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

White Gold Corp. Aug. 15 said it has begun drilling near-surface high-grade gold mineralization recently discovered at the Vertigo Trend on the company's JP Ross property in Yukon's White Gold District.

The Vertigo gold mineralization was encountered using GT Probe, a track mounted sampling machine engineered by Dawson City-based GroundTruth Exploration. Designed to be more cost-effective and less environmentally invasive than traditional trenching, the GT Probe drives a cased hole through the soil profile to collect a sample from the bedrock interface.

GT Probe sampling at Vertigo returned assays with as much as 29.1 grams per metric ton gold, including 6.5, 3.4 and 3.3 g/t gold within 2 meters of the surface on previously untested structures.

"The results from the Vertigo are very exciting, confirming near surface high-grade gold mineralization in locations consistent with our model and the presence of multiple parallel mineralized zones on the JP Ross property," said White Gold Vice President of Exploration Jodie Gibson. "We immediately put a drill on the target to confirm that the mineralization continues at depth and we look forward to receiving these drill assays."

White Gold Corp. used a combination of soil sampling, Lidar and induced polarization geophysical surveys to develop its model. This work has identified at least three zones of potential mineralization – the Vertigo, Rebecca and Sabotage trends. The company is following up on these targets with rotary-air-blast (RAB) drilling.

GroundTruth Exploration Inc.

Dawson City-based GroundTruth Exploration designed the GT Probe to take samples from the soil-bedrock interface quicker and with less environmental impact than the trenching method traditionally used.

"These new high-grade gold targets identified at Vertigo are a result of our systematic exploration method that emphasizes the efficient collection of cost-effective exploration data that begins with regional soil sampling, followed by GT Probe and IP-resistivity surveys and finally drilling," Gibson added.

Surface sampling has traced the trend at Vertigo for about 6,000 meters along strike.

White Gold Corp. said the geological setting at Vertigo is similar to the Golden Saddle deposit on the company's White Gold property about 19 miles (30 kilometers) to the south.

JP Ross was previously explored by Underworld Resources and Kinross Gold Corp., which carried out soil sampling, trenching, geophysics and 8,592 meters of diamond drilling in 64 holes. This work includes trenching at Vertigo, which returned 4.28 g/t gold over five meters within a 45-meter zone that averaged 1.05 g/t gold.

White Gold Corp. said 14 target areas have been identified across the more than 113,650-acre- (46,000 hectares) JP Ross property and large portions remain unexplored.

–SHANE LASLEY