Parker’s $2.5M Season in Crisis: Crew Tensions and Equipment Failures | Gold Rush
Parker’s $2.5M Season in Crisis: Crew Tensions and Equipment Failures | Gold Rush
I’ve got some bad news for you.
We’re not done mining.
We need to keep working.
We need to stay and find some more gold.
Parker Schnabel just pulled $2.5 million in gold out of the Klondike and his season is in crisis.
His crew is turning on him.
One guy flat out says he does not even want Parker as a boss.
Another veteran walks off the dredge after 2 years and never comes back.
Not dealing with anymore.
I’m not some pawn in some game.
I’m done, man.
And across the claims, Rick Ness watches his only dozer eat its own transmission alive.
Metal shavings pouring out of the filter while his entire operation grinds to a halt.
But here is the part that makes all of this worse.
Parker is not done.
He needs 400 more ounces in the next 7 days to buy his own claim and break free from Tony Beets for good.
400 ounces from men who just told him they have nothing left.
If we’re going to be able to find 400 ounces, everybody just has to give it a good final push.
That’s what needs to happen.
Crew tensions, equipment failures, and a $2.5 million season hanging by a thread.
This is how it all nearly collapsed.
The payroll cut.
Kevin Beets picks up the phone.
And his mother, Minnie, is on the other end.
She has been running the numbers, sat down, went through the books twice, and the math is bad.
Payroll is eating into profits faster than gold is coming off the dredge.
Her fix is simple.
Cut hours.
Every claim.
No discussion.
Your dredge master is fine, Minnie tells him.
You have to have someone running the dredge 12 hours.
The deck hands and the yard people are all going to lose an hour.
So, your dredge master is fine.
You have to have someone running the dredge 12 hours.
The deck hands and the yard people are all going to lose an hour.
Kevin knows what this means.
Montana has been pulling 12-hour shifts on that dredge day after day.
And now Kevin has to walk down there and tell him his paycheck just got smaller.
He tries to push back.
They’re really good guys we have on there right now.
They do work hard.
Minnie does not care.
Neither should you.
You’re the boss.
It’s your project.
And then she hits him with the line that ends the conversation.
That dollar’s got to flow into your pocket, not somewhere else.
The one who makes the most money is the one who keeps the most money.
It’s your party.
Figure it out.
So Kevin walks down to the dredge and it goes exactly how he expected.
Montana does the math in about 5 seconds.
1 hour per day.
6 days a week.
Over a full month of dredging.
That is real money.
On a dredge operation in the Klondike, deck hands are typically pulling around 20 to 25 dollars an hour.
Losing an hour a day across a full month adds up to over 500 dollars gone.
For a guy grinding 12-hour shifts in below zero conditions on a floating dredge, where the season is only four or five months long, every dollar counts.
That is your entire year’s income compressed into one stretch.
Cutting hours is not just cutting pay.
It is cutting into a guy’s whole life.
You know, my big deal is I’m on this thing for 12 hours a day, Montana says.
You want me to lose an hour?
I can, but that affects my whole month.
That’s earnings I’m losing.
You know, my big deal is I’m on this thing for 12 hours a day.
You want me to lose an hour, I can, but that affects my whole month of earnings that I’m losing.
Dana, the other deck hand, tries to smooth it over.
Sometimes there’s 6 hours and nothing’s happening.
That’s all overtime that he has to pay.
But Montana is done listening to justifications.
That’s a lot of overtime that I’ve earned, though.
I figured I at least earned the respect of being a valuable employee.
Just kind of harsh, man.
So here is the deal.
Montana does not file a complaint.
He does not negotiate.
He makes a decision right there on the deck of that dredge, and it takes him about 30 seconds.
I’m not some pawn in some game, he says.
I’m going to take this opportunity to get the hell out of here as fast as I can.
Two years.
Two full seasons on the Beets crew.
And Montana quits over one hour of overtime.
He packs his tools and walks off the dredge.
Done.
Kevin watches him go.
Well, they’re understandably pissed.
Montana mostly.
We’re cutting those hours by a large chunk.
That’s a lot of money.
I’d be pissed, too.
But I’m not dealing with this anymore.
