One of the staples of Gold Rush is Rick Ness, a gold miner who previously worked with Parker Schnabel. The pair parted ways when Rick established his own mining operation in the ninth season, but it hasn’t been an easy path for Rick, as he’s had to face many personal and professional challenges since then.
Following a short-lived hiatus from the show, Rick returned in the 14th season. But the joy of his comeback was slightly overshadowed by the shocked reactions caused by visible changes in his appearance. Gold Rush fans have been quick to theorize the varied reasons behind these changes—but is there any substantial reason to believe those theories?
Keep with us to learn more about Rick Ness’s life now, the reason behind his new appearance, the future of his mining operation, and a lot more.
Rick Ness’s return to Gold Rush in the 14th season was one of the most eagerly anticipated by fans. Previously, he left during the 13th season to sort out personal and financial troubles, but he promised to return to the mining operation eventually—carrying out his promise in the next season, which premiered in late 2023.
Unfortunately, Rick’s run on the show’s 14th and 15th seasons has been widely commented on—not for his mining accomplishments but for the apparent physical changes that he’s experienced in recent years. As fans on Reddit and his social media have commented, his face looks older, and his nasal septum looks lower compared to how his nose looked several years ago.
Rick’s changes in appearance have become such a common topic of discussion that news platforms have also reported on it. Though no one knows for sure what caused these changes, fans have inevitably theorized that Rick’s face has changed either because he’s gotten older naturally or because of an accident. Others have claimed it’s a result of his recent struggles with drugs.
An accident is an unlikely possibility—as such a thing would have already been known due to Rick’s fame. The aging theory is as likely as the theory about drugs, as the latter is a struggle that Rick has dealt with recently. However, nothing is for sure until Rick himself addresses these comments.
A lot has happened to Rick Ness in recent years. For a start, he lost his mother in 2018, which caused him to spiral down into depression and other mentally and physically demanding problems. While Rick kept most of these struggles under wraps for several years, it came to the point when he could no longer keep going with his life as he normally would.
At the beginning of Gold Rush‘s 13th season, Rick revealed that he needed to take some time away from the mine and TV altogether to focus on healing and making his life better. It’s also worth noting that at that time he was struggling to keep his mining operation afloat. According to him, in an interview with People shortly before the premiere of the 14th season in late 2023, there was some stigma about him asking for help to alleviate his mental health struggles.
On top of that, Rick had turned to drugs to hide from those issues. All of that led him to take time to figure out that something wasn’t right with him. Though he eventually realized that he was deep in depression, as Rick also admitted to People, coming to terms with his vulnerability was a huge step forward in finding a way out of that dark part of his life.
The reasons which led Rick Ness to temporarily step away from Gold Rush in 2022 certainly included his depression, which was revealed by Rick to his friend and associate Brian Zaremba at the beginning of the 13th season—much to the shock of his fans. According to Rick and the show, he suffered from a type of depression named Seasonal Affective Disorder.
It was hard for Rick to publicly reveal his struggles, so the revelation was a long time coming. Later on, Rick told TV Insider that the issue originated when he tried to ignore the grief over his mother’s death for far too long due to work and the old mindset that he shouldn’t let that get to him.
Seeking help and taking some time for himself was the right thing to do—but the financial issues that he’d had following a not-so-successful 12th season were still there. That’s why Rick made the tough decision to sell his mother’s house and afford to buy the equipment and documentation he needed to return to the mining business in late 2023.
In the end, Rick had a positive 14th season. Thus, his return for the next one was expected and probably the best way to get him on his feet after struggling for so long.
Since his return to Gold Rush in 2023, Rick Ness has again found how great gold mining is, as he confessed in a 2024 interview with TV Insider. The 14th season was his way of proving that the mine was the place where he belonged—and that motivated him to return with renewed energy and higher expectations for the next season.
Those high spirits have had positive results in Rick’s operations, as some clips from the 15th season show him happily weighing a considerable amount of gold from his operation.
So what will happen to Rick Ness from now on? Only time will tell, of course. But it isn’t far-fetched to think that Rick could be finding his way out of the struggles he has faced recently and maintaining his successful mining operation.
