Familiar Face Makes Unexpected Return to Join Kevin Beets & Reveals Bold New Look

[Warning: The below contains spoilers for Gold Rush Season 16.]

The miners are hard at work during Season 16 of Gold Rush with the stakes as high as ever. During the November 28 episode of the popular Discovery Channel series Parker Schnabel leveled up his operations with new equipment to help him reach the 10,000-ounce goal. 

Tony Beets has been riding high coming out strong, but doesn’t want to lose momentum. His son Kevin continues to work through growing pains as a second-year mine boss. However, a new recruit of a familiar face gives him and partner Faith Teng the boost they desperately needed.

Read on to find how things shook out this week. 

Parker Schnabel 

Parker Schnabel/Discovery Channel

After three weeks into the season, the mine prodigy generated more than $2 million in gold from his Dominion Creek claim. However, he sought out to jumpstart things further by getting Sulphur Creek on the board. Time is ticking with his water license set to expire soon there. He doesn’t want to run into the challenges Rick Ness had been dealing with and worrying about a renewal. Parker wanted to get sluicing within the week, which put the pressure on the two foreman Mitch Blaschke and Brennan Ruault. They cleared overburden and identified the gold hotspots for what was believed to be pay. The next step was relocating the wash plant Roxanne from 25 miles of rough road at Dominion. The crew managed to get her running, which made Parker happy. The crew met for a weighing. Right out of the gate, Sulphur came in at 114.08 ounces. “That’s actually really good for the hours you ran,” Parker said. He was pleasantly surprised. Overall the three wash plants ran at 527 ounces for the week worth $1.1 million. That was 1,100 ounces ahead of where they were at last year. 

Tony Beets

Jacob Moore/Discovery Channel

The “King of the Klondike” had already banked a whopping 775 ounces toward his 6,500-ounce target. He wasn’t resting on his laurels and wanted to keep his foot on the gas at Indian River. The problem was Cousin Mike had an emergency and needed to fly out to Europe. This meant heavy equipment operator Jacob Moore stepped in as foreman in his absence. The first big task was to take care of the water at the Early Bird cut. The crew had to expand the cut by nine acres. Spring water flooded the space and drowned the exposed gold rich pay. 

They had to connect the submersible pump in order to drain water out of the mined out section and get back to hauling. Jacob didn’t make a good show for himself. Tony took charge as a result. He gave Jacob a second chance. He heard a mysterious noise coming from the wash plant Sluice-a-Lot in the shaker deck and found cracked tailing shoots after bolts fell off, which made it unstable. The crew welded the area. Luckily the problem was found early or it would have been an even worse issue. Tony was impressed. The Beets family came together to see how they did. They hit more than 1,000 ounces with a 250.7 ounce result worth $878,000. 

Kevin Beets

Buzz Legault/Discovery Channel

It has been a mixed bag for Scribner Creek. The second-year mine boss had a nice stockpile out of the gate where he sluiced 100 ounces in two weeks. However, his crew dwindled after losing Brennan and Kayden Foot to Parker. He was also running out of pay and had to open up new ground at the Pyramid Cut. Kevin and Faith had to get some more additions to their team. In an interesting turn of events, Buzz Legault returned. Only this time it wasn’t for Rick. During his time away, Buzz mentioned he went on a trip to Mexico and got his teeth fixed. He told Kevin and Faith he wasn’t going back to Rick because it was unstable and he needed stability with a baby on the way. 

Kevin offered him the job of foreman. Faith said they needed a jack of all trades. “This might work,” she said. Buzz responded with, “I can be your Buzz of all trades.” With an experienced addition, Kevin could focus on making the biggest wash plant move of his career. He had to move it from the Links Cut down a slope and then up a steep 30-degree incline to its final sluicing location. There was no second quarter of a million dollar wash plant, so this had to go well. It was also the first test for Buzz and Kevin’s working dynamic. When the excavator couldn’t move the wash plant the way they wanted, the plan pivoted to bringing in the D10 dozer. This worked. Kevin thought Buzz fit in well. The crew weighed the last of stockpile pay before the wash plant relocation. It brought in 56.59 ounces worth $198,000. They hoped  to sluice by the end of the week at the Pyramid cut. It would be the only way to get them remotely close to the 2,000-ounce goal set. 

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