White Gold Corp. July 5 announced the start of its 2022 drill program at the Betty Ford and Mascot gold targets on the Betty property, located within the southern part of the company's enormous land package that covers much of the White Gold District in Yukon, Canada.

Betty is strategically positioned about 15 kilometers (9 miles) northeast of Western Copper and Gold Corp.'s Casino porphyry deposit and 40 kilometers (25 miles) east of Newmont Corp.'s Coffee gold deposit.

"Our 2021 maiden diamond drill program on the Betty Ford target returned one of the best holes drilling in the district, intersecting 3.46 g/t (grams per metric ton) gold over 50 meters from near surface," said White Gold CEO David D'Onofrio. "We are eager to follow up on this exciting discovery to further test the extents of the broad gold zone encountered. We are also excited to commence a maiden drill program at the Mascot target that hosts three large gold mineralized zones, which we believe may be indicative of the presence of a broader gold system."

The program forms part of the company's 2022 fully funded $6 million exploration program on its extensive and underexplored 350,000-hectare (864,869 acres) White Gold District land package, which is supported by strategic partners Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd., and Kinross Gold Corp.

The 2022 program at Betty is expected to include approximately 2,200 meters of diamond drilling and 1,650 meters of reverse circulation drilling, focusing primarily on Betty Ford and Mascot. This will be done to test the depth and strike extents of the gold mineralized zone identified during last year's program – which included 3.46 g/t gold over 50 meters in hole BETFD21D003 and 1.17 g/t gold over 48 meters in hole BETFD21D001.

Planned drilling at Mascot, which is located approximately five kilometers (three miles) southeast of Betty Ford, represents maiden diamond drilling for the target.

Drilling at Mascot will be focused on three known gold mineralized zones – Page, Boop, and Davis – where historical RC drilling encountered significant gold and silver mineralization including 2.62 g/t gold and 107 g/t silver over 41.1 meters in hole BETR12-022 at Page; 29.75 g/t gold over 3.1 meters in BETR12-012, as well as 2.19 g/t gold over 10.7 meters including 6.05 g/t gold over another 3.1 meters in BETR12-014 at Boop; and finally, 1.48 g/t gold over 21.3 meters in BETR12-007 at Davis.

RC drilling planned will also test several additional targets elsewhere on the property, including the Betty Black target located directly on the Coffee Creek Fault approximately five kilometers (three miles) west-northwest of Betty Ford and the Betty Grable target, which may represent a strike extension of the Betty Ford 1,500 meters to the west.

"Our Betty property is located in close proximity to existing large gold and copper deposits along the same fault structure," said D'Onofrio. "We look forward to further advancing this prospective and underexplored property."

The startup of drilling at Betty follows the completion of the initial phase of 2022 diamond drilling at the Ryan's Surprise and Ulli's Ridge targets on the company's namesake property.

Once drilling is finished at Betty, White Gold plans to return to Ryan's Surprise for an additional phase of drilling.

Further details of White Gold's exploration program can be read at White Gold announces 2022 program plans in the May 20, 2022, edition of North of 60 Mining News.