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

Sitka Gold Corp. April 12 reported an update on its recently initiated 10,000-meter diamond drill program at the company's RC Gold project, which has already begun returning impressive results that is "far beyond anything" the company has seen to date.

Located within the central region of Canada's Yukon Territory, the RC Gold project is roughly midway between Sabre Gold Mines Corp.'s Brewery Creek mine project and Victoria Gold Corp.'s Eagle Gold mine.

At approximately 37,700 hectares (93,000 acres), this highly fertile and largely underexplored land package is situated about 100 kilometers (62 miles) east of Dawson City, at the headwaters of Clear Creek and Big Creek, a major placer mining district that is serviced by a network of gravel roads and trails.

In March, the company announced an initial inferred mineral resource estimate for two targets at its RC Gold project. According to the calculation, its flagship Blackjack hosts 33.7 million metric tons averaging 0.83 grams per metric ton (900,000 ounces) gold at a cutoff grade of 0.25 g/t gold; while Eiger hosts 27.4 million metric tons averaging 0.5 g/t (440,000 oz) gold at the same cutoff.

Combined, the initial inferred resource amounts to roughly 1.34 million oz gold.

The initial drilling of 2023 is focused on step-out drilling to expand what appears to be a higher-grade component of the maiden Blackjack gold deposit announced early this year.

"The geologic indicators observed in our first step-out hole of the year are very encouraging," said Sitka Gold CEO Cor Coe. "The concentration of gold grains observed in hole 41 is far beyond anything we have seen to date and was encountered near the start of what appears to be a well mineralized interval."

Hole 41, DDRCCC-23-041, was collared just 160 meters south of discovery drill hole DDRCCC-21-021, "Hole 21," and drilled on a northeast azimuth with a minus 60-degree dip and was designed to test for an extension of high-grade material at a depth below drill holes 025 and 038.

"Given the impressive visuals, hole 41 is expected to further extend what appears to be a higher-grade core of the Blackjack gold deposit to the east and to depth," said Coe. "The 2023 drilling at RC Gold is off to a great start and we look forward to the significant advancement that this year's activities should bring to the project."

Hole 41 encountered the expected metasedimentary country rock unit with weak quartz-sulfide veining from collar to 184 meters depth, where it then transitioned through a series of narrow intrusive dikes and sills with markedly increased vein density and visible gold occurrences, which continues in to the main megacrystic intrusive from 232 meters to 347 meters depth.

After that, a single meter showed another zone of transitional intrusive dikes and sills with significant densities of quartz-sulfide veins similar to those above and comparable to the core of the Blackjack deposit.

At 438 meters, the holes crossed a 17-meter-wide post-mineral dike followed by more intrusive rocks with variable quartz-sulfide veining to the end of the hole at 518.8 meters.

Although not yet assayed, the first drill hole of the season has already excited Sitka Gold. Aiming for 10,000 meters, with roughly 500 down and with results this encouraging, time can only tell what the remaining 9,500 will hold.