VIDEO Gold Rush Season 3 trailer

Gold Rush Todd Hoffman

The official preview trailer for Gold Rush Season 3 has come out, and it gives us some tantalizing clues about the new season.

The video doesn’t reveal too much, which is by design I’m sure. We knew Todd and the Hoffman crew would be mining. Gold Rush has, for better or worse, become the Hoffmans’ show. That was clearly the idea in Season 1, and although Discovery could have schosen to take things in a different direction for Season 2, they stuck with the Hoffmans as the centerpiece and simply added more characters around them. Todd Hoffman may not be a very good miner, but he is an excellent reality tv star, and has doggedly stood his ground as the focus of the show. Who knows what he’s doing behind the scenes; but whatever it is, it’s working, and it appears we will be seeing a lot more of the Hoffman crew this season.

Here’s the clip:

Here’s the season synopsis from Discovery Channel:

Discovery Channel’s highest-rated series, returns for a third season on Friday, October 26th. After two years of equipment breakdowns, infighting and battling Mother Nature, this season one crew finally strikes it rich… but which one? Parker Schnabel has a new crew, new land and a newly rebuilt wash plant on his side. After months and months of digging, Dakota Fred finally hit bedrock and started to see the best gold yet just as winter set in last year – and has high hopes that this will finally be the season he walks away a millionaire. And in his quest to find 1,000 ounces of gold this season, Todd Hoffman doubles down with two claims and twice the crew and equipment. But is that enough to get him to his goal of finding ten times more than he did last year?

Gold Rush 3 Jack Hoffman Todd Hoffman Klondike gold placer mining

We could’ve guessed that Parker Schnabel would talk his mom into letting him mine for TV again. As a mom, myself, I completely sympathize with her need to rein Parker in and make sure he stays on track for college, but come on. Parker belongs on this show. She knows it as well as anyone. She might not like that the Discovery Channel showed up in her backyard, but now that they’re there, the Schnabels are just going to have to play it out.

Parker Schnabel Gold Rush 3 Alaska

I guess I’m a little surprised to see Dakota Fred Hurt, though. He was famously infuriated with the way the show portrayed him at the beginning of Season 2, and, based on what I’ve read, he doesn’t seem to have many fans. Despite being told that Fred’s off-camera story would make him look much less villainous, I still have many of the same misgivings I had about him with Season 2, Episode 1 first aired . . . and so do a lot of the show’s fans. Maybe Christo Doyle thinks he’s the miner we love to hate. Maybe he’s right.

Dakota Fred Hurt Gold Rush 3 Alaska Porcupine Creek

Do you think those mason jars of gold really came out of one of our guy’s mines? Dakota Fred’s appearance in the clip makes me wonder if he’s gone back to looking for glory in the bottom of Jack’s hole at Porcupine Creek. Wouldn’t that be something? If he is the one that hits the mother lode, and it turns out to be at the bottom of the hole that Jack Hoffman dug in Season 1 there are going to be some angry, angry Gold Rush 3 fans. My oh my oh my!

Gold Rush 3 Todd Hoffman Parker Schnabel Dakota Fred Hurt

Long gone are the days that I tune into Gold Rush because I’m interested in learning anything about mining. If there’s anything that the last two years have taught us, it is that these guys don’t know anything about placer mining, gold prospecting, or anything else related to what they do on film. Call me a glutton for punishment, but even though I know I’m just going to see a bunch of amateurs grabbing their moment in the reality TV spotlight, I just can’t look away. I’ll be right there this season watching the Hoffmans talk big and find new ways to look like they don’t know what they’re doing. There’s an off chance, I guess, that in the process of pretending to mine for the cameras, the Hoffmans will actually become gold miners, sort of like the Monkees actually became a band because they were cast as one for TV. That’d be an interesting twist, wouldn’t it? Hey, maybe they’ll be the one’s who strike it rich!

Nah. My money’s on Tony Beets!

Gold Rush 3 Alaska Klondike Tony Beets Todd Hoffman Dakota Fred Hurt