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

TerraX Minerals Inc. Nov. 4 announced an inaugural mineral resource estimate for its Yellowknife City Gold Project about seven kilometers (four miles) north of the past producing Giant gold mine on the outskirts of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories.

Three deposits at YCGP – Crestaurum, Mispickel and Sam Otto – host 11.62 million metric tons of open-pittable inferred resource averaging 1.4 grams per metric ton (523,000 ounces) gold.

Additionally, four deposits – Crestaurum, Barney, Mispickel and Sam Otto – host 1.15 million metric tons of underground inferred resource averaging 5.7 g/t (212,000 oz) gold.

All these deposits are found within a 3,000-meter radius.

"This first mineral resource for the Yellowknife City Gold Project is a major milestone in the project development," said TerraX Minerals Executive Chairman Gerald Panneton. "To date, drilling has barely scratched the surface of the property and already we are having exploration success at Sam Otto and Crestaurum, and elsewhere."

Panneton, founder of Detour Gold, was named TerraX executive chairman on Oct. 22. TerraX' former executive chairman, Joseph Campbell, will remain on as a director and COO of the company.

"The Yellowknife city gold project represents a very unique opportunity. I am as excited as I was for the Detour Lake acquisition 13 years ago. We look forward to resuming drilling as soon as it is possible on our two best targets, Sam Otto and Crestaurum," Panneton said at the time of his appointment.

Hosting 10.79 million metric tons of open-pittable inferred resource averaging 1.23 g/t (426,000 oz) gold, Sam Otto is by far the largest of the three surface deposits outlined so far at YCGP.

The shear-hosted gold mineralization at Sam Otto has been defined over a strike length of 4,500 meters and remains open along the north-south strike and to depth.

The Crestaurum deposit, situated about 3,000 meters southwest of Sam Otto, hosts 127,000 metric tons of open-pittable inferred resource averaging 9.41 g/t (38,000 oz) gold.

TerraX Minerals Inc.

The outcropping Crestaurum deposit, and the high-grade gold mineralization found there, has been modeled for a shallow starter pit before moving potentially into an underground operation. The underground deposit currently stands at 723,000 metric tons of inferred resource averaging 6.56 g/t (153,000 oz) gold. Both the surface and underground deposits at Crestaurum remain open in multiple directions.

TerraX plans to carry out drilling at both Sam Otto and Crestaurum early in 2020.

The current lack of drilling in many areas of Sam Otto has put a limit on the initial mineral resources within the pit optimizations, which the company plans to begin to address with a drill program slated to begin in the first quarter of next year.

Early 2020 drilling at Crestaurum will focus on tracing this deposit deeper, as well as infill drilling to increase the confidence level of the high-grade gold resource already outlined to the indicated category.

–SHANE LASLEY