‘Gold Rush’ Star Parker Schnabel Explains What’s ‘Incredibly Difficult’ About His Love Life

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Gold Rush star Parker Schnabel has mined more than 63,000 ounces and $98 million of gold in his career, as Discovery Channel touts in a press release for the docuseries’ new season. And yet Schnabel says trying to describe his life’s work makes dating difficult.

“I try to explain it in a way that doesn’t sound like Mad Max,” Schnabel told People with a laugh. “It’s hard to explain that without it sounding like some dystopian, insane world. I’m in the woods, and you’re living in a f***ing bunker washing rocks, looking for little, shiny rocks. … Then it makes dating incredibly difficult. They’re like, ‘What do you do?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know.’”

Schnabel added that he hopes to have a family and “a life outside of TV” eventually, adding that he’ll likely have kids after Gold Rush goes off air.

Parker Schnabel in snowy landscape

Discovery Channel

And when he does start a family, he won’t pressure his kids to follow in his footsteps.“I think that that’s a hundred years outdated,” he said. “One of the best things about my upbringing is my parents didn’t push me in any direction. My dad ran a construction company, and there was zero pressure to be involved in what you would consider the family business.”

As Gold Rush fans know, Schnabel was just a child when he started mining gold with his grandfather in Alaska. Schnabel told People his grandfather’s mine was “a money-losing venture” and that it “really bugged” his father that it “was not an economically viable business that I was involved in as a teenager.”

“But he never said anything,” Schnabel added. “He just wanted me to be happy. That’s the best thing you can do for a kid, in my opinion.”

With any luck, Schnabel won’t have a money-losing venture of his own in gold Rush Season 15, which premiered on Discovery on Friday, November 8. At his new claim at Dominion Creek, Schnabel has to mine the $200 million worth of gold before the expiration of his license in six years’ time, and he’s chasing a record-breaking 10,000-ounce, $25-million dollar season. “In deep debt and under immense pressure, Parker is one bad decision away from sinking his whole operation and derailing his masterplan for a gold bonanza,” Discovery Channel says.

Gold Rush, Fridays, 8/7c, Discovery Channel

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