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

Nighthawk Gold Corp. March 21 announced that a 25,000-meter drill campaign is now underway at its Indin Lake gold property in the Northwest Territories.

Located about 160 kilometers (100 miles) north of Yellowknife, the 899-square-kilometer (222,200 acres) Indin Lake property hosts a number of gold deposits, including zones that extend out from the historical Colomac open-pit mine, which produced 527,908 ounces of gold during the 1990s.

In 2013, the last time a resource was calculated for Indin Lake, the project hosted 39.8 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 1.64 grams per metric ton (2.1 million oz) gold.

Roughly 2 million ounces of this gold resource is found at Colomac and Goldcrest, parallel trends of dikes and sills within a larger greenstone belt.

Nighthawk President and CEO Michael Byron believes that former mine operators and others misunderstood the geology and the potential for higher grade zones just beyond the historically mined deposits.

A 21,168-meter drill program carried out last year focused primarily on expanding the resources identified along the Colomac trend. This program greatly expanded the gold zones adjacent to historical mining and the company anticipates an updated resource by mid-year.

Nighthawk Gold Corp.

A geologists inspects core from from 2017 drilling, which expanded the gold zones adjacent to historical mining on the Indin Lake property.

Highlights from 2017 drilling at Zone 1.5, which is below one historical pit, include: 55.35 meters of 3 g/t gold; 23.7 meters of 4.78 g/t gold; 51.4 meters of 2.46 g/t; 22.7 meters of 6.78 g/t gold; and 34.75 meters of 3.12 g/t gold.

This year's drill program will continue delineation of known high-grade gold zones such as Zone 1.5; explore for high-grade gold zones at Colomac; and test select priority gold targets within its vast regional land package.

Nighthawk also plans to carry out extensive geological mapping, prospecting, and ground geophysical programs directed at better defining known targets and generating new opportunities, with the goal of advancing regional showings and deposits at Indin Lake to a drill-ready status.

Kinross Gold Corp., Osisko Royalties and McEwen Mining are all strategic investors in Nighthawk.

–SHANE LASLEY