‘Gold Rush’: Parker Schnabel Dishes on Fights With Tony, Issues With Rick & Season 15 Dramas

Parker Schnabel is not one to rest on his laurels. With gold pricing reaching new heights, the franchise’s 29-year-old king of the Klondike looks to break more records during Season 15 of Gold Rush. He took the biggest bet of his career leveraging everything to buy the Dominion Creek claim. The big risk so far has paid out.

Despite collecting more than 63,000 ounces of gold worth $98 million thus far, Schnabel could see massive potential for more. That more is to the tune of $200 million within the grounds! To achieve what he wants for his operation overall, he needs to get to at least 10,000 ounces per season over six years. It’s about keeping the momentum going and not faltering, which could lead to drowning in mounting debt from the acquisition. A lofty goal that puts immense pressure on the crew including Mitch Blaschke and Tyson Lee to deliver the goods. 

We caught up with Schnabel ahead of the high-stakes season. 

How would you say having gold at an all-time high increased interest in mining? 

Parker Schnabel: What I have noticed is small operators with mining claims in the family who come out for a few weeks of summer are now spending their whole summer there. That’s because, all of a sudden, you find one ounce of gold a day and have $2,700. It has definitely sparked part-time operations to become a little bit more serious and really get after it. There is a renewed interest in gold mining in the Yukon. The Klondike area in particular is such a well historied producing area that we do see a lot of that. 

There has definitely been a lot of interest. I didn’t see a ton of random out-of-towners that had no connection up here showing up. I didn’t see that this year. Not to say it didn’t happen, but I had my head stuck in the sand with our own operation. Even with gold pricing going up, it’s a really difficult business. You have a lot of overhead and upfront costs. A lot of permitting that needs to happen. It’s not a business where you can show up and start digging. There is a lot of planning and permitting to start operation. 

Parker Schnabel and Tyson Lee (Discovery Channel)

Last season, you went all in on Dominion Creek. What can you say we’ll see on your return trip? 

It’s a difficult one. Dominion is a very big historic property. It has the biggest blocks of ground left in the Yukon that hasn’t been mined. I feel lucky that I got into it when I did at the gold price I did. The ground would be massively more expensive now, if not unavailable because someone would have bought it with gold prices going up. It was very good timing for me and the gold price. We have a lot of work to do there. As of spring 2024, we had six years left on the permits and water licenses, and operations.

It’s an unknown factor after that. You might get a permit. You might not. That’s a very uncomfortable position for me to be in if we’ve gone to term and haven’t mined it all out. You’ve seen us lease a lot of ground before. With a lease, you pay as you go. When you buy ground, you pay all those royalties upfront. Any ounces you leave in the ground after you’re done mining and not perminable are lost dollars. We’re making a big push to get that mined out in the time we have. It’s a lot of ground to get through. We are looking at six years and 60,000 ounces. So we need to do at least 10,000 a year. Maintaining that pace is extremely difficult. That puts a huge amount of pressure on every day and every week and every person at the mine site to stay on track and get that done. 

With that pressure there, how is it for you to manage those crew dynamics? Keeping them motivated and not wanting to reach a breaking point and quit. 

I try to surround myself with those who have the personality to take on big challenges. I don’t want people around me who aren’t up for a massive challenge and aren’t ready to take something on that they are not a hundred percent prepared for. We don’t really have people like that in our operation because they’ve weeded themselves out or I’ve weeded them out. 

What stood out about this season to you? 

We were at Dominion last year and still kind of getting our head wrapped around what the project was. We have 25 million bank yards of dirt to move. In six years, you have to basically move over four million yards of dirt a season. In 2023, we didn’t do that. We had to move on the property, get all our equipment, and get sorted out. We were behind the gun, but this was the first year we really got to spend a full season on the grounds and figure out if these goals were realistic. It is a massive dirt-moving project. A bank yard grows about 30 percent when you move it. You’re looking more like a 30-million bank yard project in six years. It’s a massive amount of dirt to move and figure out how to do that while still trying to keep the soul of the company intact. That’s difficult. At the same time, I don’t want our operation to turn into a soulless corporate machine with all these protocols and rules. 

There is a photo of you, Rick Ness, and Tony Beets taken and used for the Gold Rush Season 15 announcement.  How is it for you to connect with the other guys?

That’s a tough question because I haven’t had much interaction with either of them. Tony and I are physically closer. Rick’s quite a ways away. That photo was one of the two times I saw him over the summer. You’ll see it early on in one of the episodes where Rick and I get together. I’m still happy to offer advice or an opinion. It might be a misguided one, but I always have an opinion. He had an issue he was trying to deal with. I sat down with him on camera and we talked about it. That will be the show. He is doing his best. Tony is doing his best. In some ways, I’m really glad I don’t interact with them. That’s because we own our own ground and are living on our own ground and have our own permits. I’m not paying royalties to Tony. From that business standpoint, it has been nice. I’m a fighter and used to fighting. It was a lot of the years where those fights were with Tony. 

I’m primed and wired that way. When I don’t have that actively going on, I forget about it and forget about them and focus on the fight at hand. I haven’t really gotten into it. Tony and I can still sit down and have a cup of coffee and be neighborly. I did that a few times with Tony this summer. Not with Rick because he was hours and hours away. I think it’s something where they have their stuff going on and I have mine. I know the show would love more interaction between us, but it can never be forced. I think there will probably be more in that in the future as we get a handle on Dominion and look for ground again. Right now, I’m just trying to see if we can make this project work. That’s my main focus. 

Tony Beets, Parker Schnabel, Rick Ness posing together (Discovery Channel)

I always think about what you guys do when you’re not mining. Is there any other interest of yours that would surprise people that you do during the offseason? 

Normally, I would go from Gold Rush to Parker’s Trail. So I had very little free time. I would get done at the mine site in mid-October, have a week to get home, unpack and repack, and head back down to the jungle somewhere. Then when I got back from that, I was dead for a couple of weeks and then it was straight into planning for the next season. I was extremely busy. There was a point where things slowed down during COVID. One of my best friends Liam Ferguson, who owns the drilling company we use and has been on the show a few times, has a house in Mexico. I spent a bunch of time there with him and learned how to kiteboard. 

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That has been a fun sort of relaxing, but not too relaxing, outlet for me. It’s still a little dangerous, which is good. I’ve met a lot of good people through that and have a lot of fun. I met an awesome group of guys that have a few houses in the Bahamas and have gone down there kitesurfing. Kiteboarding has been a good thing for me. When I’m not doing that or working, I do the normal northern activities. snowmobiling, snow bikes, I have a snow bike that is a converted motorcycle into a snowmachine basically. That’s a tone of fun. Although I keep blowing engines up. That’s an expensive hobby. I don’t do much hunting anymore, but I am going on a hunting trip next week. I have friends all over the place. I’m a bit of a bum in the wintertime. Like right now I’m sleeping on a friend’s couch in the Palisades in Los Angeles and just hanging out. 

What do you see for the future of gold? 

I expect it to stay high. We’ll see a huge amount of interest get pushed that way. It has been kind of interesting because as gold prices go up. Even public mining companies that really leveraged their bets on gold prices. Their stock prices haven’t really gone up that much. They’ve gone up some, but they should be exponentially above gold price because, in theory, it’s a hundred percent profit margin on a huge amount of ounces. The market is very disjointed is what I’m getting at. 

Gold Rush Season 15 premiere, November 8, 8/7c, Discovery Channel