Parker Schnabel Gives Us A House Tour After Mining Gold | Gold Rush

You know I’ve been working on equipment for a long time in the Yukon, and this is uh, one of those things that you hate to see – your machinery about as far away from you as it can be, uh, and then it breaks down halfway through Parker’s stripping blitz in The Money Pit.

The lead D11 dozer has gone down in the worst possible location. Now I’m having to use a dozer just to be able to gain access out here. Obviously, we’re not driving our service trucks back here to work on this thing.

“Morning, Mitch.”

“Wow, you weren’t kidding, huh? You see it from there already?”

“Oh yeah, it’s bad, and that’s pretty wild for that thing to pop like that.”

“Yes, yeah, broke the eye right off the end of it. Yeah, broke right up.”

“Well, I have to figure out how we’re going to get this thing out of here.”

Right now, we’re just looking at our D11T here, and we broke the barrel off the end of the Ripper cylinder, so we got to get it swapped out. Two cylinders power the ripper up and down, but one has broken clean off and must be replaced, leaving the blade stuck deep in the mud, paralyzing the dozer.

“So it’s good to see my usual good timing is in full force.”

“Oh yeah, hecking.”

“What happened?”

“Just broke the end of the rod right off. We need to try and get the ripper out of the ground, but we’re only using half of the power that we normally have here.”

“I can probably just come in here sideways and push some of this out of the way, and then get underneath it.”

“Okay. Come on, come on, come on. There we go, yeah, that’ll work.”

“Thanks, buddy.”

Right now, we’re just walking the D11 out of here. This is the full definition of limping your way home to get the D11 back into the cut as fast as possible.

“Just put it right there.”

Mechanic Jordan Sand brings in a replacement cylinder from the laydown yard.

“There it is. This is off of an 11R, so a different model, but as long as it will work on this, we’ll be happy.”

Some repair required.

“Yeah, beautiful.”

“Looking good. Oh, just hooking up the hydraulic lines. Ripped one apart, so we got to put a new one on. You know, we’re taking this part off a dozer that’s been sitting parked for who knows how long, so no guarantees this is going to work, but we’re going to cross our fingers here and hope it does.”

“Alright, beautiful. Yeah, it’s working.”

Now the D11 is back in action.

“Uh, just really fortunate we had a part to put on it, so it could have been a lot worse, but it’s fixed and ready to go.”

“Last guy back is buying the beer.”

“Okay, well I guess I’m broke.” (Laughter)

After 5 hours of downtime, the D11 is ready to get back to work.

“B, I don’t know how you’re looking over there, but it’s looking pretty sweet over here. I think we, uh, think we got her after stripping nonstop for six days.”

“Yeah, man, starting to see a lot of gravel poking through. I think Parker will be pretty happy we got this done in a week.”

Parker Schnobels crew is finally down to the gold pay layer.

“Here we go, we got down to some gravels here at Dominion, and this is uh, real awesome here. This is what it’s all about. We’re going to get this ground thawed out, we’re going to get a wash plant set up, and hopefully, there’s a whole bunch of gold right underneath this gravel.”

For 10 years while building his mining empire in the Yukon, Parker lived out of a trailer. But with the purchase of Dominion, he now owns his first house.

“I have a house now. We’re having a housewarming party.”

“All aboard!”

“So, um, the back of the bus is going to be the roughest ride, so if you’re in the back, you’re going to want to hold on.”

(Crowd laughs and cheers.)

“Think about the children!”

“Everyone, watch out!” (More laughter.)

“Sorry about your bus bill.”

“That’s your bus now, brother.”

“Unfortunately… honestly, can you imagine? Like ’10 dead in bus accident on-site’ – that is not a headline we need.”

“I’ve never owned a house. It’s very weird being in a house out here, but kind of cool. You can fit like 20 in here.”

“But it’s a weird house, like come here. I wouldn’t say I’m a germaphobe, but this is a bedroom, and this is the master bathroom. And like, that creeps me out. I don’t, I don’t like that there’s carpet around a toilet. It’s gross. I don’t like that. I don’t like that. I haven’t used it yet. Not sure I can.”

“Well, congrats on your first house, man.”

“Yeah, thanks, yeah, it’s um, nice house. It’s something.”

“Well, Parker, I know this is your starter home. We finally have a home, that’s really cool. So I brought this for later, the celebration.”

“Oh, thank you. Yeah, I really appreciate that. I think we’ll enjoy it.”

“I’m Parker Schnabel, and you’re watching Discovery Australia. Hit subscribe now to not miss out on any Gold Rush content.”

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