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

TerraX Minerals Inc. Jan. 12 said it has entered into an agreement to acquire the Ptarmigan Mine property, a 47-hectare (116 acres) claim block within the company's Eastbelt property at the Yellowknife City Gold project in Northwest Territories.

The three gold properties that make up the YCG projects – Eastbelt, Southbelt and Northbelt – blanket 440 square kilometers (170 square miles) of gold prospective land surrounding the Northwest Territories capital.

The newest addition to this district scale land package hosts the historical Ptarmigan Mine, which operated 1941 to 1942, 1983 and 1985 to 1997. The main Ptarmigan vein was accessed by a shaft extending to a depth of 275 meters and mined over 400 meters of strike length. Production from Ptarmigan totaled 112,213 ounces of gold in 364,874 metric tons of material averaging 9.56 grams per metric tons gold. The gold is free milling with historical reported gold recoveries ranging from 94 to 98 percent.

When the mine closed in 1997 the vein was still open along strike to the west on claims now owned by TerraX and below the mine workings.

"The acquisition of the Ptarmigan mine property gives TerraX nearly 1 kilometer of strike coverage along the Ptarmigan vein trend. This provides an opportunity not only to extend the mineralization below and along strike of the main vein at the mine, but also offers opportunity to explore parallel vein systems discovered south of the main vein and reported in historical documents and identified as potential production areas," said TerraX CEO Joe Campbell. "With paved road access from Yellowknife, and high-tension powerlines connected to the former mine site, Ptarmigan, with exploration success, could easily be brought back to life."

TerraX has the option to acquire full ownership of the Ptarmigan property by paying C$5,000 in cash; and issuing 40,000 TerraX shares issued upon TSX Venture Exchange approval of the option agreement.

–SHANE LASLEY