The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Now plans 20,000 meters, a record for the Alaska gold project North of 60 Mining News – June 25, 2021
HighGold Mining's expanded 20,000-meter drill program at the Johnson Tract gold project in Alaska is now underway.
HighGold Mining Inc. June 23 announced it has expanded its 2021 drill program at Johnson Tract to 20,000 meters, a 25% increase over the 16,000 meters originally slated and the largest ever drill program at the gold-rich polymetallic project in Southcentral Alaska.
The decision to expand the original C$10 million 2021 program and accelerate the exploration at Johnson Tract follows a C$1.9 million boost to HighGold's treasury from the exercise of warrants in May.
Proceeds raised from recently exercised warrants provided the impetus for expanding the Program and accelerating exploration efforts at Johnson.
Drilling began this week with two rigs targeting the JT deposit and a third at the DC prospect.
"It feels great to have the drills turning again at Johnson," said HighGold Mining President and CEO Darwin Green. "During the off-season, our geological team developed and refined a large number of high-quality drill targets that we are eager to pursue. The upsized program allows us to more aggressively test these target areas, particularly amongst the regional prospects, most of which are being drill-tested for the very first time."
HighGold plans to target JT and the immediate surrounding area with roughly 50-70% of the expanded drilling, with the balance focused on exploring regional prospects.
According to a calculation completed in April of 2020, the JT deposit hosts 2.14 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 6.07 grams per metric ton (417,000 ounces) gold, 5.8 g/t (397,000 oz) silver, 5.85% (275.3 million pounds) zinc, 0.57% (26.8 million lb) copper, and 0.71% (37.6 million lb) lead.
Since this resource was calculated, the HighGold team completed 32 holes to expand this deposit and test other targets in the immediate area.
Highlights from 2020 drill intercepts on the margins of the JT deposit mineral resource area include:
• 74.1 meters averaging 17.89 g/t gold, 7.1 g/t silver, 0.48% copper, 7.28% zinc, and 1.31% lead in hole JT20-092.
• 75.1 meters averaging 10.01 g/t gold, 6 g/t silver, 0.57% copper, 9.36% zinc, and 1.11% lead in JT20-093.
• 20.1 meters averaging 11.5 g/t gold, 4 g/t silver, 0.5% copper, and 3.1% zinc in JT20-096.
This year's drilling at JT will include expansion drilling along strike and down-plunge of the deposit; expansion of the Footwall Copper zone discovered in 2019; testing of a new interpretation of the fault offset continuation of JT; exploration of the Gap target, a sparsely drilled prospective corridor northeast of JT; and further testing of the 2020 VMS zone, where hole JT20-114 cut 7.8 meters averaging 6.1% zinc, 1.6% lead, 0.2% copper, 0.7 g/t gold, and 36 g/t silver.
The Johnson Tract regional prospects to be tested this year include:
• DC prospect – Located about 2.5 miles (four kilometers) northeast of JT deposit, DC hosts large gossan alteration zones similar in style. These zones include New Vein Field, 500- by 1,000-meter silver-rich area of multiple sets of low-sulfidation epithermal crustiform quartz veins, vein swarms, and siliceous breccias discovered by HighGold geologists last season.
• Milkbone prospect – Located 400 meters west of the silver-rich New Vein Field, Milkbone is defined by a strong soil anomaly with samples of 70 to 4,390 parts per billion gold, with supporting high-grade rock sample results from near-source boulders and subcrop with up to 184 g/t gold.
• Kona prospect – a large-scale alteration zone about 1,000 meters west of Milkbone that is associated with a strong induced polarization geophysical anomaly.
Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.
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