Gold Rush might focus on miners and their quest to find gold in various locations, but the Discovery Channel has struck metaphorical gold with the series. Gold Rush has been one of Discovery’s top-rated series through the years, resulting in a fleet of spinoffs including Hoffman Family Gold and the flagship series in it’s 15th season. It’s not surprising, since a big draw of Gold Rush is seeing how the miners work to get the most gold for their buck, as well as how the show has managed to stay relevant over the years. One question has lingered over Gold Rush: hHw much gold do the miners find? On screen, miners have managed to pull nuggets that are worth thousands of dollars — but according to some, it’s not as big of a payday as viewers might expect.
A Former ‘Gold Rush’ Contestant Claims the Show Is Heavily Scripted
If the massive hauls that Gold Rush’s miners pull in seem a little too good to be true, former cast member Jimmy Dorsey has some revelations. In an interview conducted after he left the series, Dorsey claimed that Gold Rush is heavily scripted, including some of the more dangerous moments:
“It is scripted from the beginning. They knew exactly what they wanted to see out of the program….The plans were made, but the footsteps were ours.”
To Dorsey’s credit, he does admit that some moments on the show are actually real, particularly when he got into a fight with another miner and broke his ribs. But producer Ed Gorsuch claimed that while some elements are embellished, producers like to put the focus on the miners. “We don’t just turn the cameras on and shoot randomly. We do focus on a story or character; we do try to have a plan each day or at least each week on what we want to emphasize,” Gorsuch told Reality Blurred. “There’s no scripts written; the edit doesn’t feed them what to do. It comes the other way around; the miners do what they’re going to do, and we give shape to it. And that is the ideal thing,”
‘Gold Rush’ Films in Areas That Are Rich With Gold
Even if the merits of Gold Rush could be argued, there’s also the fact that gold remains one of the rarest substances on Earth. There are very few places where one could find a significant source of gold, and Gold Rush films in one of those locations: the Yukon River in Alaska, which has been a hot spot for miners over the years. In fact, Gold Rush was originally called Gold Rush: Alaska when it first started airing! Alaska’s Bureau of Land Management even has a list of areas that are high in gold, which might come in handy for the Gold Rush miners.
Other gold-rich areas where Gold Rush has been filmed include Oregon, which has a wide history of gold mines, and Colorado. This means that most of the hauls that are shown actually do come from gold-rich areas, but it turns out that the miners might not keep all of their profits. Parker Schnabel, one of the Gold Rush stars, said that he tends to sell what he collects based on the ever-shifting economy. “My approach is to sell everything before start up of the next season, regardless of cash requirements or gold price,” he wrote on Reddit. Schnabel also said that he makes more from his mining business than on Gold Rush proper and that the variety of the hauls varies. The saying “everything that glitters isn’t gold” has never been more apt — especially when it comes to reality TV.
Parker Schnabel Has the Biggest Hauls of ‘Gold Rush’
Despite Schnabel advising others to sell their gold, he wound up having some of the biggest hauls in Gold Rush history. Schnabel even broke a Gold Rush record during Season 9, where he and his crew dug up $8.4 million in gold. He managed to top that in Season 10, hauling in $1 million more than his previous record (it also didn’t hurt that gold prices were rising at the time). Schnabel would continue to pull down impressive hauls on Gold Rush; Season 14 saw him and his crew pull off a $24 million haul, with Schnabel even commissioning a friend to make some personal items on his Instagram account.
Parker Schnabel’s gold mining success isn’t just limited to Gold Rush. In the vein of other successful miners, he received his own spin-off series in 2017, Gold Rush: Parker’s Trail. Parker’s Trail followed Schnabel as he traveled across the world, mining in different locations, including Australia, where he teamed up with Aussie Gold Hunters star Tyler Mahoney. Schnabel’s success is proof that the miners on Gold Rush can strike gold, figuratively and literally, but it also shows that luck is a major part of the process, right next to hard work.
