North of 60 Mining News - The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North

Contango ORE Inc. May 5 posted results from the first-ever winter drill program carried out on the Tetlin properties near Tok, Alaska.

Peak Gold, a limited liability joint venture managed by a subsidiary of Royal Gold Inc., invested roughly US$1.9 million in this initial 2016 program focused on exploring at and around the Peak Zone gold deposit at Tetlin.

A 2014 resource for the Peak Zone outlines 6 million metric tons averaging 3.46 grams-per-metric-ton gold, 11 g/t silver and 0.25 percent copper.

Additionally, the skarn deposit has an inferred resource of 3.9 million metric tons averaging 2.07 g/t gold, 14.28 g/t silver and 0.23 percent copper.

Using a single rig, the road-supported winter program completed 4,040 meters of diamond core drilling in 19 holes at the North Peak, West Peak, Two O'clock and Connector zones, all near the Peak Zone.

The North Zone, not included in the resource but extensively drilled in 2015, continues to return good results.

TET16192 cut six mineralized intercepts at North zone, including 13.27 meters averaging 49.19 g/t gold, 4.5 g/t silver and 0.035 percent copper from a depth of 78.5 meters; TET16204 cut three mineralized intercepts at North Zone, including a silver-rich 1.82-meter zone averaging 16.34 g/t gold, 328.4 g/t silver and 0.157 percent copper from a depth of 60.95 meters; and TET16206 cut 43.43 meters at the North Zone averaging 3.6 g/t gold, 2.08 g/t silver and 0.108 percent copper from a depth of 78.5 meters.

TET16210, drilled about 200 meters southeast of North Zone and 200 meters northeast of Peak Zone, is of particular interest.

This final hole of the winter program cut two mineralized intercepts, including 43.96 meters averaging 3.28 g/t gold, 30.6 g/t silver and 0.402 percent copper.

Drilled in an area now know as Connector, TET16210 shows the potential to link the Peak and North zones, which would significantly expand the footprint of the skarn deposit(s) identified.

"The winter drilling program was successful in expanding the known limits of both the Peak and North Peak zones, and perhaps most importantly found new, significant mineralization in its first drill hole in the Connector Zone that may lead to a better understanding of the relationship between Peak and North Peak and possible further expansion of the mineral system," explained Contango ORE President and CEO Brad Juneau.

"It was previously thought that the Peak and North Peak areas were separate zones, but the mineralization found at the Connector Zone (Hole 16210) more than 200 meters from the nearest existing known mineralization at Peak-North Peak may be part of a single, larger gold system." A summer drill program is slated to begin in mid-May as follow-up to the winter drill results and to test previously undrilled areas.

Details of the summer program are anticipated in the coming weeks.

Under a deal signed in early 2015, Royal Gold can earn up to a 40 percent interest in the Peak Gold JV by investing up to US$30 million in the Tetlin project by October 2018.

Of this amount, Royal has contributed US$8.4 million to Peak Gold, of which US$1.8 million was held in cash equivalents at March 31.

Author Bio

Shane Lasley, Publisher

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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