One crew member gone.
And the Beets operation is not the only place bleeding people right now.
Oh.
They’re understandably pissed.
Montana mostly.
I mean, we’re cutting his hours by a large chunk.
That’s a lot of money.
I’d be pissed, too.
Parker and Grandpa John before the crew confrontation at Scribner Creek.
Parker left the Klondike and drove 600 miles south to Haines, Alaska.
He is not making this trip for fun.
He is going to see his grandfather, John Schnabel, 93 years old, 65 years in the mining business.
Because Parker is running out of answers.
I’m headed up to Big Nugget to see my grandpa, Parker says.
Because I rely on Grandpa for a lot of advice.
I’m headed up to Big Nugget to see my grandpa.
Because I rely on Grandpa for a lot of advice.
John meets him at the door.
Hello, Parker.
They have not seen each other since April.
That is months apart during the busiest stretch of mining season.
Hey, Grandpa.
Am I glad to see you.
You, too.
God, it’s great to see you up here.
John has been working his own ground at Smith Creek.
We’ve been about a week on Smith Creek, he tells Parker.
I’m optimistic that we’ll be able to find the channel.
At 93, the man is still mining.
Still chasing gold.
That alone tells you everything about the Schnabel family.
But Parker did not come here to talk about Smith Creek.
He came because his operation is falling apart and he does not know how to fix it.
Things up there are tough.
Parker tells him it’s a huge change.
We’ve got a bigger crew and I’m having problems with people.
They’re pretty demanding and it’s just rough.
John has been here before, literally.
You have the challenge of your crew being a little hesitant to deal with an 18-year-old man, he says.
I share your concerns.
I came here when I was 19.
Parker names the specific problem.
One of the big issues is just motivating my crew.
A lot of them just kind of check in and check out.
John gives him the answer in two sentences.
That’s probably the biggest problem of any job, having the crew motivated.
You’ve got to establish some confidence on their part to work with you.
One of the big problems is just motivating my crew.
A lot of them just kind of check in and check out.
Well, that’s probably the biggest problem of any job is to have the crew motivated.
So you’ve got to establish some confidence on their part to work with you.
And then he adds the line Parker is going to carry with him for the rest of the season.
The crew are attracted by the incentive of getting paid with gold.
That is the key.
Not hourly wages.
Not overtime.
Gold.
The actual physical thing that brought every single one of these guys to the Yukon.
Don’t give up, John tells him.
I have confidence you’re going to come out well.
Parker reaches out to shake his hand.
John waves him off.
Not only shaking hands, he says.
Give me a hug.
Parker drives back to the Klondike with a plan.
Use the gold to keep his crew motivated.
But first, he has to convince exhausted men to stay for one more week.
And that conversation is going to be the hardest one of his entire season.
Parker’s crew confrontation.
Winter has already started its freeze across the Yukon.
Temperatures are dropping fast.
And at Scribner Creek, Parker’s mine is shut down.
His crew has had enough of the cold, of the hours, of the season, and honestly of Parker.
When asked if Parker is a good boss, one crew member does not hold back.
You really want to go there?
I don’t really want him, honestly.
I really don’t.
That is what Parker is dealing with.
A crew that does not even want to work for him anymore.
And he is about to ask them for one more impossible week.
But here is the situation.
Parker has already mined 2600 ounces this season.
At current gold prices, that is roughly $2.5 million.
Twice what he got last year.
By any normal measure, that is a monster season.
The problem is Parker does not want a normal season.
He wants out from under Tony Beets.
Right now, Parker is mining Tony’s ground.
That means Tony sets the terms.
Tony takes his royalty cut off the top.
And Parker has zero control over his own future.
Every year it is something new.
Every year it’s something else.
Pretty soon it’ll be something we can’t deal with or something we can’t afford to give up.
I don’t like the way that things are headed with Tony.
Every year it’s something else, something else, something else.
Pretty soon it’ll be something we can’t deal with or we can’t afford to give up.
That’s why I’m asking you guys to stick around.
The fix is straightforward.
Buy his own claim.
Own the ground outright.
No royalty payments.
100% of the gold goes into Parker’s pocket.
