Exploration programs live for the hole that changes the story. On September 30, ICG Silver & Gold reported one of those holes at its Tuscarora District project in Elko County, Nevada: hole T26RC-04, drilled at the Battle Mountain target — ground the company staked only earlier this year — cut 24.3 meters grading 10.14 g/t gold and 3.4 g/t silver, with a one-and-a-half-meter section running 137.0 g/t gold and 25.7 g/t silver.
- T26RC-04's headline interval, reported from 181.4 meters downhole, included 4.6 meters at 51.84 g/t gold and 12.1 meters at 20.00 g/t gold — grades that stand out in any jurisdiction, let alone from a reverse-circulation hole.
- All six holes reported — the first of twelve drilled in ICG's 3,000-meter Phase 1 program — encountered gold and/or silver mineralization. Assays from six more holes, at the King's Vein and East Pediment targets, are pending.
- The drilling identified what ICG calls a new high-grade mineralized shoot at Battle Mountain, within a broader, lower-grade mineralized system.
- ICG controls roughly 10,000 acres at Tuscarora and has compiled more than 40,000 meters of historical drilling into a district-scale geological model.
- The company is targeting a first Mineral Resource Estimate for Tuscarora in Q1 2027.
An honest word on the numbers
The reported lengths are downhole intervals; true widths have not yet been established. That is normal for an exploration-stage result like this — the hole tells you the grade is real, and follow-up drilling tells you how wide the body is. What matters at this stage is that a structural-targeting model picked ground the company had only recently staked, and the first drill test hit a high-grade shoot.
"This is a significant result for ICG and an important validation of our approach at Tuscarora," said President and CEO Steven Sirbovan. He added that the result comes from ground "secured earlier this year based on our team's geological interpretation" — the kind of call that builds confidence in a targeting method, not just a single target.
Where Tuscarora sits
Tuscarora is a silver-gold epithermal district about an hour northwest of Elko, near the intersection of the Carlin and Independence trends — some of the most productive gold ground on Earth. Historically, the district produced more than 500,000 ounces of gold and 7.5 million ounces of silver (historical production, not a compliant estimate).
The neighborhood is busy. Nearby, First Majestic Silver is advancing the Jerritt Canyon operation — a separate property, not part of Tuscarora — with a reported US$75 million of planned investment in 2026, 42,000 meters of drilling this year, and a potential production restart targeted for the second half of 2027. Two projects do not make a trend, but they do say the same thing about this corner of Nevada: the drills are turning.
With six more holes in the lab and a resource estimate on the calendar, ICG has given itself — and its watchers — a winter of catalysts to look forward to.