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

GT Gold Corp. is a new junior exploration company that is expanding an exciting high-grade gold discovery at its Tatogga property in British Columbia's Golden Triangle.

Lying alongside Highway 37, just west of the village of Iskut, Tatogga hosts Saddle, a large gold-in-soil anomaly that was previously overlooked due to a lack of outcropping bedrock.

As a private company, GT Gold discovered and sampled Saddle in 2013. Because of the downturn in the mining sector, however, advancing the project to the drilling stage had to wait.

When Charles Greig, former senior geologist at Pretium Resources, saw the soil sample data in 2016, he spent his own money to further sample the property. The 11 initial samples he collected across a portion of Saddle South, one of two related gold-in-soil anomalies, averaged 27.3 g/t gold. Follow up sampling confirmed these initial results, and Greig has since joined the company as director and vice president of exploration.

In June, the now publicly traded company launched the first drill program to test the Saddle South discovery, and the initial results were worth the wait.

Highlights from the first batch of results from 20 reverse circulation holes drilled at Saddle include: 10.67 meters of 13.03 grams per metric ton gold from a depth of 7 meters; 9.14 meters of 17.41 g/t gold from a depth of 46.3 meters; and 8.8 meters of 15.33 g/t gold from a depth of 5.5 meters.

An induced polarization program completed in July showed that the mineralization tapped with RC drilling correlated well with the response from the geophysical survey.

This information was used for an initial 10-hole core drill program.

With the success of the maiden drilling, GT Gold raised another C$5 million in August, money the company is putting toward expansion of the high-grade gold discovery.

Highlights from the first eight holes of this core drilling include 7 meters of 51.53 g/t gold and 117.38 g/t silver from a depth of 122.1 meters; 7 meters of 10.26 g/t gold and 46.07 g/t silver from a depth of 20 meters; and 2.9 meters of 18.29 g/t gold and 49.24 g/t silver from a depth of 108.1 meters.

As of mid-September, GT Gold had completed 11,962 meters of drilling in 50 holes at Saddle South.

The first visible gold in Saddle South core was observed at 109 meters of TTD031, assays from this hole were pending at the time of this report. Two reconnaissance holes drilled at Saddle North this summer show the system to be gold-bearing, and the company plans to further test this lower elevation prospect after winter weather makes Saddle South drilling difficult.

-SHANE LASLEY