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

Whitehorse Gold Corp. Feb. 17 reported that its maiden drill program at Skukum has succeeded in enhancing the company's geological understanding and confirmed the high-grade tenor of this gold project about 55 kilometers (34 miles) south of Whitehorse, Yukon.

New Pacific Metals Corp., which gained full ownership of Skukum through the 2011 acquisition of Tagish Lake Gold Corp., created Whitehorse as a vehicle to further explore this road accessible gold-silver project in southern Yukon.

Host to the historical Mount Skukum mine, which produced roughly 79,750 ounces of gold from 233,400 tons of ore from 1986 to 1988, the Skukum property is already an advanced project with significant infrastructure. These facilities include a year-round access road, 50-person camp, roughly 4,800 meters of underground workings, 300-ton-per-day mill, tailings management facility, and service buildings.

There has also been roughly 140,000 meters of drilling previously completed on the property.

According to a calculation completed prior to the formation of Whitehorse, the Skukum Creek deposit hosts 1 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 5.85 grams per metric ton (188,344 oz) gold and 166.4 g/t (5.36 million oz) silver; plus 537,000 metric tons of inferred resource averaging 4.99 g/t (86,124 oz) gold and 108.3 g/t (1.87 million oz) silver.

A four-hole drill program completed by Whitehorse late last year was successful in its goals of defining the deeper portion of the Rainbow zone at Skukum Creek, validating historical drill hole intercepts, and identifying thicker zones of high-grade gold and silver.

Whitehorse previously released results from the first two holes:

• SC20-001 cut 8.9 meters (roughly 8.1 meters true-width) averaging 6.54 g/t gold and 186.9 g/t silver, including 1.22 meters averaging 21.4 g/t gold and 563 g/t silver.

• SC20-002 cut 10.5 meters (6.3 meters true-width) averaging 8.1 g/t gold and 175 g/t silver, including 2.2 meters of 25.2 g/t gold and 636 g/t silver.

The third hole encountered an equally impressive gold-silver intercept in the Rainbow zone.

SC20-003 cut 6.3 meters (roughly 5.8 meters true-width) averaging 11.2 g/t gold and 300 g/t silver, including 1.3 meters of 30.3 g/t gold and 837 g/t silver.

Whitehorse Gold Corp.

The final hole of the 2020 program, SC20-004, did not cut significant mineralization. It did, however, cut geological and geochemical indicators that the mineralizing system continues to the northeast toward the largely untested Raca target.

"We are very pleased with our 2020 drill program and the success our exploration team had in identifying thicker zones of mineralization and confirming the high-grade gold mineralization in the Skukum Creek deposit," said Whitehorse Gold CEO Kevin Weston. "The results provide valuable, strategic information to be used in the planning of our 2021 drill program on the project."

Significant gold and silver mineralization at Skukum Creek has been traced to depths of roughly 700 meters and for nearly 1,000 meters along strike. Whitehorse says this system remains open at depth, as well as to the northeast and southwest.

Author Bio

Shane Lasley, Publisher

Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.

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