‘Gold Rush: Parker’s Trail’ Star Parker Schnabel Uncovers a Seriously Surprising Discovery in Exclusive First Look

Parker Schnabel is taking on a brand new mining adventure deep in the Australian outback in the new season of Gold Rush: Parker’s Trail, and the way things are looking from the start, it’s going to be one hell of a mining season. In a PopCulture.com exclusive sneak peek of the Discovery show’s new season, Schnabel and his team are still looking for a viable mine with consistent fine gold in Victoria, Australia.

Sluicing through some of the gold-rich concentrate, one of Schnabel’s cameramen celebrates the first pan of Parker’s Trail: Australia.

“What’s the most you’ve seen in a pan where you’ve taken it straight out the cut?” he asks the seasoned miner as he swirls the water in his pan.

“Oh God, I’ve had some killer pans in the past,” Schnabel answers, recalling the one time he found a whole gram of gold in just one pan. “That only happened to me, that’s once in seven years.”

With such a high bar set for the season, it’s unclear how much gold Schnabel was expecting from this first pan, but he’s certainly not expecting the flake after flake of gold that keeps appearing from the murky water.

“Seriously?” one of his team members asks, incredulous. “What the?!”

Another chimes in, “Are you kidding?”

It’s a good sign at the start of the season, but Schnabel knows more than most how quickly things can go sideways. Prior to last season of Gold Rush, he told PopCulture exclusively on a trip to the Yukon that anyone who follows the gold miner’s calling is “a little crazy.”

“When I first came to the Yukon and started to learn the ground and what we were doing and figuring out the processes, I didn’t know how far we’d get,” he said of his own success. “It’s a very hard business to really grow and build and maintain efficiency. And so, I didn’t really … I didn’t think that we’d make it to the point where we were doing, you know, like over 1,000 oz. a month, which is what we did last year.”

Will he find similar success in Australia?

Gold Rush: Parker’s Trail returns to Discovery on Friday, March 13 at 8 p.m. ET.

Photo credit: Discovery