TerraX set for first drilling at Southbelt

TerraX Minerals Inc. Jan. 24 said it has received the permits needed to drill Southbelt, one of two large land packages that make up its Yellowknife City Gold project. With permits approved, the company plans to begin drilling this highly prospective property around the end of February.

Southbelt is about five kilometers (three miles) south of the city of Yellowknife and extends from the mine leases of the historic Con Mine, where more than 6 million ounces of gold was produced during a 60 year mine life.

TerraX says extensions of several mineralized trends previously mined at Con extend onto the Southbelt property, including the namesake Con Shear, which appears to extend up to five kilometers (three miles) onto Southbelt.

Other structures have been traced on surface for about 1,000 meters onto the Southbelt property.

Sampling of these structures in 2015 returned up to 94.9 grams per metric ton gold and grab samples collected in 2016 returned 33.6 g/t and 16.4 g/t gold.

TerraX plans to target these structures with 10,000 meters of drilling in 2016.

"The Southbelt target contains multiple high-grade gold occurrences with very high potential for discovery," said TerraX CEO Joseph Campbell.

In recent years, TerraX has focused its drilling on Northbelt, a second large Yellowknife Gold property that extends north from the capital of Northwest Territories.

The company says the six veins and shear zones it has discovered along a 10-kilometer-long (six miles) core area of Northbelt - Mispickel, Sam Otto, Barney, Herbert-Brent, 20 Shear and Crestaurum - are indicative of a larger mineralized system on the property.

TerraX will continue drilling at Northbelt with a planned 7,000-meter program in 2017.

-SHANE LASLEY