Skeena Resources Ltd. April 3 announced the start of an 11,000-meter underground drill program at its Snip gold project in British Columbia's Golden Triangle.

The historic underground mine at Snip, which Barrick Gold operated from 1991 to 1999, produced 1.1 million ounces of gold from 1.25 million metric tons of ore averaging 27.5 grams per metric ton gold.

Skeena optioned this project from Barrick early in 2016 and completed roughly 7,180 meters of surface drilling that year.

This drilling and other exploration work met the requirements for Skeena to gain full ownership of the property and begin exploring the historic mine from underground.

In 2017, the company completed 8,650 meters of drilling in 62 holes.

Building upon the data gathered from this initial phase of underground drilling, the 2018 program is designed to further delineate areas of known mineralization with low drill-density and to expand newly modelled zones via widely spaced exploratory drill step outs.

One of the newly modelled zones, 200 Footwall, is situated 200 meters below the Twin Zone, which produced 709,601 ounces of gold from ore that averaged 28.95 g/t gold.

Geologically and structurally similar to the parallel Twin Zone, the 200 Footwall was the target of limited underground drilling by previous operators. One surface hole drilled by Skeena in 2016, S16-006, cut 13.5 meters of 16.24 g/t gold in a previously undrilled area of this zone.

Skeena said the geological similarities to Twin Zone, coupled with the sparse drilling, make the 200 Footwall a substantial exploration target and a large portion of the 2018 program is designed to expand upon this newly modelled and largely untested area.

Another target of this year's drilling is Eastern Twin Zone, an area beyond the eastern portion of the Snip Mine that was less densely drilled by the former operators and never developed.

During 2017 underground drilling, Skeena cut 3.82 meters of 91.56 g/t gold about 50 meters below the surface in the Eastern Twin Zone. Another hole testing Eastern Twin at depth cut two broad intervals of gold mineralization – 11.85 meters of 19.26 g/t gold and 5.95 meters of 11.21 g/t gold – at a depth of 370 meters below surface.

Skeena plans on infilling Eastern Twin, as well as testing deeper extensions of this zone, during the 2018 drill program.

Another target of this year's drilling is 412 Corridor, where gold mineralization is characterized by a network of discrete, structurally controlled veins geologically akin to the historically mined 130 and 150 veins, zones that accounted for 23 percent of historical gold production at Snip.

–SHANE LASLEY