Parker Schnabel’s Newbie Makes a BAD First Impression… | Gold Rush
Parker Schnabel's Newbie Makes a BAD First Impression... | Gold Rush
Eight weeks into the season,
Parker Schnabble is hemorrhaging millions of dollars
on two huge cuts at Dominion Creek.
But so far, with little reward —
just 576 ounces of his 10,000-ounce goal.
But right now, the sluicing we’re doing is not even covering our costs.
So the sinkhole continues to grow.
Parker’s now at the point where he needs at least 100 ounces a week just to keep going.
I mean, as grim as things are right now,
I don’t feel like we’ve totally lost the season. Not yet.
Despite the troubles that we’re having, it is exciting,
and we’ll just take it one day at a time and try not to forget the big picture.
We just got to focus on that right now. One step at a time.
Parker’s throwing everything he’s got
at mining two enormous cuts
on his 7,500-acre Dominion claim.
In the 20-acre Long Cut,
wash plant Rocksan is churning through 250 yards of pay an hour.
Two miles away,
Big Red is sluicing top gravels in the 114-acre Bridge Cut.
Ten miles southwest, at Ken and Stewart’s,
Parker’s skeleton crew is three-quarters of the way
through stripping an 8-acre cut.
We were really hoping by this time in the season that the Long Cut would be all thawed out.
We’ve been fighting it from day one here.
This is the middle of summer, and we’re still fighting frozen permafrost in this cut.
There’s so much ice in it — as it’s melting, well, obviously it turns to water,
and then it just saturates the dirt.
In the Long Cut,
21-year-old loader operator Evan Curts is struggling
to feed wash plant Rocksan with wet, sloppy material.
[Music]
Hey, uh, Mitch, you got a copy?
Yeah, go ahead.
We got a jam on the belt.
You’ve got to be kidding me. That is not good.
Roksan’s feeder conveyor is jammed.
And Mitch has also found a tear in the belt.
Every hour the plant’s not running
pushes Parker further into the red.
We got to figure out what caused this,
and we don’t have any more problems.
You can see it right here.
Oh, there’s our problem. There’s rocks stuck in the tail pulley here,
so it’s protruding out of the belt.
Oh yeah, buddy. That’ll do it.
We need dry dirt going up our belts.
You can see this material here — a lot of water in it.
This is really soupy stuff.
When you put this on your belts, it makes a lot of material stick to the belt.
You know, there’s not a lot we can do other than shut down Rocksan.
And, well, we know Parker isn’t down for that.
We can’t afford any downtime. And right now, that’s what we got.
But I’m done in here. It’s looking better.
[Music]
Conveyor drum cleared.
Alec and Liam move on to fixing the tear in the belt.
Two or three hours to get this reset. Put that on your wall. Time to reassemble.
[Music]
That was the last one. They all look like they’re sitting nice and happy.
Nothing but the best for our old wash plant friend.
Three and a half hours down —
but they’re ready to fire back up and get sluicing.
We got water back at the plant. Let’s get this thing shaking. Fire up.
All right, Evan, we’re all ready to go up here.
Set us down, buddy.
[Music]
We were down for a few hours, but thankfully now we’re back running again,
and that’s what matters most.
New hire, 20-year-old Taven Peterson,
is hauling overburden and building a new road
along the east bank of the Long Cut.
I just like being happy and having fun.
And right now, I’m happy and having fun. It’s awesome.
Uh-oh.
Whoa, we’re near off the edge!
Mitch, you got a copy?
Yeah, man. What’s up?
Yeah, I’m stuck up here. I’m going to need a little hand with the dozer.
Maybe pull out the front?
All right. Yeah, I’ll head that way.
I am frustrated right now.
Really wanting to be moving dirt, not trying to save rock trucks
from flipping off a ledge here.
Damn.
All right. I’ll come up here and see if we can cut some of this material behind you.
Yeah.
If we can do that, we might be able to back you up a bit.
But I’m just worried this thing’s going to want to roll here.
Yeah.
We got the other trucks running, bringing material up.
We’ll have him dump some right here, and I’ll try and push a little off this side
to help hold the bank up.
Sounds good.
You know, these kind of things are going to happen,
especially when you got new drivers.
You got to be very careful when you’re up here on something like this.
No, not you — back up. Back up. Come on, baby.
Holy — that was close.
Easy.
This is not a good first impression. Look at the mess I caused.
[Music]
All right, man. Let’s give that a try. Beautiful work.
Sorry that it had to be done.
Oh, no worries. You know, when you’re out here doing a job like this,
there’s a lot of things where stuff can go wrong.
The last thing you want to see is somebody get hurt.
Did the best thing — stop, ask for some help.
We carried a little material around the truck, and as you can see,
was able to back right up. But let’s get back to moving some dirt.
Yeah, thank you.
Yeah.
Parker is chasing a record-breaking 10,000-ounce season,
but so far only has 576.
Big Red has been sluicing top gravels in the Bridge Cut.
Last week it produced just 30 ounces.
Let’s see it.
Ready? Here we go — Big Red.
2, 30, 40, 45, 50, 55.8.
That’s way better than I thought it would be.
Almost $140,000.
Do it, Rocksan.
Roksan, you ready?
Yeah.
It was a tough week, but she made some gold, looks like.
All right — 20, 40, 50, 80, 90 — going to break 100 — 130, 145, 150, 170, 171.95.
Worth just under $430,000 for the week.
You guys, we wound up with 227.75 ounces,
and that brings the season total to 804.25.
Only 9,200 short.
All right.
The way the numbers have been going, fire up three plants, four plants, I don’t care.
We need to get some gold rolling through here.
Yeah.
We’ve got to get these numbers up. Every week we’re falling further behind,
and something’s got to give.
[Music]
We just got on this ground last year, and it scares me.
We don’t know it at all, and it’s very tough to make good decisions.
Any company that makes a big pivot or change — a lot of them don’t survive that.
