[dramatic music playing]
-[Danny] Ready? -[Parker] Mmm-hmm.
I'm waiting on you.
[Danny] All right. Cool. Sorry.
So, look, imagine...
Let's just imagine for a second
that nobody's ever seen Parker's Trail.
How do... How did you fancy that?
Yeah. Tell Bobby.
You've never watched any of the show?
Get the [bleep] out.
[laughing]
[narrator] Parker Schnabel has spent the last decade
becoming one of the most successful miners
in the Yukon.
We've pulled, like, 50,000, 55,000 oz out of the ground in the Yukon
in the last 10 years.
[narrator] But during the off-season...
[Parker] If we can go somewhere and do, like,
one month mining and find 20,000 oz of gold,
then, life's a party.
...his search for new ground...
[man] Oh, my! Are you serious?
...goes global.
[Danny] It's all reflecting on your face, Parker.
[man] It's an 80-ounce nugget.
That's wild, that there's that much gold here.
[narrator] Taking him to some of the most remote...
[Karla] Jackson said it was crossable.
Sounds like Jackson's full of [bleep].
...most dangerous...
-[car starting] -[Karla] Ready?
[Parker] Drive, drive, drive. [bleep] hell!
...locations on the planet.
It was super [bleep] sketchy,
and I literally almost got washed off the mountain.
[narrator] Now, Parker reveals new details
on seven years of exploration...
I've actually never seen anybody mining like that.
Like, that's as ancient as it gets.
It was probably the most
eye-opening place I've ever been.
Probably in my life.
...that finally led to the best ground
he's ever seen.
I'm super [bleep] pumped to be here to have found this.
[Danny] Got a house.
Uh-huh.
Mate. That is a step up from the castle.
It's pretty nice.
It's really nice.
What a spot.
[narrator] At the start of the last mining season...
I think you'll have a good time here. I think you'll do well.
...twenty-eight-year-old mine boss Parker Schnabel spent $15,000,000
-on his Dominion Creek claim. -[Parker] Okay. Let's do it.
[man] Thank you. Congratulations.
[narrator] Now, after a 7,000-oz season...
I don't have any more big thermoses.
You're gonna have to just start using a bucket.
...Parker's invited long time buddy Danny Etheridge to his new home.
Come on, then, let's have the tour.
[Parker] I use about 10% of it.
[Danny] It's just a house, living room.
[Parker] Second living room.
[Danny] Very nice.
Two living rooms. Who needs two living rooms?
[Parker] A lazy man's fireplace.
[Danny] Oh, yeah.
Did you get this just to make me feel even smaller?
-What? Is this your suitcase from Peru? -[Parker chuckling]
-[laughing] You haven't unpacked from Peru. -No.
[narrator] After the tour, Danny sits Parker down in the confessional.
-[Danny] Let's do it. -[Parker] Okay.
So how did it all begin?
I've always been interested in,
like, hardcore adventure expeditions.
The pioneers that...
first went to these, like,
crazy places and did crazy things.
Being on the water is dangerous.
Out here...
one wrong move and you're a dead man.
The premise of the first one was recreating the,
like, gold rush of 1898,
going from the landing point in Skagway to Dawson City.
[groaning]
[narrator] On Parker's first ever trail,
he was joined by some of his closest friends.
-Oh, that [bleep] wind is so cold. -[Rick] Yeah.
[narrator] His then foreman, Rick Ness.
-[James] How are your feet? -Cold as [bleep].
So are mine.
[narrator] Survival expert Karla Ann.
We've gotta make some miles, big time.
[narrator] And cameraman James Levell.
Current's off to the right a wee bit, guys.
[Parker] We just gotta keep paddling!
-[James] Yeah. -[Rick] Paddle hard. Paddle hard.
[Parker] Okay.
The flake of gold is on top of the coconut oil container.
That's not a good spot for it.
It's fine as long as nobody touches it.
[Rick] That's Parker.
Why not put it in a little container?
Nah, just set it on top of the food.
-[narrator] And even in the sub-zero temperatures... -[Parker] Hello.
-[woman speaking] -[Parker] Good.
Could I record a claim, please?
...the crew managed to stake their own claim.
-[Parker] All right. Thank you for the help. -[woman] You're welcome.
[narrator] Parker's first ever in the Yukon.
-[Karla] What's up? -[Parker] Got it.
[Rick] [bleep], man.
[Parker] We got ourselves a Yukon claim.
The first trail was...
not anything really like what the trail is now.
