Near Winnemucca, Nevada, Hycroft Mining says its newest drill hole is the best in the company’s 40-plus year history, a result that pushes its Vortex gold-silver system into new ground and feeds the underground mine plan the company is building around it.
- Hole H26D-6175A cut 19.6 metres grading 30.49 g/t gold and 1,726.72 g/t silver, including a narrower 1.7-metre zone at 347.07 g/t gold and 9,526.36 g/t silver with visible gold present.
- Hycroft calls it the highest-grade gold intercept in company history at the mine, and the best silver-equivalent grade yet drilled at Vortex.
- The hole is part of Hycroft’s 2025-2026 exploration program at Vortex and the neighboring Brimstone system, both high-grade precious metals targets inside the broader Hycroft Mine.
- The Northern Miner reports the narrower high-grade zone extends the system to the west and south, and that its true thickness has not yet been reported.
- Hycroft is feeding results like this into a conceptual underground mine plan, a separate track from the open-pit heap leach operation that has run at the site for decades.
What did the new hole find?
H26D-6175A is a step-out hole into the Vortex system, one of two high-grade precious metals targets Hycroft has been drilling since its current exploration program began. The headline interval, 19.6 metres of 30.49 g/t gold and 1,726.72 g/t silver, carries an inner 1.7-metre zone where grades jump to 347.07 g/t gold and 9,526.36 g/t silver, with visible gold observed in the core. Hycroft’s executive chair and chief executive, Diane Garrett, called it “an exceptional result and the best hole in our history,” adding that the silver-equivalent grade beat the company’s previous best hole by more than half.
Where does Vortex sit in Hycroft’s Nevada operation?
Hycroft Mine, roughly 90 kilometres west of Winnemucca in Humboldt and Pershing counties, has operated under various owners for more than four decades, historically as an open-pit, heap leach gold and silver mine. Vortex and Brimstone are exploration targets layered beneath and around that existing footprint, and the company describes both as among the largest precious metals systems it has identified at the property. Hycroft has engaged outside engineering firms to study a conceptual underground mine plan built around this higher-grade mineralization, work that sits alongside, not in place of, a possible restart of heap leach production.
Why does one drill hole matter for Nevada’s mining story?
Nevada already produces roughly three-quarters of the country’s gold, most of it from the Carlin Trend operations anchored by Barrick and Newmont. Hycroft represents a different kind of Nevada story: a long-running mine searching for a higher-grade underground extension of a system that has mostly been worked from the surface. Results like H26D-6175A do not yet change what Hycroft can book as a mineral resource. The company’s own disclosure is explicit that exploration targets are not resource or reserve estimates, and that no feasibility study for an underground mine has been completed. What the hole does show is that the mineralized system keeps growing in the direction the geology team is chasing.
What happens next at Hycroft?
Hycroft says the higher grades and longer intercepts suggest drilling may be closing in on a source for the broader Vortex system, and the company has accelerated follow-up drilling at both Vortex and Brimstone. Separately, Hycroft has said a decision on restarting heap leach production could come by year-end, while the underground study continues on its own longer timeline. Mining Our Future’s Season 1 tour visits this stretch of Nevada on its Nevada silver and emerging plays leg near Winnemucca, and our Nevada state report tracks the district alongside the Carlin Trend and the state’s lithium projects. Silver from sites like Vortex feeds the same solar and electronics supply chains that run through the rest of the tour.