground for Parker

across Alaska and the Yukon.

Dude, you hit a nug!

And last season... Green is good. Red is bad.

He helped to identify

a potential 80,000 ounce

$200,000,000 price at dominion creek.

That's a lot.

Yeah.

But Parker's vast claim

has several remote tributaries yet to be explored.

Parker, where are we going?

We're going to some little creek

that's about 20 minutes away.

The creek that the old timers hammered

and nobody's ever touched it in 100 years

that classic story.

When prospecting, modern gold miners

look for signs that the old timers

from the 1890s mined in a location.

An indication there could mean good gold is still present.

So you don't know much about this creek at all?

No.

Parker and Liam first check out sulfur creek.

There's some sign of activity.

What's that joint called?

Who's a woodworker here?

That's pretty old.

Well, that's too narrow to be a shaft.

It could have been a small person sluice box.

My guess would be like a boom gate for hydraulicing

all the material out.

Prospectors first found gold at dominion creek back in 1896.

Over 130 years, miners have pulled out

an enormous 2.7 million ounces.

At today's gold price,

worth a staggering $6.2 billion.

But the old timer's primitive equipment

didn't catch all the gold,

leaving behind lost treasure in the tailings

or down abandoned mine shafts.

Let's go out there and have a look.

But see, it's super flat in here.

Here's a piece of pipe.

Really we're looking for old shafts

or piles of tailings.

Because there was no machinery mining up here

other than where I parked.

So find a pile of rocks, tell me.

Or like slumps.

Yeah.

Shafts look like just holes.

You hear someone go, ""

and then you can't find them.

That's what we want.

That's what we're looking for.

There we go!

- We're just gonna stop for one second. - -Why?

So that everyone can catch up to you for one second.

Everyone's here.

- Liam has to go. - I know.

There he goes.

I mean, if we'd have found some shafts

or some tailings pile or something,

I would have gotten more excited, but

Carter, maybe you should give him a ride home

and I'll do a few pans.

Okay.

With no shafts or tailings found,

Parker checks the riverbank for gold.

The job of a gold miner to mine

the best ground they can possibly find.

And so if you're not looking for better ground,

then you're not really doing your job.

Ideally, you would do a pan on bedrock.

Because I don't know how high off bedrock we are here.

And it could be really good ground

but not find anything in a face like this, you know?

I think one of the most interesting

parts of exploration that I enjoy

is there's been basically thousands of people

that have looked at every single one of these creeks

in every single area that we're looking at still now

in the last 125 years.

One, two bigger pieces.

One, two, three tiny pieces.

Five colors, and it would take,

like a thousand yards to make an ounce of gold of this.

I wouldn't quite say the creeks had died, but...

Darn close.

With so little gold found,

Parker won't move his operation here.

A true failure.

Someday I'll find out what that's like.

I'm sure it's coming.

I actually had fun today.

It was nice.

You know, spent some quality time

talking about life and work

and went and looked at some ground.

It's probably a little less productive

than a typical day,

but I have you to drag around,

so it's kind of expected.

Well, this is me.

Good night.

- Good night, Parker. - Good night.

Are you just filming my super wet ass right now?