And it took on a whole new life
once we started looking for really good mining properties in the middle of nowhere.
[narrator] But just getting to the remote mining centers of the world
on the hunt for gold-rich ground...
You have to go where nobody else goes.
South America has a lot of ounces in the ground.
But it's not for the faint of heart.
...often pushes Parker's crew to breaking point.
-[shrieks] -[clattering]
-[thuds] -[Karla screams]
What the [bleep]?
Let's grab our [bleep] and get out of here.
[birds chirping]
[Parker] We've got Schnabel at the controls.
[narrator] In 2017, Parker traveled
deep into uncharted territory,
in the Guyanese jungle...
Unbelievable.
[bleep] unreal!
...in search of the Uewang gold fields in Amatuk.
It's like you're flying through Jurassic Park.
This as far as we can go?
Gotcha.
[guide speaking]
-[Karla] I got this, boy. -[Parker] Yeah, thanks.
[narrator] Danny and a small film crew
document the team's journey
as they venture into the jungle alone.
[Karla] This is a whole new ballgame.
This jungle will eat you up in a second if, if you don't respect it.
[Parker] Don't forget to tell the search party where you dropped us off.
[guide] Yeah. Yeah.
[Karla] My goal for today...
Is just make some miles,
get to camp, set up before dark.
It's the basics, right?
Wait, hang on. What was Karla's job?
-She was like the survival expert. -[Danny laughing]
And at that point, the navigator, I think.
Yeah.
[Karla] Um, so you wanna know direction?
I believe, that way.
[Danny] I was running along
about 50 yards off to the side,
fifty yards up ahead, just following you.
Pretty dense.
[Karla] Ooh. A beach.
Keep moving then.
This is, uh, gonna be some slow going.
[Karla] Definitely the hardest navigating I've ever had to do.
[James] There's a big ass river.
[Parker] Nice.
[James] Oh!
[Karla] Ew! Oh, my God. Look.
That is where we [bleep] dropped off.
I [bleep] guarantee.
[Rick] You're kidding me.
But you knew we were going the wrong way, didn't you?
Yeah. Though you couldn't be privy to that.
Should be in a [bleep] cartoon.
Staring at the spot you started.
[Danny] I think you did
that amazingly classic thing.
Of essentially walking
in a huge circle, didn't we?
[Parker] How far do we think we came?
A "K?"
-[Parker] Half a mile. -[Karla] Less than a "K."
Sounds like fake news to me.
[Parker] I don't wanna believe it. But...
[Rick] [bleep] pathetic.
-We'll never make it anywhere. -[Karla laughing]
[Parker] We're super tired, sweaty.
Used up a day's worth of food. Made it...
the distance you could walk in about 20 minutes.
I think you and I talked later that night, like,
and you're like, "You know, I knew that you guys
were going the wrong way at, like, 10:00 a.m."
[laughing]
Yeah. Great day.
I'm pretty good with directions.
Especially in the woods.
-You know, I grew up in the [bleep] woods. -[laughing]
That's the problem with having, like, a navigator,
is you follow your navigator, right?
Yeah, that went wrong.
[narrator] 12 hours later. things go from bad to worse.
[Danny] It's 5:30 in the morning,
The creek that we've camped next to has completely flooded.
I'm balls deep in water.
Parker.
[Parker] What?
[Danny] The creek has burst it's banks,
it's risen about six or seven feet.
[Parker] Sam, like, comes wading over, like, in waist-deep water.
I was like, "Sam, I'm dry," and he was like,
"Yeah, I [bleep] wasn't, I should've put my hammock
"where you did, I'm two foot lower.
"I woke up, like, underwater."
[Danny] Try to become as dry as you can.
I was like, "Thank God that wasn't me."
-[Danny] Hey Rick! -[Rick] Yeah?
[Danny] Mate, we're flooding here,
save whatever you can.
[Rick] [bleep] dude.
[water sloshing]
[bleep]
It just took ages to get you out,
-because with the cameras -- -Yeah, it's like,
you immediately were just, like, waist-deep in the water,
and I, just, like, I don't wanna do that.
-So that's about... -Oh yeah?
[Danny] As big as my hand,
and there's what looks like a tarantula up there as well.
[Parker exlaims]
[Parker] Holy [bleep]
[Danny] That is [bleep] big one.
[Parker] In a flood, like, every insect
needs to get up out of the water.
[Rick] It just can't get and [bleep] worse right now.
[Danny] Guy.
