This season has been a big learning curve.
We’re well behind and, you know, fighting to try to stay in the green.

I’m just meeting with Mitch and Chris and Tyson to give them an update.

Hi guys.
What’s happening?
What’s going on, man?

I just wanted to have a chat with you guys.
Like this year’s been an absolute fight, right?
We’re fighting the ground and we’ve got our hands full on Dominion right now.

But we have a neighbor.
He approached me a few weeks ago and wanted to sell us property.
I’ve been in discussions with him about buying him out, and I just signed a deal today.

Seriously?
Yeah.
You bought Gold Run?

Three miles of Gold Run that butts up to our property, and a mile of ground on Sulfur.

Is there anything left up there, man?
It’s been hammered, but they’ve done a lot of ten-ounce-an-hour runs there.

Holy—that’s a lot of gold.
Yeah, it’s extremely rich.

Did you buy just the dirt, or like buy the whole thing out?

The whole company.
Purchase price: 2.5 million.

From a cash basis, it does put the screws to us a bit, but I’ve embraced the debt.

How much gold do you think we need to get off the property?

I would really hope to see a thousand ounces between the two properties.
We have to produce this year.
We have to put some serious gold away.

I wouldn’t suggest this if I didn’t think that we could solve the money problem.

I really don’t like having neighbors.
You could have just built a fence probably for a lot cheaper.

Well, that’s not what I was expecting to hear, but congratulations.

We’ve got some more sluicing to do.
Yeah, we’ll see if it’s congratulations or condolences.

Parker’s played Klondike Monopoly.
Here we have three wash plants running now, and to top it off, we have Gold Run and Sulfur.

It’s just a lot of work to do and we’re spread out again, but we’ve got to make it work.

With his latest addition, Parker now has an almighty empire.

At Indian River, Parker’s crew is almost done mining eight acres of ground leased from Ken Tatlow and Stewart Schmidt.
Over on Parker’s Dominion claim, they’re mining 20 acres at the long cut and another 114 at the bridge cut.

Next door is Parker’s new 1,100-acre property at Gold Run, and ten miles away at Sulfur sits another 950 acres with one cut stripped and ready to be sluiced.

Parker’s kingdom now spans a colossal 9,550 acres with hundreds of millions of dollars of gold in the ground.

Sulfur is on pay and ready to go.

Probably the biggest risk is that it spreads us more thin than we already are and takes a bunch of cash out of the business at a time when cash is somewhat hard to find.

I’ve blown up the season plans yet again.

When we bought Gold Run, it came with some property on Sulfur, and a lot of gold came out of that creek.
It’s been mined top to bottom for a very long time.

Parker’s new claims on Gold Run and Sulfur Creek are some of the richest in Klondike history.
First mined in the 1896 gold rush by hand and then with dredges, the two creeks combined have yielded more than one and a half billion dollars in gold, and ground along their banks is still sought after by modern-day prospectors.

I knew down the road I would kick myself for not doing it, even though we’re having some short-term money issues.

There is a stripped cut over there, and there’s already a pay pile for a wash plant.

Tyson has a lot of work to do to get Bob moved and sorted out, and nailing that transition is a really important thing.

This is our last cleanup on Canon Stewart, and we’re done at Indian River for this season.

With the ground mined out and Sulfur Creek ready to go, Parker wants wash plant Bob moved and sluicing within ten hours.

My job’s done here, and now it’s up to Tyson and the rest of the crew to move everything and get it started at Sulfur.

You guys ready?
Hell yeah, buddy. Move that wash plant.

Parker wants the wash plant moved from Ken’s over to Sulfur by the end of the day and up and running.

We’re going to do our best to make that happen, hopefully the gold’s worth it over at Sulfur.

Quite frankly, I think we’re doing too much.

A plant move doesn’t consist of there to there, because it’s 40K one way with all these trucks, all these people, and a whole day of work.

If the dirt doesn’t produce money, that’s it—money stops coming, and so do I.

We’ve got the plant torn apart, all the pieces on trailers, and it’s time to start the convoy.

The 25 miles to Sulfur Creek is Parker’s longest plant move ever, and if one part gets damaged, the whole plan is done.

Burn the dust in the heat.

I’m Parker Schnabel, and you’re watching Discovery Australia.