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

TerraX Minerals Inc. Jan. 14 announced that, in cooperation with The Geological Survey of the Northwest Territories and The Giant Mine Remediation Project, it was able to recover 16,000 meters of core from historical drilling on Northbelt, one of the properties that make up the company's Yellowknife City Gold Project.

In a preliminary review of the core, TerraX geologists have identified visible gold and are currently logging and splitting the favorable sections of core for assaying.

"Acquiring core with visible gold provides an exciting and unexpected jumpstart to the advancement of key targets that will provide investors an early look at assay results in the first half of 2019," said TerraX Minerals President and CEO David Suda. "We have effectively gained a full season of drilling for a fraction of the normal cost."

Historical drill logs related to the recovered core indicate that several holes cut significant gold intersections. TerraX said logging and re-sampling this core to confirm historical reports is a top priority for the first quarter of this year.

TerraX has identified core from several holes drilled on the northern extension of the Giant mine gold structure on TerraX land. These holes are significant to the development of targets that the company has prioritized for drilling this year.

Earlier this month, TerraX flagged four top priority targets within a roughly 60-square-kilometer (23 square miles) area on the Northbelt property – Crestaurum, Barney Deformation Corridor (BDC), Sam Otto and Homer – as priority targets for deposit expansion and confirmation drilling.

Crestaurum, a 10- to 25-meter-wide shear zone continues to be a top priority target for TerraX. One hole drilled at Crestaurum in 2013 cut five meters averaging 62.9 grams per metric ton gold. The company said the success of past drilling, together with strong vectors from geophysics and geochemistry, have identified two parallel structures to the north that are new and largely untested.

BDC is an extension of the Giant gold system with three parallel structures extending more than 1,000 meters and intersecting with Crestaurum and features abundant high-grade rock samples on surface. There has been very little drilling over most of this shear zone at the intersection with Crestaurum making this a strong new target.

Sam Otto is a prospective bulk tonnage target east of BDC where past exploration has outlined 2,500 meters of continuous gold mineralization. Drilling in 2016 cut zones of up to 49.7 meters averaging 1 g/t gold, 32.13 meters of 1.24 g/t gold, 30.75 meters of 1.29 g/t gold, and 2.4 meters of 9.89 g/t gold. The 2019 drilling will focus on further defining the extension of mineralization.

TerraX Minerals Inc.

Homer, situated about 2,300 meters north of BDC, is a roughly 2,000- by 1,000-meter target with confirmed strong gold mineralization on surface. Pathfinder elements and felsic intrusions related to gold mineralization are contributing vectors that make this a very exciting target. TerraX says Homer is one of largest mineralized zones identified so far at YCGP and there is potential for economic gold bearing shears.

Suda said the 18,000 meters of recovered historical core is from three of these targets – Crestaurum, BDC and Homer.

While the discovery of historical core with early indications of strong gold mineralization is highly encouraging, the TerraX Mineral CEO said some of the largest and strongest targets have yet to be tested.

TerraX will continue to sort, log and resample core to strategically identify the best core for assay in winter 2019.

–SHANE LASLEY