I think every single one of us at that point was like,
"What are we doing?"
[chuckles]
[wind blowing]
[Danny] The salt flats in Bolivia,
-that was a [bleep] cool journey. -[Parker] Yeah, that was cool.
Except I felt like I was gonna die on that plane.
Oh, my God.
We're tickling 20,000 feet right now.
In a plane which isn't pressurized,
the trail is testing
every step of the way.
[narrator] On another journey to virgin ground in Bolivia,
the crew fly across the world's largest salt flat,
the Salar de Uyuni.
[Parker speaking]
That plane wasn't pressurized.
I thought I was about to start puking.
And I was like, that won't be pretty good.
-Like, three cameras in my face. -[chuckling]
[Diego speaking]
-You're allowed 30 minutes unpressurized. -[Danny] Right.
Whenever I'm about to get sick
or something bad's about to happen,
I kind of have a real good...
-An impending feeling of doom. -[Danny laughing]
And I had that bad. Like probably the worst I've ever had on that plane.
-[Danny] Really? -Yeah.
[Danny speaking]
-Oxygen deprivation. -It's just your brain just starting to go...
[Diego speaking]
Like, get out of this situation.
[narrator] To prevent oxygen deprivation, the crew make an emergency landing.
[Karla speaking]
Jump out of a plane?
[Diego] Oh, man.
[Danny] Wow.
[Parker] I felt like I was dying.
[Rick] This is [bleep] mental.
[Karla] Parker's feeling better.
And now we're in the middle of nowhere on a salt flat.
So I'm just trusting Diego that he's got something sorted.
[James] Sweet. Let's hit the road.
[narrator] Coming up...
Not what we need right now.
There was a moment where I didn't think I was gonna be able to stop.
[narrator] Parker relives his most dangerous moments on the trail
in exclusive unseen footage.
-What, are we gonna turn around? -We don't wanna die.
[narrator] And later finds ground that could see him mining
over 6,000 miles from the Yukon.
Yeah, this is awesome.
[Parker] We have to make some fast decisions.
[Danny] I do feel a little bit like...
everything's a bit wonky.
-Right, if I line myself up with that cupboard, it... -[Parker] Yeah.
You can really tell...
[Danny laughing and clapping]
[Parker] You know, it's very aggressively... leaning.
[Danny] It feels like a house that Willy Wonka would own.
[narrator] Cameraman Danny Etheridge
is with Parker Schnabel at his new home in the Yukon...
[Danny] There has been a few close calls.
...to reveal new details about their last seven years on the trail.
And you tried to drop a boat on me off a waterfall.
Oh, mate.
[Rick] Parker!
-Watch out! [bleep]! -[narrator] From nearly drowning
in the Rewa river in Guyana...
[Rick] Parker!
[Parker] This is [bleep].
...to narrowly avoiding a runaway hose,
shooting 700 gallons of water per minute.
[Parker] Oh!
Oh, [bleep].
[Rick] Parker!
[bleep]
[Parker groans]
-[Danny speaking] -[Parker] Yeah, I'm all right.
[birds chirping]
Danny tried to kill me in Papua New Guinea.
[Parker] Uh, he tried to send me off
-the side of a mountain. -[chuckles]
-No. With a big flood of water. -[Danny laughing]
[narrator] Parker got more than he bargained for,
clearing overburden from the side of a mountain.
Just timed out like a bunch of shots.
I was like, "If you were there..."
But this whole place was, like, very, very...
-Unstable. -[Danny] Unstable, yeah.
[Karla] Whoa! Heads up!
-[Rick] Whoa, whoa, whoa! -[Danny] You were just sitting
in the most precarious positions.
[James] Parker, look out, look out, look out, look out.
[Parker] Oh, [bleep]! [bleep]!
In the wrong place at the wrong time.
[James] Parker!
[Parker groaning]
Parker!
I'm, like, filming. I'm like, I mean,
"Is this gonna be the last time
-I ever see Parker?" -[Parker and Danny laughing]
[muffled groans]
[James] Parker!
[Parker] And it's, like, a 50-foot, like, cliff
then it all went over, like...
maybe in another 50 or 100 feet from where I stopped.
[bleep]
[James] Got him.
[Parker coughing] Oh, [bleep].
[coughing]
[Danny] Holy [bleep]!
[coughing]
Are you okay?
[Parker] That went from, like, zero to 100
in a very short amount of time.
-[Danny] This is slipping. -[Parker] Yeah.
