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Boxed drill core staged on the pad
2026 Crew Honors

Employeeof the year

Twelve on, twelve off, all winter on the ridge and underground. Four hands out of the Hawthorne yard put up the best recovery and footage numbers Gorilla Drillers has ever logged across surface core, reverse circulation and the decline — and did it without a single recordable incident.

4
Crew
4
Awards
0
Incidents
Chris A., Gorilla Drillers driller, on a Nevada ridge pad in company uniform
Driller of the Year
Driller — Night Shift

Chris A.

Chris runs the brake like he can feel the bit. Broken ground that eats other crews' recovery numbers comes up whole in his barrels — he backs off, changes his water, and brings the run home instead of forcing it. He plans his rod trips before the shift starts, keeps the deck clean, and has never handed off a rig that the day crew had to fix. Fastest average penetration rate in the yard, and the highest recovery to go with it. That combination does not happen by accident.

112,400 ft
Drilled in 2026
98.9%
Avg. HQ recovery
0
Recordable incidents
Mikal E., Gorilla Drillers helper, on a Nevada ridge pad in company uniform
Helper of the Year
Helper — Night Shift

Mikal E.

Mikal is on the deck before the rod stops turning. Core comes out of the barrel oriented, blocked, depth-marked and photographed the way the geologist wants it — every run, every box, every shift, at three in the morning in the wind. He keeps the pad squared away, catches the loose fitting before it becomes a shutdown, and the boxes are banded and staged before the sun comes up. Best set of hands a driller can ask for on a graveyard rotation.

6,880
Core boxes handled
Same shift
Box turnaround
100%
JSA participation
Greg T., Gorilla Drillers RC driller, on a Nevada pit pad in company uniform
RC Driller of the Year
RC Driller — Grade Control

Greg T.

Greg makes a hammer sound like it wants to be there. He reads the booster and the air, keeps the bit fed instead of beating it, and pulls more clean footage per shift than anybody in the yard without cooking tooling. Where he really earns it is the sample: cyclone blown down between rods, splitter cleaned every interval, bags labeled and sequenced so the lab never sends a query back. Dust control on his pad is the standard the rest of the crews get measured against.

148,600 ft
RC advanced in 2026
<1.5%
Sample contamination
0
Recordable incidents
Billy J., Gorilla Drillers underground driller, in a lit mine heading in company uniform
Underground Driller of the Year
Underground Driller — Decline Programs

Billy J.

Billy works where there is no room to be wrong. He sets up square in headings other crews call too tight, bolts and bars before the rig ever comes in, and never lets a setup get rushed by a shift clock. In broken, water-charged ground he backs the pressure off and changes his mud instead of forcing the run — which is why his recovery holds up in the exact intervals the geologists care about most. He calls the back honestly every single shift, and the whole underground division is safer for it.

61,200 ft
Drilled underground
97.4%
Recovery in fractured ground
0
Ground-control events
The standard

Why they earned it

Nobody wins this on talk. It is measured off the shift reports, the recovery logs and the safety board hanging in the Hawthorne shop.

Recovery

Core in the box the way it came out of the ground. Numbers the client's geologist never has to question.

Footage

Consistent shift-over-shift advance without pushing the tooling or the crew past the line.

Safety

Written JSAs, honest hazard calls, and a rig handed off clean. Everybody drives home.

Attitude

First on the pad, last off it. Fix the problem, then talk about who caused it.

“Put any of these four on a hole and I stop worrying about the hole.”

Yard Superintendent — Hawthorne, NV

Put this crew on your program(775) 412-0968