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

HighGold Mining Inc. Nov. 5. reported a long section of world-class gold-zinc-copper mineralization in its first hole at the Johnson Tract gold project in Southcentral Alaska.

The newly formed company's inaugural hole, JT19-082, cut 107.8 meters averaging 12.42 grams per metric ton gold, 8.9 g/t silver, 0.88 percent copper, 7.11 percent zinc and 1.64 percent lead – or 19.55 g/t gold-equivalent.

"Johnson Tract is one of an elite few gold deposits to generate drill intersections in excess of 100 meters of greater than 10 grams per tonne (metric ton) gold," commented HighGold Mining President and CEO Darwin Green. "What makes the mineralization even more impressive is the occurrence of high-grade copper and zinc along with the gold."

This 108-meter intercept is calculated at a 2 g/t gold-equivalent cut-off grade. If you dial the cut-off up to 20 g/t gold-equivalent, the width of the interception is still impressive, and the grades are phenomenal.

At the 20 g/t gold-equivalent cut-off, JT19-082 cut 50.3 meters averaging 23.86 g/t gold, 14.7 g/t silver, 1.33 percent copper, 8.95 percent zinc and 2.92 percent lead – or 33.74 g/t gold-equivalent.

When you calculate the grade times the thickness, which provides a means of comparing different styles and grades of mineralization, the intercept at JT19-082 comes to 2,107 gram-meters gold-equivalent, making it one of the industry's best drill intersections reported this year.

The JT deposit at Johnson Tract has long been known to host rich gold-silver-copper-zinc-lead mineralization.

Under a joint venture with Cook Inlet Region Inc. (CIRI), the underlying Johnson Tract landowner, Anaconda Minerals was the first to explore the Johnson Tract deposit in 1982. The discovery hole cut 102.6 meters averaging 10.94 g/t gold, 8.01 percent zinc, 0.75 percent copper, 2.13 percent lead and 8.5 g/t silver.

Westmin Resources Ltd. continued the exploration at Johnson Tract in the 1990s with the idea of shipping ore from the near coast property to mill facilities at its Premier Mine in northwestern British Columbia.

Based on 88 holes drilled prior to 1995, Westmin calculated that Johnson Tract had 1.04 million metric tons of historical resource averaging 10.05 grams per metric ton gold, 7.63 g/t silver, 8.32 percent zinc and 1.13 percent lead.

JT19-082 is the first new hole on this property in 25 years and was drilled as a twin of historic hole JT93-065.

The new hole cut both wider mineralization and higher grades than its historical twin, which is good news for validation of the past drilling and calculating a resource that complies to modern reporting standards.

HighGold Mining Inc.

HighGold crews carry out prospecting, mapping and sampling during a late-summer program on the Johnson Tract property about 125 miles southwest of Anchorage, Alaska.

Constantine Metal Resources Ltd., which spun Johnson Tract and other gold properties into HighGold earlier this year, said resampling of core from the past drilling on the property returned grades and widths that strongly correlate with the assay results that formed the basis of the historical resource calculation.

In total, HighGold completed 2,247 meters of drilling in nine holes at Johnson Tract this year. The company plans to use the new drill data in combination with the validated historic drill data to generate an initial NI 43-101-compliant mineral resource for the JT deposit.

In addition to drilling, the 2019 program included extensive prospecting, mapping and sampling on numerous regional targets in the vicinity of the JT deposit. HighGold said this work identified multiple drill targets, including a potential fault-offset continuation of the JT deposit and other prospects in the vicinity.

–SHANE LASLEY