[Danny] Just get up, just get up.
It was super [bleep] sketchy.
And I literally almost got washed off a mountain.
[laughing]
Ow. [grunts]
Oh, this is really cold water.
[James] Yeah.
Yeah, I'll take that while you clean off.
-[Parker] Thank you. -[James] Yeah.
You got an awful bruise on your back.
[Parker] Yeah.
Not what we need right now.
There was a moment where I didn't think I was gonna be able to stop.
And that... it is not a good feeling.
'Cause that's a very steep mountain.
I almost died hiking up it, but I certainly didn't wanna
go falling down it with a bottle of water.
[Danny] There's one notable close call. Rinconada.
Yeah, I think Rinconada probably the most...
-eye-opening place I've ever been. -[Danny exhales]
Probably in my life.
That was [bleep] mental.
[Parker] Yeah. I asked all the film crew to leave.
-Sheena, you're staying here. -Yeah.
-Okay. And most of the crew's staying here. -I think we...
Oh, my God. It's huge.
[narrator] In 2022, Parker took a skeleton crew to La Rinconada,
a virtually lawless Peruvian mining town,
nearly 17,000 feet above sea level.
[man] The mining operations are under the glacier.
Here we go.
[narrator] Miners blast tunnels deep into the side
of the 6,000,000-year-old mountain
to extract gold-rich ore.
[miner] Now we're gonna load the hole.
-[Parker] We're gonna blow it up. -[miner] Yeah.
[Parker] Well, [bleep]. This is the explosives,
and they've wrapped it up in newspaper.
[Danny] Okay.
I think it's fair to say that plenty of people
-have blown themselves up in that mountain. -Yeah.
I've never set explosives off with a lighter before.
So we let the fuse off in here?
-[Parker] Yeah. -Oh, my [bleep] God!
That was such an intense experience.
So we basically light the fuse
-and run out. -[Parker] Yeah.
You've got a better understanding of exactly
whether something might go wrong.
Okay. How dangerous is this?
[Parker] If we do it wrong, you'll never know.
There was a fair amount of potential for things to go wrong.
Everything in my body is telling me not to stand here right now.
That's why I asked all the film crew to leave.
-Yeah. -[Parker] Except for you.
-Thanks, mate. [laughs] -We go down together.
[in Spanish]
[Parker in English] What the [bleep]?
Vamonos, vamonos, vamonos!
-[explosion] -[exclaims]
That was not that long.
[crumbling]
-Oh, there's more. -[Danny] Yeah.
Thought you said no more.
-[bleep]! -[softly] See how that worked?
I've never had a gun fully held to my head,
but that was the closest
-I could ever imagine feeling like that, you know? -[Parker] Right.
-[clattering] -Whoa!
[speaking Spanish]
[Danny in English] Well, the roof is gone.
[Parker] Look how clean it broke.
This is, like, the veins that they're looking for.
That's what they'll take and crush up
and get gold out of.
One there and one there.
[Danny] Very cool.
Awesome.
In those situations, I am entirely in your hands.
[Parker] If something goes wrong, you never know which is,
like, fine with me.
Like, if I eliminate every chance of death
that I have for the rest of my life, I'm gonna be...
-bored out of my [bleep] mind. -[Danny laughing]
This is... It's quite a sort of disregard for your own...
Like, if I feel like I'm being put in a sandbox
and, like, don't have agency to make decisions and, like,
some autonomy and ability to, like,
do my own thing and pursue things that I want to pursue,
like, I will just stop doing anything.
-[Danny] Yeah. -Like, I'll just go home.
Like, I'm not there to be told what to do.
Ice.
[Rick] Holy [bleep].
[narrator] Over the last seven years...
[Danny] If the ice is this bad here...
[James] We might get [bleep] by this stuff.
...extreme environments have brought out
-extreme tension. -[James] Relax.
You know me well enough to know I'm not gonna [bleep] relax.
-[James] Okay. Well, then... -That's one thing I don't do.
[narrator] From falling out
-with cameraman James Levell... -[animal howling]
...on the Chilkoot Trail...
I'm fed up, actually. All he ever does is give me [bleep].
And, uh, I don't know if I can take it much more.
[Karla] You don't have to be a [bleep].
[Parker] I'm not trying to be a [bleep].
... to falling out with everyone in Guyana.
That's great... that's great stuff. He's a [bleep] captain.
Well, you've got eyes too, so you can help out.
A journey worth, uh, talking about is probably the one...
that we took just after Quince Mil.