But a viable claim in the Klondike is not cheap.
Parker needs at least 400 more ounces to make it happen.
At roughly $1,000 per ounce, that is $400,000 worth of gold he still needs to pull out of the ground.
And he needs to do it in one week.
400 ounces in 7 days.
To put that in perspective, his crew’s best weekly haul all season has not come close to that number.
To hit 400 ounces in a week, his wash plant needs to be running nonstop.
Processing somewhere around 200 to 250 yards of pay dirt per hour.
Burning through diesel around the clock.
Every excavator.
Every loader.
Every haul truck operating at full capacity.
It is the kind of output that breaks equipment and burns out operators even when a crew is fresh.
Parker’s crew is anything but fresh.
We’ve wiped your ass 2000 ounces all season, one of them tells Parker straight.
And now we’re empty.
Everybody’s wore out.
These guys are done.
Every single one of them is ready to go home.
But Parker gathers them together.
Mitch and the rest of the core crew.
And he puts the whole thing on the table.
We’re trying to get set up so we can have our own ground, he tells them.
That’s why we’re going to try to push.
If you guys will stick with me for another 400 ounces.
Mitch pushes back.
We’re all wore out, Parker.
We’ve had a tough season.
Every one of us is ready to go home.
I know you guys have busted your asses, Parker says.
But we can go buy our own ground and not have to deal with Tony.
We’re all wore out, Parker.
We’ve had a tough season.
Every one of us is ready to go home.
I know you guys have busted your asses, but we can go buy our own ground and not have to deal with Tony.
What is your plan?
Someone asks.
How are we going to do this?
I think that the ground that we’ve got open will damn near have what we need if we can just push through one more week, Parker says.
What do you reckon?
The crazy part is they say yes.
Not because they are not exhausted.
Not because they think it is a great idea.
But because every single person standing there knows what owning your own claim means.
It means next season they are not working for Tony Beets.
They are working for Parker.
On Parker’s ground.
With Parker keeping every ounce.
No royalty payments skimming 25 to 30 percent off the top before anyone sees a dime.
Full ownership of every cleanup.
For a crew that has spent an entire season busting their backs to make someone else rich, that is the pitch that gets through.
Mitch speaks first.
Yeah, let’s go get it done.
Let’s do it.
Another voice adds.
Thanks, guys, Parker says.
Let’s do this.
We’re all exhausted, another crew member admits.
But another week, we can do it.
We know what we’re doing.
Let’s go get all the ground we’ve got open and sluice.
We’re all exhausted, but another week we can do it.
We know what we’re doing.
Let’s go get all the ground we’ve got open and sluice.
So here is the deal.
Parker has 7 days.
And a crew that agreed to stay.
Now the math has to work.
400 ounces means they need to push roughly 60 ounces per day.
Every day.
For a full week.
The wash plant has to run maximum hours.
16 to 18 hours a day if they can manage it.
Every excavator loading pay dirt into haul trucks nonstop.
Every truck cycling between the cut and the plant without breaks.
Fuel costs alone on an operation this size run thousands of dollars per day.
One mechanical breakdown on the plant.
One busted hydraulic line.
One frozen fuel line.
And the whole schedule falls apart.
And the ground is not getting any easier.
Every night the temperature drops.
The permafrost pushes deeper.
And the pay layer gets harder to reach.
Parker is racing a clock that he cannot slow down.
Parker has his seven days.
Now he has to make them count.
But 600 miles north, another operation just hit a wall.
And this one might not recover.
The dozer crisis.
Rick Ness has been scraping all season to get his operation off the ground.
Greenhorn crew.
Bargain basement equipment.
Everything held together with duct tape and optimism.
But somehow he finally has momentum.
His dozer is ripping permafrost in the freedom cut.
And his crew is actually moving dirt.
It’s a great day, Rick says.
Getting all the machines in place, it gets my blood pumping.
We’re that much closer to pay dirt.
His rock truck driver agrees.
If I wasn’t stuck in this rock truck, I’d be doing cartwheels right now.
Carl, Rick’s mechanic, is just as fired up.
My heart’s about to beat out of my chest.
Can’t wait.
