Parker Schnabel: “The BIGGEST BET of My Life!”

Last week it banked just 84. We had to fight for this stuff; it wasn’t just easy. We had to make some adjustments, cut the water back, really trying to fine-tune it, and it seems to be running a lot better.

We did see gold in the upper mats. You want to see the rest of it? Yeah, I want to see how we did.

Okay, here we go. Ready, Mitch?

Parker Schnabel, the gold expert, finds himself head and neck deep in debt after purchasing a new claim. A few months into the season, he had only managed to bring in 400 ounces of gold, and now his only gold-producing wash plant has shut down.

Parker is in a position where no money is coming in, and things seem to need to be better for him. Once his new wash plant yields results and processes $250,000 of gold, join us as we delve into how Parker’s new wash plant processes $250,000 of gold.

Parker spent almost everything he had on his new $15 million Dominion Creek claim, and being a miner, he keeps spending more money each day to come down to gold. With his plant shutting down, the chances of it breaking down are suddenly high, and with no other cuts ready to run, the chances of going bust are at an all-time high.

Things are looking extremely gloomy for him. Chris Drumit, a gold recovery expert, wants to get everything out and see if they can find some gold in the area. He pulls the gold-catching mud from Sluicifer and claims that Parker is currently stressed because he has never had debts like this.

He doubts that most people have the kind of debts he has right now. If they pay the bills, they will retain what they already have, and what they have is their only way to pay the debts. That is also weighing down on his mind, as he cannot afford to lose the little string of hope that he has left.

Parker had spent about $1 million a week to get things rolling, but more was needed to be brought in. Even though he has already spent so much, the investment return is not impressive. His team desperately needs gold to offset the debts, and Dominion Creek seems to be where the gold can be obtained.

10 miles away, Parker pays a visit to his foreman, Mitch Blash, who is stripping the new cut at Dominion Creek, the Money Pit. He asks Mitch what he thinks about the level he is cutting. He thinks it is okay; the level to which he has stripped the cut feels like pay, which is good news since the area is well dried.

He thinks Mitch can SLO the ditch. Desperate to get gold coming in, Parker wants to get things moving. Over the past few weeks, the crew has stripped over 4 acres of money back down to frozen pay, and they dug ditches around the edge of the cut for water from the pay gravel to drain into.

Most of the cut is frozen, but a small amount of pay dirt is deep in the ditches, ready to go through a wash plant. When Parker bought Dominion Creek, the new wash plant was included in his plans. Well, money has to be made, and it has to be made from somewhere.

The crew hopes that the new wash plant can catch them some gold. The team is ready to fire up Sluicifer twin. It is a big day for them as they are finally ready to send some pay dirt through the wash plant. Mitch calls Emma to head over so they can start hauling some pay.

They are excited about the first of the paying dirt in the newly acquired Dominion Creek. The first scoop of the dirt will tell them all they need to know about their new claim.

The process begins with the first scoop of pay dirt in Dominion Creek. Parker fires up the wash plant to be sure it works, and it confirms by releasing water. It’s time to mix some dirt with it and hopefully some gold.

The mine boss hops into an excavator and scoops the pay dirt, sending it straight to the washing machine, which is still nameless, hoping there is a lot of gold here. With almost $18 million in the red, Parker is finally running for dirt in Dominion Creek.

At least it was not in vain; the team managed to mine some gold, which was brought for weighing. His crew also has two gold weighs this week. The last gold is from the unforgiving cut they already mined, and his first is from Dominion Creek.

Mitch and Parker arrive and announce to the crew that they have caught gold from the new wash plant. Speaking of the new plant, the team finds themselves trying to devise a name for it. Parker suggests “Doom,” while Mitch thinks “Bob” sounds better.

They agree with Bob; however, Parker thinks there is no need to worry too much about it since he might just sell it off. Because part of the idea of buying the place was so they could recoup some of the purchase prices by selling stuff, but they have yet to do that.

The plant is worth about $1 million and has 1,000 hours on it. Chris ends up supporting the idea of selling the plant; he thinks it is a good idea too. The unforgiving cut had been sled pretty quickly, such that the speed at which it was sled caught everybody off guard.

Parker wants at least 500 ounces from the now mined-out unforgiving cut. To hit that target, he needs 120 ounces, but the now mined-out unforgiving cut produces 30 ounces of gold worth $60,000.

The total out of the cut was 489.5 ounces. He does not think that’s good enough as it still needs to be up to the 500 ounces he wanted. The mood was already really low after weighing the gold from the unforgiving cut.

The team can only hope Dominion Creek produces more gold than the other cut they had run. 100 hours on Dominion Creek have been weighed, and Chris announces with a smile that the gold mined from Dominion Creek measures up to 132.5 ounces, worth over $250,000.

The result lifts the team’s mood. The result from the weighing seems to be on target and is easily one of the best shots that the team has had. Parker’s crew got 1.3 ounces per hour, which is good considering that the plant had issues with water. Chris thinks it is one of the best shots they have had.

Parker hopes the ground will continue going like that and even improve. Let’s go through other big finds and some difficulties that almost caused Parker’s mining operation to tumble.

Parker had taken over his Grandpa John’s Alaskan claim just 12 years before, and it was only a short time before he outgrew what he inherited. According to him, if he wanted to play with the big boys, he had to get closer to where the big boys were.

He now runs one of the biggest mining operations in the Klondike. This season, his team plowed through 90 acres, whether running or on grounds. Parker gambled hundreds of thousands of dollars to secure his future on a new claim in Alaska.

Every test showed that it could hold $10 million and keep them glued to mining for years if paid out. Parker hoped that they could do 1,000 ounces there. There was a lot of stripping for the team. Thus, in the meantime, they were simply stockpiling old drift tailings with the hope that there would be lots of gold in there.

Parker’s Alaskan greenhorn had been divided into two. His wolf cut is focused on opening virgin grounds holding high-grade pay, but the pay layer, being 30 ft down, would take the team weeks to get down to it.

On the other hand, his drift crew is hunting for a quick score to set the whole operation rolling in gold. Mark Fors is the new foreman overseeing the setup of Parker’s latest wash plants.

Mark worked with the team to set up the Red Rocket wash plant before they could begin mining. Parker’s Alaskan mine began running, and the first scoop would determine the future of Parker’s mining operations.

Parker Schnabel’s crew had churned through nearly 1,500 yards of old-timers’ drift tailings. After processing the gold, Parker brought the team together for the first Alaskan gold weigh. After 14 hours of running to hit his mark of 1,000 ounces, Parker was looking for drift tailings to deliver 1.3 ounces per hour of runtime.

He needed 435 grams to hit 14 ounces. Ultimately, the team came up with 13.82 ounces. The team even tagged at the most important pit of the season, just in terms of the information gotten from it.

Parker’s crew took 2 months to get to the wolf cut pay layer, but only some things go as planned, which was the crew situation. Weeks prior, a rather devastating flood turned the wolf into a lake. Parker thought it would have been better to go with all the money to Vegas than drown in the wolf cut.

But Parker was resilient. The crew managed to battle back the water, and foreman Mark Fors finally came down to pay dirt. Parker was determined to find out if there was enough gold to go all in.

He loosened the dirt in one area but was utterly unimpressed. Moving to another area, he finally found fine dirt—a natural indication of gold. Parker decided to leave the crew and return in 2 days.