[Danny] I think he wants us to get out and just
-walk this bit of the river. -[Tyler] Yeah. Yeah.
[narrator] While traveling off-grid
in the Peruvian jungle...
[Parker] We gonna walk here?
...torrential rainfall forces the crew
to cross fast-flowing, swollen rivers.
-Current's really strong. -[narrator] On foot.
[Danny] Wait for us, Parker!
[Parker] Yeah, it's going to cross over here.
[Tyler] There's a huge boulder just there.
[Tyler groans]
[bleep]
All right.
[breathing heavily]
Oh, [bleep].
I just lost my footing completely.
Yeah.
[bleep]
-Okay. I'm going in the middle. -Yeah.
Step by step. Really slowly.
[Tyler] Roger.
-Oh! -You all right, Ty?
-[Tyler bleeps]. -[Danny] Easy, easy. That's it.
There's the crew.
Where's Parker?
You disappeared out front,
crossing some pretty heavy rivers.
Parker!
Where the [bleep] is Parker?
-[radio beeps] -[Diego] Pete, do we actually know where Parker is?
-[radio beeps] -[Peter over radio] That's a negative, Diego.
We're trying to find out right now.
[narrator] In the middle of the Peruvian jungle,
Parker decides to go solo during a flash flood.
[Danny] Oh, [bleep].
I didn't try to disappear.
I'm just, like, when I'm super wet and cold,
it's, like, you have to stay moving.
-Yeah. -So, I stayed moving.
Like a shark.
[Parker] Yeah, I could've, like,
walked back and forth, I suppose.
But that's not my style.
[Robin over radio] I 'm gonna get a drone up to see if we can find Parker.
[narrator] Series director Robin Trump
sends up a drone to see if they can spot Parker from the sky.
[James] He'll come back sideways along there.
[Robin] Yeah, like, uh, just about out of range.
[James] That's about as far as I can go.
[Robin] Can't see him at all.
Well, we've gone 500 meters along the trail.
He's got a bright red jacket on,
so we'd see him easy enough.
[Tyler] Parker?
[Danny] Parker!
[Tyler] Can't find him, drone can't find him.
[radio beeps]
[narrator] An hour later...
Pete, this is Diego, do you copy?
[Pete over radio] Copy, copy.
[narrator] ...there's still no sign of Parker.
[Peter over radio] We didn't see him as we turned down that trail.
There's another trail to the left.
You guys head off that way and see if you can find him.
-[radio beeps] -Roger that, thank you.
[Danny] [bleep].
This is seriously deep.
I hope Parker didn't cross this river without us.
-[Tyler] That's not good. -[Danny] I'm getting a little bit worried about that.
[Danny] I can see him.
Are you all right, Parker?
[Parker] I thought I was spending the night over here alone.
-[Danny] Oh, my God, are you all right? -[Parker] Oh, man.
[Parker] There was a fork in the road.
And I was like, "[bleep], probably going the wrong way."
At the first spot where I was like,
"Here's potential for me to go the wrong direction," I stopped.
[Danny] We had the drone up looking for you.
[Parker] I'm sorry that happened. That was [bleep] dumb.
We were just a bit [bleep] worried about you.
Oh, don't worry about me.
[Danny] I know, I know. You're, um...
You're amazing.
[chuckles]
You don't say it often enough, Dan, I keep telling you.
[laughs]
Funny thing.
Uh, after I crossed all the rivers,
a guy with a moped offered me a ride to town.
[chuckles] I was like, "No, I'll actually get in trouble for that."
But I could've ended up back in town.
Then you guys would've been really upset.
-[Danny laughing softly] -I didn't do that.
And I remember you and I had a bit of a, a spat
when we were crossing the rivers in Peru.
Hmm.
Geronimo said you're gonna have to cross the river, didn't he?
[narrator] Not long before Parker went AWOL...
[Parker] But I don't really wanna go across that thing.
[narrator] ...a precarious river crossing...
[Parker] Look, you wanna get on that [bleep] thing?
[narrator] ...put Parker and Danny's relationship to the test.
[Danny chuckles] I mean, I don't really see what other option we have.
[Diego] It's full of termite.
I'm seeing termites.
[narrator] The posts for the 30 foot elevated cable car
have been eaten away by termites.
-[Parker] Look at the-- -It's eaten at it.
[Parker] No, but look at the basket.
I'm not worried about the cable.
What, are we gonna turn around?
We don't wanna, we don't wanna die.
