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

White Gold Corp. May 18 announced its plans for the 2022 exploration program at its more than 1-million-acre (422,730 hectares) land package in Yukon's White Gold District, with particular focus on targets from last year's successful season.

Much of this year's program will further evaluate targets on the White Gold property as well as the Betty Ford property to follow up on the 2021 exploration which continued to produce very encouraging results as well as to perform maiden drill testing on several other targets.

"We expect 2022 to be another exciting year for White Gold as we build on the success of our 2021 program where we made a very significant new high-grade gold discovery on our Betty property and continued to expand the large footprint of mineralization at the Ryan's Surprise/Ulli's Ridge zones," said White Gold CEO David D'Onofrio.

The flagship deposits on White Gold's namesake property – Golden Saddle and Arc – host 15.6 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 2.28 grams per metric ton (1.14 million ounces) gold and 9 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 1.39 g/t (402,100 oz) gold.

Situated about 2,000 meters west of Golden Saddle, Ryan's Surprise lies at the center of a roughly 6,500-meter-long gold mineralized trend running alongside the Yukon River that also encompasses Ulli's Ridge, Teachers Showing, Minneapolis Creek, and other prospects.

A significant early-stage regional exploration program is also planned to identify and advance other targets on the company's extensive and underexplored land package.

The 2022 program is slated to include:

• 7,500 meters of drilling, including 5,000 meters of diamond drilling, 1,000 of reverse circulation (RC) drilling, and 1,500 meters of rotary air blast (RAB) drilling.

• Drilling at Betty to test for extensions of the near surface breccia-hosted high-grade gold zone, where 2021's maiden diamond drilling intersected 3.46 g/t gold over 50 meters in hole BETFD21D003 and 1.17 g/t gold over 48 meters in hole BETFD21D001.

• Maiden diamond drilling at the Mascot target, which lies approximately 5,000 meters east of the Betty Ford discovery, to test mineralized zones identified in historical RC drilling which included 2.62 g/t gold over 41.1 meters in hole BETR12-022 at the Page zone, 29.7 g/t gold over 3.1 meters in BETR12-012, and 1.48 g/t gold over 21.3 meters in BETR12-007 at the Davis zone.

• Additional prospective targets at the Betty property will be tested with RC and RAB drilling.

• Diamond drilling on the White Gold property will be focused on Ryan's Surprise and Ulli's Ridge target area with drilling to be carried out to test the gap area between the prospects to determine if they are part of the same mineralized zone, and to further test the high-grade gold discovery at Ulli's where the 2021 maiden diamond drilling intersected 6.94 g/t gold over 19.5 meters in hole WHTULR21D004.

• Focused prospecting will be carried out along the 6,500-meter-long north-northwest gold and arsenic soil geochemical trend (Ryan's trend) located 2,000 meters west of Golden Saddle, with plans to test high priority anomalies with RAB drilling.

• A regional early-stage exploration program based on the company's proven methodologies, will include 10 properties with the goal of identifying and defining new targets.

White Gold Corp.

Click photo to see larger map.

• Further details on the 2022 drilling and other exploration programs will be announced in the coming weeks and months in respect of the different components of the programs.

"In 2022 we have designed a very impactful program to further diamond drill test these recent high-grade gold discoveries as well as advance other high-priority targets across our expansive and underexplored land package," added D'Onofrio. "Extensive review and analysis performed in the off-season has also provided insightful new interpretations on several projects which we are excited to integrate into our methodical program."

The company says the C$6 million program slated for this year is fully funded and is scheduled to get underway in the coming weeks.