On September 6, White Gold Corp. (V.WGO) put out a press release detailing the new discoveries at it’s “Ryan’s Showing” target. MotherlodeTV recently interviewed White Gold Corp. CEO, David D’Onofrio, about this satellite deposit in the White Gold District, Yukon.
What is reverse circulation drilling and why do you use it to test new targets?
Reverse Circulation (RC) drilling is a fast, light-weight and cost-effective method of generating high quality samples which are eligible for inclusion of a resource calculation. RC drilling achieves better penetration than Rotary Air Blast (RAB) drilling, but is cheaper than diamond drilling, allowing us to complete more drill holes within a given time and monetary budget. Additionally the environmental impacts of RC drilling are minimal as the drill is mounted on rubber tracks that do not disturb the ground.
How did you select “Ryan’s Showing” for drill testing. What features did it have before you brought in the drills? (And, yes, I did read the paragraph on Ryan’s Showing. Could we go even more basic?)
Rather than jump directly to costly drilling, our team uses a systematic approach to exploration. Given our massive land package this is critical; it’s simply not feasible to drill every target on each of our properties. Ryan’s Showing had all of the positive indicators, including geophysical structure as mapped with Lidar, geochemical soil anomalies and rock samples with high-grade gold. The presence of all of these characteristics made the Ryan’s Showing a viable drill target and the drill results confirmed this. This measured approach allows us to stretch exploration dollars further and test more targets each season.
In the release, Jodie (Jodie Gibson, P.Geo. and Vice President of Exploration) mentions “satellite deposits”. How many of these have you identified and, ballpark, what size are you looking for?
There is an old adage, “The best place to make a new discovery is near an existing discovery”. We have seen this proven to be true over and over again, and we believe this to be the case on our White Gold property. One of the key ways we’re working to grow our existing 1.25M oz gold resource is through the exploration of the land surrounding the Golden Saddle for satellite deposits. There are 5-6 targets we are actively exploring right now, with many more in the queue. With the planned infrastructure improvements, including roads built directly to the White Gold property, even deposits of 250k-500k ounces become viable that are not very close to our existing resource. There are also opportunities to share infrastructure with nearby mines, such as Goldcorp’s mine which is scheduled to be in production by 2021, making satellite deposits more economical.
At this point, are you viewing Ryan’s Showing as part of the Golden Saddle “system” or are you considering it a “stand-alone” occurrence?
Ryan’s Showing is located 2 km away from the Golden Saddle deposit but is along the same trend, and while we believe it to part of the same system, it is a completely new mineralized zone. Ryan’s Showing is characterized by particularly high grades from shallow depths, with the discovery hole returning grades ranging from 7.07 g/t to 39.8 g/t Au, some of the highest ever in the Yukon. What is also very exciting is that the system is wide open and only very limited historical work has been done between the Golden Saddle and the Ryan Showing before this year. Additional results from this year’s exploration are pending and will be released in due course.
How much longer will White Gold be able to continue with this season’s exploration program – weather? Daylight?
Drilling was well ahead of schedule which allowed us to expand our budget and get more exploration work done than originally planned. This is well timed as it will avoid scrambling to finish the program as the days get shorter and temperatures drop. Having achieved our exploration goals we are looking forward to taking the winter to digest this season’s results and sharper our plans for next season. With that said, however, we are set up to and will continue to work as long as it makes economic sense to do so as we are following up on a number of exciting opportunities.