[narrator] But with their destination still two miles away
and sundown fast approaching,
the team have no choice.
I'm a little bit nervous.
Uh, we don't know how much weight it holds
or, like, when was the last time it was used,
but we don't really have much of an option.
-Are you ready? [laughs] -[Parker] Yeah.
[Danny] Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Let him out slow. Let him out slow.
[Parker] No, no, don't stop it, [bleep]!
[Danny] I mean, I know I've always said I wanna kill him, but...
[Tyler] Oh, my God.
Whoo! Man.
Oh, my God.
-[Danny] You good? -[Tyler] I'm good. Yeah. Let's do it.
That is some really [bleep] quick moving water.
Keep pulling!
[Danny] [bleep].
Camera's died, so, film it.
[Parker] We're pulling you in.
Oh, yeah, you were yelling at me to film things.
[Danny] No, no, get us 'cause there's no footage.
[Parker] Pull yourself in.
-[Danny] We can't. -[Parker] Why not?
[Danny] 'Cause we [bleep] ourselves.
[Parker] Well, do you want us to film,
or do you want us to pull you in?
-[Danny] [bleep]. -[Tyler groans]
That got my heart going.
Only [bleep] Dan would scream at us to film him
while we're [bleep] pulling him across the [bleep] river.
This guy.
[narrator] Despite a few setbacks along the way...
[Danny] Goodness me, that looks pretty good.
[narrator] ...Parker's determination pays off
at the Quince Mil mine.
Looks like a lot.
-[Danny] What do you reckon, Ty? -[Diego] Wanna bet?
-[Danny] Hard to tell. -Hard to tell.
Ah. 40 grams.
[Danny] Forty grams?
-Fifty. -[Danny] Fifty?
[Tyler] Oh, [bleep].
[Danny] Oh, my God, are you serious?
[Tyler laughing]
[Danny] Fifty grand.
[narrator] A hole worth 3000 bucks.
[Parker] That's impressive gold.
Okay, like, what's next?
-The sick moments. -Yeah.
Actually, though, across the board,
I don't think we've done too badly on the illness front.
I don't know who you were with.
The most dangerous part of this operation,
it's 99.9% pure cyanide.
[narrator] From medic Fred's bad reaction to cyanide...
[Danny] Fred, Fred, Fred, wait a minute.
[Fred] You know, I don't feel normal.
My eyes are burning.
[Danny] You're shaking a little bit, too.
I don't wanna freak you out, though.
[grunts and sighs]
[narrator] ...to food poisoning in Guyana...
I really don't feel good.
Mmm.
[burps]
[narrator] ...life on the trail for gold takes its toll.
I can puke a lot.
[coughs]
[spits]
I hate puking more than just about anything.
[Diego] Yeah, Parker's not in good shape at all.
You, yeah, you like a little puke every now and again.
I just have a weak Alaskan stomach, you know?
I'm, uh, from a very sanitary environment.
You, actually, more than anybody I've ever met,
are one of the best examples of more puke coming out of somebody's body
than seems humanly possible.
[narrator] In La Rinconada, Peru...
Uh, I don't want you to panic.
I can't talk so much.
I have no oxygen. [chuckles nervously]
And I have a bit of a headache.
We need to go. We need to go now.
[narrator] Altitude sickness put Parker in the greatest danger
of any trail so far.
[Diego] Let's get outta here then.
High altitude sickness is usually start with a headache,
dizziness, nausea, shortness of breath.
And if you continue going, you can have seizures, coma and death.
[narrator] In La Rinconada, Peru,
the world's highest permanent settlement...
[Diego speaking]
[narrator] ...Parker suffers from extreme altitude sickness.
[Parker speaking]
[chuckles softly] I remember going down for dinner.
You texted me and you were like,
"I think you might wanna pop back up here." [laughs]
Came back up and I was like, "Oh."
[Diego speaking]
-[retching] -All right then.
-You can only use me puking so many times in a series. -That's true.
Ah, mate.
[Parker] There's nothing [bleep] left.
No, I know, mate.
Stop.
Yeah, I mean, I [bleep] myself too.
That wasn't fun.
Yeah. [chuckles softly]
You did.
[bleep] everything, didn't you?
-Twice. -[Danny] Yeah.
Not looking good, mate.
[Parker retches and coughs]
-[Danny] He's not well at all. -Nope.
[Diego] You put in your IV wrong.
Thankfully, his vital signs start going up.
Let's see how he's tomorrow.
