'Gold Rush' Spinoff: Gresham's Dave Turin Is Happy To Be 'calling The ...

When Dave Turin left fellow Oregonian Todd Hoffman’s “Gold Rush” crew at the end of Season 7, it wasn’t with a whimper, but a bang.

In a 2017 retrospective episode, “Gold Rush” viewers saw that a season of tension on the Hoffman team finally boiled over, as Turin and Trey Poulson got into a fight. The brawl, at the Hoffman gold claim in Colorado, was a shocker, especially since Turin had earned a reputation as the level-headed mining expert on Hoffman’s crew.

Turin may have been done with working on the Hoffman crew, but he wasn’t done with mining. And now he has his own spinoff show, “Gold Rush: Dave Turin’s Lost Mine,” which premieres on the Discovery Channel on April 5.

In a phone interview, Turin, who lives with his wife in Gresham, jokes that it literally took a “punch in the face” to get him to quit the Hoffman crew.

As he says in the show, Turin had been feeling frustrated for a while. What had begun as a group that felt as close as family had changed, he says, with Turin often disagreeing with “Gold Rush” decisions made by Hoffman, who lives in Sandy. (Hoffman last year announced he was also leaving “Gold Rush” after Season 8.)

He and Hoffman had been “very close” for years, Turin says. Though the on-camera break wasn’t easy to watch, Turin says he and Hoffman still sometimes talk, or exchange texts, though they’re not as tight as they once were.

“That’s life,” Turin says, sounding philosophical.

But Turin is excited about the new show, which helps channel his sense of adventure. While he could stay in Oregon and work in the family business -- which does road building, paving and operates a rock quarry in Brightwood – Turin says finding gold in a sluice box is more exciting than admiring, as he says in the show, “a nice pile of rock.”

“Dave Turin’s Lost Mine” isn’t just another “Gold Rush” spinoff, like “Parker’s Trail,” which debuts a new season on April 5, before Turin’s show starts. Turin’s show also marks the first multi-platform series in the Discovery lineup. The first seven episodes of the show premiered on the Discovery GO streaming app and are available on the Discovery website. The episodes, about 10 minutes each, feature more about Turin’s search for abandoned mines.

In the series premiere, we follow Turin as he journeys from the Yukon territory to the American Southwest, exploring abandoned mines and analyzing whether there’s enough potential gold to be worth his effort.

Though Turin sets out with investor funding, a twist comes late in the series premiere. Without spoiling too much, by the time the episode is over, Turin has decided to finance his mining with his own money.

Turin says it was satisfying to be “calling the shots,” and build a crew that may not be the most experienced, but are people is he respects and who respect him. Adding to the family feeling he was looking to recapture, Turin says, his wife, Shelly, was also on hand, working in the business side of the operation.

With 'Gold Rush' done for the season, and Dave Turin out, Parker Schnabel stars in a spinoff

After a "Gold Rush" season that saw the miners struggling, Parker Schnabel is starring in a three-part spinoff series, "Gold Rush: Parker's Trail," starting March 31 on the Discovery Channel.

While Turin was shown on the job in his seasons working with Hoffman on “Gold Rush,” the new show includes some glimpses of Turin at his home in Gresham, and fishing with one of his grandkids on the Deschutes River.

Turin hopes viewers will get a sense of the history of the mines and the impact the industry has had on America, including a tidbit about Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War.

He was happy to get back to gold mining, Turin says. As he notes in the show, "I’ve always been the guy that always gets back up, gets back in the fight, puts his boots on, and goes to work.”

“Gold Rush” begins with Season 3 of “Parker’s Trail,” which takes Parker Schnabel and his team to Papua New Guinea, at 9 p.m. April 5, with “Dave Turin’s Lost Mine” debuting at 10 p.m. on Discovery Channel.

-- Kristi Turnquist

[email protected] 503-221-8227 @Kristiturnquist

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