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

Golden Predator Mining Corp. got off to an early start at its 3 Aces project in 2017, significantly expanding the size of the southeastern Yukon property as well as the high-grade gold zones found there.

Early in the year, the company announced the acquisition of the Hy-Jay and Reef gold properties, which expand 3 Aces to 357 square kilometers (138 square miles).

With the district consolidated, Golden Predator kicked off a 40,000-meter drill program in February. This work began at the Spades zones – Ace, Queen, Jack, Seven and Three. The early 2017 drilling continued to have success at Ace of Spades, the primary vein in the zone.

The best hole, 3A17-098, cut 39.63 meters averaging 13.26 grams per ton gold, including 3.05 meters averaging 124.64 g/t (4.04 ounce per metric ton) gold.

Other highlights from Ace of Spades include 1.52 meters of 72.25 g/t gold; 1.52 meters of 54.25 g/t gold; 19.3 meters of 16.15 g/t gold and 6.86 meters of 20.15 g/t gold.

Golden Predator says this year’s drill results suggest a merging of the Ace and Jack of Spades zones into a single near-surface, bulk mineable deposit. In September, Golden Predator poured a 744 troy ounce doré bar recovered from a 776-metric-ton bulk sample collected from the Spades zones. In addition to the doré poured from the No. 1 concentrate table, Golden Predator shipped 86.4 kilograms of No. 2 concentrate and more than 1 metric ton of No. 3 concentrate for further processing.

The 2017 program also included nearly 10,000 soil samples across a wide swath of the 3 Aces property; 943 grab, chip, channel and panel samples; and geological mapping. This work resulted in the discovery of at least four new zones – King of Hearts, Jack of Clubs, Spades Detour and Diamonds. The structural zone hosting the King of Hearts appears to extend to Jack of Clubs. If so, the combined zones would have a strike of around 1,600 meters. Drilling began testing the northerly extension of the Hearts zone in August and on the newly discovered gold-in-quartz veins at the Diamonds zone in September.

Golden Predator also owns Brewery Creek, the site of a past-producing gold mine 55 kilometers (34 miles) east of Dawson City, A 2014 preliminary economic assessment outlined plans for a heap-leach operation that would produce an estimated 372,000 oz of gold over a nine-year span. This includes mining 10.2 million metric tons of open-pit material from eight deposits averaging 1.35 g/t gold and reprocessing material located on the former heap leach pad. The company is seeking a partner to operate this mine.

Focused on 3 Aces, Golden Predator optioned its White Gold District properties – Chopin, Korat, Lucky Joe, 40 Mile and Sonora Gulch – to Taku Gold Corp. in exchange for a roughly 25 percent stake in that company. Golden Predator also holds net smelter return royalties on the projects optioned to Taku.

-SHANE LASLEY