Well, you were way sicker than I was.
Mmm. I never puked once.
Okay, that doesn't mean you weren't sicker than me.
[laughs] That's true.
[Danny coughing]
[narrator] On the same trail in Bolivia...
[Parker] What's wrong, Dan?
[narrator] ...hardened adventure cameraman Danny Etheridge
takes a turn for the worse.
Every random few breaths, I go... [inhales]
And then I get this sort of tight pain.
[Diego] Your temperature is 103. We should leave right now.
[Danny] Let's get the [bleep] outta here.
[man speaking Spanish]
You can die without puking.
[laughs]
You were way closer to death than I was.
-Do you think? -Oh, yeah.
[Diego] We're in the malaria zone,
and malaria is considered an emergency.
[narrator] If Danny has malaria,
he is at risk of kidney failure and death.
So, doctor Diego orders an emergency x-ray.
[Diego] When you have something like malaria,
you can end up with fluid in your lungs.
[Danny] I was absolutely petrified.
[Diego] The pain was here. I cannot see anything here.
Everything looks fine.
-[Danny] Awesome. -[Diego] Careful, man.
[Danny] Thanks, guy. Cheers, dude.
You showing a very caring side,
there's a few times I saw a very, very soft version of Parker.
-Don't tell anybody. -No, it's true.
When you came in, I could see that you were worried.
[Parker] How are you?
[Danny] I'm all right. Yeah, I've just got a sore throat now.
[Parker] Well, I'm glad you're better.
-[Danny] Thank you. -I was worried about you.
[Danny] Okay, let's move on.
I think gold mining is a very good example of people that are,
you know, hardworking people
that are in the sort of the guts of the country.
I feel like you really see what makes people tick
when you get out in the middle of nowhere.
[narrator] Parker's hunt for gold
has taken him from the depths of winter in the Yukon...
[Parker] Cannot get stuck here. There's no Plan B.
[narrator] ...to the arid Australian Outback...
[Parker] Metal is hot out here.
Everything is just roasting.
[Danny] That is a bit of a difference from the Yukon.
[narrator] ...and everywhere in between.
When we first got to the Canaries,
that was, like, an incredible moment.
[narrator] The Amarakaeri Reserve is home to the Arakmbut tribe
who lived in complete isolation from the outside world until 1957.
[knock on door]
[Diego speaking other language]
[narrator] Parker and the team must first visit village elder,
72-year-old chief, Andres Moqui Mio
[Andres speaking other language]
The big one for me was that that guy
met a first white person in his teens.
[Diego] They used to live upriver,
but it was hard to get in con--
contact with the white people.
[Parker] So, when he was a kid, no white men?
[Andres speaking other language]
That was really cool to me.
Yeah, that stands out for me as, like, one of the highlights
of all the trips we've been on.
[Diego speaking other language]
[speaking other language]
[Parker speaking other language]
Oh, man.
Just checked something off my bucket list.
I always wanted to meet somebody
that grew up uncontacted by the outside world.
[Diego speaking other language]
[speaking other language]
[Diego speaking other language]
[Danny] This is unbelievable.
I feel like this is our most out there
we've ever been mining.
[Tyler speaking other language]
Wow, there you go.
[man] Ah, yeah, you can see it all the way along the top there.
[Parker] I just wanna see gold all over the place.
It's very cool. And we're, like, properly in the middle of nowhere.
[narrator] Coming up...
I've just seen one of the most beautiful pounds of gold
I've ever seen in my entire life.
[narrator] ...Danny and Parker stumble across the richest ground
in seven years of trails.
My gut's telling me to do it, so we're gonna do it.
[Parker] You want some lunch?
[Danny] I feel like anything you cook in there
might mean that your, your children are gonna end up pretty weird.
-You know what I mean? -[Parker] I use that microwave.
I think it's the first microwave ever made.
Ooh, this says nine to 11 minutes total.
-We're already past that. -[Danny] Oh, we're over...
[Parker] Oh, that actually looks quite good.
[Danny] Yeah.
-Dude, air fryer, the [bleep]. -Oh, mate.
They are literally...
I'm having my house done at the moment,
and we've lived out of it.
[Parker] I don't have any, um, tartar.
[Danny] Ketchup will go okay with it.
[Parker] I don't need a fork.
[Danny] Go ahead. Can I have a bit more ketchup?
-[Parker] That's not enough? -[Danny] No. How is it?
[Parker] Yeah, good.
Initially, I thought, might be a little bit mushy.
