Parker Schnabel: the dirt nerd who keeps striking gold

Parker Schnabel was a typical Alaskan teenager when he discovered gold exploration and reality television. Still only 25, he has excelled at both for a decade. What will he do next? 

Parker Schnabel © Roy Rochlin/Getty Images
© Getty
(Image credit: Parker Schnabel © Roy Rochlin/Getty Images)

When he was growing up, Parker Schnabel viewed himself as "a pretty typical Alaskan kid". He lived for hunting. "For about five years our family hardly had to buy any meat. I was pretty proud of that." Then, in his teens, his attitude shifted, says The Times. "It was no longer deer and bears and moose" that drove Schnabel. "It was something more mysterious and compelling. It was gold."

Fans of the Discovery Channel reality show Gold Rush are no strangers to Schnabel's standing as "a connoisseur of dirt". He's made $20m, consistently out-earning rivals, and now lays claim to being "one of the most successful gold mining bosses in the Klondike" as well as the star of Discovery's most successful show.

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Jane writes profiles for MoneyWeek and is city editor of The Week. A former British Society of Magazine Editors editor of the year, she cut her teeth in journalism editing The Daily Telegraph’s Letters page and writing gossip for the London Evening Standard – while contributing to a kaleidoscopic range of business magazines including Personnel Today, Edge, Microscope, Computing, PC Business World, and Business & Finance.

She has edited corporate publications for accountants BDO, business psychologists YSC Consulting, and the law firm Stephenson Harwood – also enjoying a stint as a researcher for the due diligence department of a global risk advisory firm.

Her sole book to date, Stay or Go? (2016), rehearsed the arguments on both sides of the EU referendum.

She lives in north London, has a degree in modern history from Trinity College, Oxford, and is currently learning to play the drums.