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

Atac Resources Ltd. Jan. 17 announced plans for a C$10 million exploration program at its Rackla gold project, an extensive land package that stretches roughly 185 kilometers (114 miles) east-west across central Yukon Territory.

This fully-funded program will include roughly 15,000 meters of drilling focused on expanding high-grade gold mineralization at the Nadaleen and Rau trends.

At Rau, a 20-kilometer-long (12.5 miles) trend towards the western end of the Rackla project, Atac plans to complete core drilling to test the newly discovered Tiger East anomaly and other targets related to the Tiger gold deposit.

In 2016, the company published an updated preliminary economic assessment for a mine at Tiger that would produce roughly 302,300 ounces of gold over a six-year mine life from ore averaging 3.81 grams per metric ton gold.

Estimated pre-production capital costs for this operation are C$109.4 million and life-of-mine sustaining capital costs are expected to be C$8.3 million.

At Nadaleen, about 90 kilometers (55 miles) east of Tiger, Atac is planning core drilling aimed at expanding high-grade gold structures at the Conrad and Osiris zones, where the first Carlin-style gold mineralization was discovered in Canada.

The company is also planning exploration drilling at the nearby Anubis Cluster gold zones and other high priority geochemical targets in the area.

"We have successfully advanced the Rackla gold project through challenging markets while maintaining a healthy treasury and preserving our capital structure," said Atac President and CEO Graham Downs. "We are very well-positioned going into a busy and exciting year as we take advantage of the economies of scale that have previously returned excellent results and new discoveries at the Rackla gold project."

-SHANE LASLEY