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

Golden Predator Mining Corp. focused its 2016 exploration on 3 Aces and Brewery Creek, two of the company's five mineral properties in the Yukon Territory.

At 3 Aces, a high-grade gold project located in southeastern Yukon, the company completed a roughly 750-ton bulk sample of high-grade vein material from the Ace of Spades (formerly Sleeping Giant) vein. In August, the company reported the recovery of 81.4 ounces of gold and 7.77 oz. of silver from the processing of 87.8 dry tons of the bulk sample material. Golden Predator received C$139,062 from the sale of the precious metals.

In addition to bulk sampling, Golden Predator completed a 31-hole reverse circulation drill program at Ace of Spades during an initial phase of exploration. Highlights from the program include: 2.28 meters grading 96.78 g/t gold from a depth of 3.51 meters; 11.43 meters grading 31.89 g/t from a depth of 12.8 meters; and 10.36 meters of 14.3 g/t gold from a depth of 10.06 meters.

In addition to impressive gold grades, this drilling demonstrates the high-grade veins continue and seem to be getting thicker at depth.

In early August, Golden Predator reported a C$4 million second phase of exploration at 3 Aces that included collection of 4,800 soil samples; detailed resistivity-induced polarization surveys to identify quartz veins and structural targets that may not be exposed to the surface within a roughly 10-square-kilometer (2,450 acres) central core area of the 225-square-kilometer (55,600 acres) property.

Within the first two weeks of this program, the company had discovered visible gold at Jack of Spades, a quartz vein about 100 meters east of the Ace of Spades vein and 1,100 meters northeast of the Ace of Hearts (formerly Main Discovery) vein.

Observations of mineralization at Jack of Spades, as well as the other veins, have identified structures and conditions that will provide better targeting for the potential discovery of additional high-grade vein zones.

By early September, this program had discovered 11 previously unknown mineralized veins.

A second phase of exploration that began in October includes at least 3,500 meters of reverse circulation and 400 meters of core drilling designed to collect large volume samples to accurately estimate grades in the veins containing coarse visible gold at Ace of Spades.

To lower costs and ease year-round access, the company also constructed bridge over the Little Hyland River along with six kilometers (3.7 miles) of road into the core area.

At Brewery Creek, the site of a past-producing gold mine located 55 kilometers (34 miles) east of Dawson City, Golden Predator completed roughly 1,600 meters of engineering and metallurgical drilling focused on formerly producing pits where historical data indicates significant oxide gold mineralization remains unmined.

A preliminary economic assessment completed in 2014 targets 10.2 million metric tons of open-pit material from eight deposits at an average grade of 1.35 g/t gold and reprocessing of 4.1 million metric tons of material located on the former heap leach pad at an average grade of 0.77 g/t. The operation is expected to produce 372,000 oz. of gold over a nine-year span.

Golden Predator's portfolio of Yukon properties also includes Marg, a copper-lead-zinc-gold-silver property about 40 kilometers (25 miles) east of Keno City; Grew Creek, an epithermal gold-silver property in southeastern Yukon; and Sonora Gulch, a copper-gold-molybdenum project 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of Capstone Mining's Minto Mine.

-SHANE LASLEY