But when I got to the, the,
tiny piece of fish in the middle, it was good.
With those onion rings and that microwave.
you've given yourself every chance of success in the Yukon.
[Parker and Danny chuckle]
[narrator] At his new house in Dominion Creek...
I feel like in Australia,
we had the best leads and the best actual, like,
time spent on the ground assessing projects.
[narrator] ... Parker and best buddy Danny Etheridge
discuss their seven-year-long quest for the perfect ground.
-Like the Fitzgeralds. -[Danny] Oh, yeah.
[Parker] Here we go.
-Have we come to the right place? -[Tyler] Wow.
[narrator] Deep in the Australian Outback,
Parker and crew arrive at the Palmer Goldfields.
See if there's any ground, um, available for us to test.
There's always ground available, eh?
[Danny] How we looking, Terry?
Uh, I reckon we're nearly done here.
[Parker] Cut the power.
-By comparison, we hope for a third of a gram a yard. -Uh-huh.
And that's stripping 10 feet of frozen mud off of the top.
You guys don't have the stripping.
-This is extremely rich ground, yeah. -That's right, yeah.
[narrator] If Parker mined here,
he could make nearly three times more than the Yukon,
over a million dollars per week.
If you're interested, we're interested, we'll negotiate.
I mean, we got offered a piece of ground
by the Fitzgeralds in Northern Queensland.
All right. Perfect.
I'm glad we ended up here.
-[Cheryl] Yeah. Oh, that's good. -[Jack] Yeah, me too.
[Parker] Had the timing been different,
probably would've really considered going mining there.
Um, COVID kicked off right as we left Australia.
In COVID, it was really hard to...
do much other than just hunker down
and try to make money and not lose your business. You know?
[narrator] With Parker's expansion efforts
put on hold during the pandemic,
he lost out on the opportunity with the Fitzgeralds
and had to look elsewhere.
Then we found the Quince mine.
Flippin' heck.
Oh, that's a hole.
[narrator] On the last week of Parker's Bolivian gold hunt...
[Parker] Buenos Dias.
[narrator] Parker met Cancio and son Eric
at their 450 acre claim, the Kemci mine.
It's a sort of memory of all of the places we've been,
-it, it was a magical place, that. -It was an amazing area.
Yeah, I really-- It was beautiful.
How deep is that from the top?
[speaking other language]
That valley is mineable, there's a huge amount of ground there.
These are the kinda areas where deep ground's never been tested.
And that's what I've always kinda looked for
is this kind of project, and that's really intriguing.
[narrator] And when Parker got down to the business of testing...
This is the same thing we had at my grandpa's mine site.
Barrels cut in half that we pan into.
[speaking other language]
[Parker] It brings back good memories.
[narrator] Cancio's mine didn't disappoint.
[Danny] Wow, that is so well panned off.
He's got that so clean.
-That's good, eh? -[Parker] Mmm.
I've just seen one of the most beautiful pounds of gold
I've ever seen in my entire life.
A lot of gold, a lot of nuggets, specimens, all in one pan.
This place is so similar to the Yukon, it's uncanny.
There's so many things right with it.
But we have got now a serious dilemma on our hands.
[Parker] Holy [bleep].
-What? -[Parker laughs]
Oh, my...
[speaking other language]
[man 2 speaking other language]
[narrator] The team pulled three ounces of gold worth $5100.
-[Danny] That's good, isn't it? -Mmm. It's not bad.
[narrator] If the test results are consistent along the Valley,
Parker could mine nearly double the gold he does in the Yukon.
[Parker] We have to make some fast decisions.
If they've spent $25,000 so far on that pitch
and they still have further to go,
I'd like to split the cost with them
and put up $25,000.
-[speaking other language] -[speaking other language]
-[Diego] Obviously. -[Parker laughs]
[Danny] Everybody has always been on tenterhooks
to see whether or not
you are actually going to end up investing in something.
You did invest in Bolivia.
We were really looking for ground.
And I always felt like that would,
we'd find something like that and we did.
It's not as easy as it, as it sounds. [laughs]
no matter where in the world, you end up,
like, if it's good enough ground,
I'll go to the ends of Earth and, you know,
if the gold's there, then we'll go there.
For me, there isn't,
there isn't another series or another show
that I've continually had the most amazing, like, adventures.
We've been in some really, really quite dangerous situations,
but we've been in some [bleep] wicked situations too.
But, yeah, not too many near-deaths.
More to come, I'm sure.