Most Pause-Worthy Moment On Gold Rush: Parker's Trail

The Discovery Channel has produced over 25 episodes of the "Gold Rush" spinoff "Gold Rush: Parker's Trail" since it premiered in 2017, over the course of four seasons. Throughout the show so far, host Parker Schnabel and his crew have searched for gold in Guyana, Papua New Guinea, and Australia. "Gold Rush: Parker's Trail" has earned excellent IMDb viewer ratings, with only three episodes — all in Season 3 — scoring lower than a 7.0/10, and all but one Season 4 chapter logging a 7.5 or better.

Schnabel's team is able to bring in huge amounts of gold — $8.4 million worth in 2018 alone (via Discovery) — but many of the show's dramatic moments come from immediate threats to life and limb. Season 2 sees Schnabel, wilderness guide Karla Ann Charlton, and their crew encounter deadly caiman, piranhas, and anacondas as they make their way through Guyana. But in Season 3, Episode 2, Schnabel's adventures — and his life — almost end with a disastrous mishap on a Papua New Guinea cliffside, and his body camera catches it all.

The crew — Parker Schnabel, Karla Ann Charlton, medic Fred Lewis, and camera operator Sam Brown — offer to help a local family dig their vein out from under a huge landslide. They pump water from a nearby reservoir to try and wash the debris away, but a makeshift dam breaks, and Schnabel is knocked off his feet by the rushing stream and sent head over heels down the muddy crevasse. The sequence, available to watch on YouTube, includes the terrifying jumble of sky, mud, and flailing limbs from his body camera as he is carried away, along with his muffled grunts and the sound of the rushing water.

Lewis and Brown bravely follow Schnabel and are able to pull him free after he manages to stop his slide. Covered in wet mud and still coughing water from his lungs, Schabel wheezes, "That went from like zero to 100 in a very short amount of time." Schnabel manages to escape with nothing worse than a couple of smashed fingers, but Brown says he feared much worse. "That was a very close call. Honestly, I thought he was a goner." The team quickly rallies to get Schnabel dry and warm, who says he "hadn't felt this out of control of a situation in a very long time ... it would have taken one rock to knock me out and that would have been a very different story."