Parker Schnabel: “You’re FIRED THIEF!” | Gold Rush
Parker Schnabel: "You're FIRED THIEF!" | Gold Rush
Parker Schnabel and Tony Beets are the stars of Discovery’s number one show “Gold Rush,” which is back for season 9. This season will be unlike any other, featuring new miners and rivalries as the crews mine for gold. Let’s take a look at a clip from the several problems that arise following Parker Schnabel’s absence from the crew to the chances that these problems could prevent the team from achieving their goals for the week.
Here’s how Mitch Blasch tried to avoid getting fired by Parker Schnabel. As a budding young gold mining entrepreneur, Parker Schnabel has pretty much seen it all when it comes to gold mining. However, that was most likely because he was born into a gold mining family already—the son of a miner. This mining legacy also included his grandfather, the legendary Big John. After his grandfather took him under his wing, the only way seemed upwards for the budding young miner, whose only goal was to start his own mining company ever since he was about 16 years old. Following this, we all watched as the young man came to prominence during his 14 seasons mining for gold on the “Gold Rush” TV show.
We’ve watched as he’d had to overcome challenges such as other competitors. If you can barely afford to buy a plane, you shouldn’t have a plane, and if you can barely afford to buy a gold mine, you shouldn’t have a gold mine, and I can barely afford to as well as the elements as he chases his dream to run his own thriving gold mining company. That is why it may become problematic to lose certain members of his team. Parker soon found that he may have to deal with such a dilemma in the years to come. This reminds us of the time Parker had to head to the Indian River trying to make some headway here, getting two plants up and going. This is a critical move for the year, right? I’m going to go over to Fairbanks, so I’m not going to be here. Do you feel comfortable about where you’re at?
So that he could conclude some plans he had concerning a mining claim of interest that he found there. However, before he could do that, he decided to meet with his foreman Mitch Blasch at the gold mining site so that he could make sure that the wash plant and everything else they needed for their work was in order. To his relief, Mitch lets Parker know that everything is running fine and he has nothing to worry about. After all, their two wash plants were working well, and nothing seemed to be able to change that in the near future. “Big Red’s doing a good job down there, but we’re falling behind on getting through the square footage we need to without two plants going. When you get back, hopefully we’ve got a wash plant pad done, and there are two plants going.”
However, Mitch would find that he did have some things to worry about. Funnily enough, it was almost as if the machines were waiting for Parker to leave because as soon as he left, Mitch would find that one of the machines had suddenly experienced a breakdown again—perfect timing. You could probably imagine all the thoughts that were running through Mitch’s head at that point in time. How much will it cost to fix this now? How much time would it take to fix this? Will this affect Parker’s targets for the season? What is he going to do about this machine failure? We’re sure Mitch wished that he didn’t promise Parker that everything would be fine in his absence right before he went on that trip to seal the deal at the Indian River in Fairbanks, Alaska. How is Mitch going to sort things out now?
His job there was to oversee the activities of the other miners on the mines. He was the one to make sure that they were working morning and night to find all the gold that would help them reach their target for the season. “You know, approaching the middle of summer pretty soon here, the days are going to start getting shorter each day. It’s just clicking by faster and faster. We need to have Slucifer on that new wash plant pad.” He was also the one that had to make sure that the wash plants were working at their optimum capacities. As such, it should come as no surprise that he was left in a state of confusion and perhaps disappointment when he realized that his wash plant would not be of any use while Parker was gone. It almost feels like a betrayal.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the super stacker, one of the most essential machines in the unit, also experienced a failure even before they had the chance to do anything on the mines. What is all this? The two wash plants named Slucifer and Big Red were supposed to work hand in hand with one another to sluice gold while Parker was gone. That was the only way they could meet their weekly targets. Now, this all seems like a dream because they can’t even get the machines to start. Mitch is going to have to come up with solutions if he is going to get these machines to start working for them again. That’s the only way they could even dream of meeting their weekly targets.
The plan was fair enough too. “Here we go, my first scoop of the 2022 season in Slucifer, game’s on.” If they could just move Slucifer to a large 30ft high pad, they could assemble the super stacker and connect both so that it could feed the pay dirt into Slucifer’s large frame. This would allow Slucifer to wash the pay dirt, which in turn will result in the production of those clean nuggets of gold we all love. The team had actually gone as far as setting up the 30ft high pad before performing certain tests that convinced them that they could start work on the super stacker as well. They even managed to move Slucifer to the large pad. Now they hoped that they could use the 12ft super stacker to feed the pay dirt into the waiting wash plant.
To be honest, initially it appeared as though the super stacker was working fine as well. The team couldn’t help but feel amazed as they saw the massive structure get to work on the mines. However, as the team started maneuvering the machine and started to lower it, everything came to a head. “So normally we go 4 days between cleanups. This has only been 2 days here, and you see the gold already piling up in all the riffles, so time to do a cleanup. This is a good problem to have.” You could see the shock on everybody’s faces as the machine came to an abrupt halt as it experienced a sudden crash. What could have gone wrong with the machine?
Soon Alec Kelly, one of the mechanics on the crew, ran over to the machine to see what could have caused this sudden crash. After running around the massive machine, he was shocked to discover that there was an oil leak. As much as they’d have loved this to be superficial, they loathed the moment they learned that this could be a grave problem that could be massively detrimental to the team’s aspirations. Perhaps this was mostly due to the fact that the super stacker would take some time to fix. As a result, rather than feeding pay dirt into Slucifer, the team would now have to spend precious time fixing the machine instead of searching for the gold that they all came out there to find.
Disappointed, Alec could only state that he just realized that the super stacker had just blown out the plug right out of the cylinder. In the end, this is ultimately what caused this potentially fatal leak in the machine. “Hopefully you can just pound out those 700 oz from the strip and to get Big Red up to Mud Mountain. It’s a real priority. That’s my priority—best ground we can find.” Apparently, this plug is important because it keeps the hydraulic oil in place by regulating the lifting cylinder, and without this plug, this could be a serious problem. To solve this massive problem, the team knew that they must put an end to all this leaking.
Eager to find a quick fix to this pressing problem, Alec decided that it may be best to move the super stacker. But this revealed itself to be the wrong idea because the top of the plug that was sealing the cylinder fell away somehow. This made what may have been a manageable problem even worse. This created an even bigger leak that was even more fatal to the running of the machine. Mitch had it all at this point, and it wasn’t even funny. Before he knew what was happening, “I can say getting back in the loader is like riding a bike, but I always used to fall off a bike, so we’re not going to use that example. Oh crap, Tatiana, Tatiana, shut down the plant! Shut down the plant! You’re all jammed up, free washes, loaded up, the dirt filling out everywhere.”
Oil was flowing out of the machine like a gutted pig. Of course, Mitch had to jump into action as the team couldn’t afford to spend too much time fixing the machine. As they searched for answers, they soon found that the only thing left of the plug was its thread that was still hooked onto the cylinder. Eager to find the solution before Parker got back or before the week got over, Mitch drove to the scene of the machine’s failure. “The biggest thing that we run into is just having enough time in the day. You know, we’re always trying to get every minute, every hour we can of sluice time because that’s how you get good cleanups, that’s how you have a lot of gold at the end of the season.”
What’s even worse was that he had actually just realized how bad the damage was, as it was Alec who had to tell him that they may have been in over their heads with this one. The damage was so much that Alec believed that they may not be getting any gold anytime soon—not when the machine was down and out. Disappointed yet resolute, Mitch decided
