GT Gold Corp. May 20 announced plans for a 10,000-meter initial phase of 2019 drilling primarily focused on the Saddle North gold-copper target on its Tatogga property in British Columbia's Golden Triangle.

Last year's discovery program at Saddle North involved roughly 8,200 meters of drilling in 10 holes. Highlights from the 2018 drilling include:

• 822.2 meters of 0.42 grams per metric ton gold, 0.26 percent copper and 0.62 g/t silver in TTD085;

• 904.1 meters of 0.51 g/t gold, 0.3 percent copper and 0.93 g/t silver in TTD093;

• 685 meters of 0.4 g/t gold, 0.26 percent copper and 1.03 g/t silver in TTD098;

• 323.8 meters of 0.43 g/t gold, 0.32 percent copper and 1.09 g/t silver in TTD108; and

• 1,149.7 meters averaging 0.62 g/t gold, 0.36 percent copper and 1.17 g/t silver in TTD109.

The principal targets for the initial phase of 2019 drilling will be: nearer-surface extensions to the copper-gold-silver mineralization encountered in hole TTD108, mainly along trend to the northwest; and deeper extensions, both to depth and along strike, of the higher-grade core mineralization encountered in holes such as TTD093 and TTD109.

The deeper drilling will be facilitated in part by drilling a series of "daughter" holes wedged off from existing holes 109, 085 and 102.

"We're thrilled to be gearing up for what will be an important and exciting season in our company's short history," said GT Gold Vice President of Exploration Charlie Greig. "On the back of an exceptional 2018 campaign, our team has successfully outlined a potentially world-class copper-gold porphyry system."

Camp mobilization is slated to begin on June 1 and the company has plans to have two drills turning this year. A weather-resistant camp established at Tatogga last year is expected to support an extended drilling season into the fourth quarter of 2019.

GT Gold said targets for the second phase of 2019 drilling will be determined by the results in the first phase and may include peripheral targets on the property.

GT Gold completes roughly 25,000 meters of drilling in two phases of its 2018 program and has similar plans for this year.

The results of the first phase of drilling will largely determine the course of the second phase, to be undertaken in the latter part of the 2019 season. Earlier this month, Newmont Goldcorp Corp. agreed to invest C$17.6 million into a GT Gold financing, a strategic investment that will accelerate the exploration and development of Saddle North and other targets identified on the Tatogga property.

"We expect this year's program to be comparable in size to last year's, but with the vast majority of the meterage to be drilled on Saddle North," said Greig. "We also welcome a strategic investment from Newmont Goldcorp – we look forward to working with them and leveraging their significant resources and expertise. Now supported by our strong balance sheet, our exploration efforts will be fully funded well into 2020."

Concurrent with phase-one drilling, a variety of additional exploration activities are planned to help develop targets for an anticipated second phase of 2019 drilling. These will include further induced polarization (IP) geophysical surveys, geologic mapping and prospecting to investigate prospective airborne magnetic anomalies along trend to the east of Saddle North; along with a property-wide airborne magnetotelluric (MT) geophysical survey. Any prospective anomalies identified in the MT survey may be a further focus for ground-based follow-up work.

–SHANE LASLEY