For the first time all season, everything is clicking.
The dozer’s rippers are tearing through frozen ground so the crew can get down to the gold-rich pay layer.
It looks like a real mining operation.
That lasts about 45 minutes.
Hey B, I’m already having problems with this dozer.
The operator radios in.
Man, the transmission is overheating.
104 degrees.
Deep in the red.
For anyone who does not know, the transmission is what converts engine power into the force that actually moves the dozer’s tracks through frozen ground.
The torque converter inside it multiplies that force.
When a torque converter starts slipping, it generates massive heat.
And the whole system starts eating itself.
That is exactly what Carl suspects.
Transmission getting hot like that usually means your torque converter slipping, Carl says.
But here is the thing.
Pulling the entire transmission to inspect it would take a full day.
Carl does not have a day.
So he goes for the quick diagnostic.
Pull the transmission filter.
If there are metal filings in it, the gears inside are grinding each other to dust.
They pull the filter.
They crack it open.
There’s a bunch of garbage in them, Carl says.
The transmission’s eating itself.
Metal shavings everywhere.
The internal gears have been destroying themselves.
There is no field repair for this.
No bush fix.
No workaround.
A replacement transmission for a dozer like this runs tens of thousands of dollars.
And even if Rick could find one, shipping it to the middle of the Yukon and installing it would take weeks.
They do not have that time.
She’s toast, someone says.
Rick stares at the filter.
I don’t even know what to say about what’s next.
We’re pretty screwed without a dozer.
Without a dozer, Rick cannot rip frozen ground.
Without ripping, the crew cannot reach pay dirt.
Without pay dirt, there is no gold.
Without gold, nobody gets paid.
The whole operation shuts down.
We can’t afford any more days off, Rick says.
We’re at the end of the season here.
And without the dozer being in place and running, we’re screwed.
Everything’s frozen, man.
And without a ripper, we can’t do anything.
He makes the call.
Hey guys, I’m going to shut it down.
Terry, his foreman, pulls the crew out of the cut.
We hit a wall, man.
I can’t think of anything else to keep these guys busy.
I need some direction.
Rick does not have any.
I’m scratching my head trying to come up with a plan too.
Without a ripping machine, we’re pretty much shot right now.
There’s certainly a lack of planning on my part.
That is Rick admitting in front of his entire crew that he did not have a backup plan.
No second dozer.
No contingency.
In a place where equipment failure is not a question of if, but when.
Rick went all in on one machine.
And now that machine is scrap metal.
And the crew is not going to wait around forever.
These are guys who left their homes, drove to the middle of the Yukon, and signed up because Rick told them there was gold to be found.
Every day they sit idle is a day they are not getting paid.
Every day without a dozer is a day closer to the point where it makes more sense to just drive home.
There’s not one person here that wants to sit on their ass, one of them says.
We’re all counting on getting paid here.
And if that doesn’t happen, why would I stay?
On top of all of this, Rick is dealing with internal crew conflict.
A new crew member showed up and refused to shake Rick’s hand on the first morning.
Which on a mining claim is about as disrespectful as it gets.
Within hours, the crew is taking sides.
And Rick is stuck in the middle of a team that is fracturing over personality clashes on top of everything else.
Dozer’s my only friend anymore, Rick says.
I brought my friends all the way up here.
They came up here to work.
And they came up here to find gold.
And if they start thinking things aren’t going to change, what would I expect?
For them to bail before they get in too deep?
That’s just how it is.
I’ve got to get this figured out.
So here is where things stand.
Parker has 2600 ounces.
$2.5 million.
And needs 400 more in 7 days to buy his own claim and cut ties with Tony Beets for good.
His crew said yes.
But every one of them is running on empty.
Rick Ness is completely shut down.
No dozer.
No ripper.
No way to reach pay dirt.
And a crew that is one bad day from walking out.
And the Beets operation just lost Montana.
A 2-year deck hand.
Over a single hour of overtime.
Three operations.
Three crises.
And winter is not waiting for any of them.
So here is the question.
Do you think Parker’s crew can actually pull 400 ounces in 7 days?
Or is this the season where it all falls apart?
Drop your answer in the comments.
