The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North

ME2018: White Gold Corp.

With continued financial and technical support from Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. and Kinross Gold Corp., White Gold Corp. carried out a budgeted C$9 million program in 2018 to expand known deposits and explore the larger potential across the roughly 1 million acres (390,000 hectares) of prospective lands it holds in the Yukon's White Gold District.

The explorer's massive portfolio of gold properties is a re-assemblage of White Gold prospects legendary Yukon gold prospector Shawn Ryan identified over the past decade.

Ryan, whose savvy prospecting helped spark a gold exploration rush across the Yukon that led to the discovery of Goldcorp's Coffee Gold project, serves as White Gold Corp.'s chief technical advisor.

"I'm helping them on the technical side; we got Rob Carpenter, who was leading the charge with Kaminak, on our board of directors," Ryan explained.

As president and CEO of Kaminak, Carpenter recognized the potential of Ryan's prospecting at Coffee and took the discovery to a roughly 3-million-ounce gold project that led to Goldcorp buying Kaminak for some C$520 million.

Jodie Gibson, who has a decade of exploration experience including extensive work in the White Gold District and Alaska, is White Gold's vice president of exploration.

When the junior raised funds for the 2018 program, both Agnico Eagle and Kinross elected to participate in a C$10 million flow-through financing to maintain their respective 19.9 percent interest in White Gold Corp.

About half of this year's exploration program focused on regional targets across the company's extensive land holding. The balance targeted resource expansion at the flagship White Gold property.

A resource calculated for the White Gold property early in 2018 outlines 12.32 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 2.43 grams per metric ton (961,000 ounces) gold; plus 5.16 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 1.7 g/t (282,500 oz) gold in the Golden Saddle and Arc deposits.

GS Main, a high-grade core of Golden Saddle, contains 832,000 oz gold in the indicated category averaging 2.96 g/t gold and 107,000 oz gold in the inferred category averaging 3.18 g/t gold. Using reverse circulation drilling, the 2018 program focused on expanding the GS Main zone and testing the system at depth.

An initial phase of diamond drilling targeted previously underexplored portions of Golden Saddle.

Highlights from the first holes of this program include 32 meters of 6.89 g/t gold from a depth of 171 meters in hole WHTGS18D0176; and 44.9 meters of 4.6 g/t gold from a depth of 219 meters in WHTGS18D0175.

White Gold also reported that WHTGS18D0174 intersected an unexpected eight-meter zone of 1.34 g/t gold above the Golden Saddle Main zone, from a depth of 47 meters, demonstrating the presence of mineralization above the previously defined mineral resource. This hole also cut 40 meters of 3.69 g/t gold starting a depth of 139 meters.

Ryan has a database of more than 300,000 soil samples taken from prospects across the White Gold District. To narrow the best drill targets uncovered by this extensive sampling, White Gold Corp. is utilizing GroundTruth Exploration, an innovative exploration company run by Ryan's wife, Cathy Wood.

GroundTruth employs "Drones to Drills," a systematic mineral exploration technology that uses drones to collect ultra-high-resolution imagery of prospective areas turned up with sampling; soil-bedrock interface sampling with GT Probe, a track-mounted sampling rig designed by GroundTruth; and rotary air blast drilling using GT RAB, a remote-controlled tracked drill also developed by the company.

In addition to drilling completed on its namesake property, White Gold conducted RAB drilling, GT Probe sampling, induced polarization geophysical surveys, electromagnetic geophysical surveys and collected around 22,000 soil samples from its extensive portfolio of properties across the wider White Gold District.

In August, the company reported a high-grade gold discovery along the 6,000-meter-long Vertigo trend on its JP Ross property, about 19 miles (30 kilometers) north of Golden Saddle.

GT Probe sampling at Vertigo returned assays with up to 29.1 g/t gold within 2 meters of the surface on previously untested structures.

The first hole drilled at Vertigo cut 3.05 meters of 56.25 g/t Au from a depth of 3.05 meters, part of a 10.67-meter intercept averaging 17.34 g/t gold. Immediately following the Vertigo discovery, White Gold expanded the JP Ross property.

The Vertigo discovery is another example of how White Gold Corp.'s systematic reconnaissance exploration is paying off and results from this year's regional program will be used to define targets for further drilling in the White Gold District in 2019.

-SHANE LASLEY

White Gold Corp. - TSX-V: WGO

CEO: David D'Onofrio

Chief Technical Officer: Shawn Ryan

VP, Exploration: Jodie Gibson

82 Richmond St. East, Toronto, ON M5C 1P1

Tel: 604-630-6889

 

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