On December 10, White Gold Corp. (V.WGO) put out a press release detailing the new drilling and prospecting results at its “Vertigo” target. MotherlodeTV recently interviewed White Gold Corp. CEO, David D’Onofrio, about this discovery in the White Gold District, Yukon.
1. In your December 10 press release you report results from a drill hole 300 meters away from previous drilling. Why did you choose to drill there?
Soil sampling and advanced geotechnical analysis has always been at the core of our exploration strategy; a strategy designed by our Chief Technical Officer and famed prospector, Shawn Ryan. Before any drilling happens in an area, we first analyze a wide swath of the unglaciated Yukon soil as it is a strong indicator of what is contained in the bedrock underneath. Subsequent to the geochemical work, we then analyze these “Hot” zones structurally with Lidar to asses the structure, and finally follow up with the GT Probe, a highly advanced way to assess the bedrock with minimal environmental disturbance. These tools allow us to optimize the drill placements.
Once again our exploration strategy was proved correct. JPRVERRC18-016 is approximately 300m north of our core Vertigo drilling, and returned results of 9.19 g/t Au over 9.14m from 54.86m depth, including 17.2 g/t Au over 4.58m.
This is very big news, as it indicates another mineralized structure parallel to our existing Vertigo structure. With the hole’s distance and it still producing such high-grades, we believe our Vertigo discovery could be multiples larger than we previously imagined.
2. In terms of grade, how do these results compare with the results of other Vertigo holes?
The drill results to date across Vertigo have been really extraordinary, such as JPRVERRAB18-014/JPRVERRC18-013 with 22.47 g/t Au over 30.46m, including 59.3 g/t Au over 3.05m, or JPRVERRC18-006 with 31.35 g/t Au over 6.10, including 103.9 g/t Au over 1.53m; these being just a few highlights of our many high-grade holes.
What is really exciting is that these new step-out drill holes continue to demonstrate consistent high-grades, even when hundreds of metres away from our main drilling area. Holes such as JPRVERRC18-016 mentioned prior with its 9.19 g/t Au over 9.14m, or JPRVERRC18-014 with 18.6 g/t Au over 1.52m. With these latest drilling results, we see that the already significant footprint of multiple structurally controlled mineralized zones at Vertigo have been identified over hundreds of metres, on a very footprint that is largely untested. And as we continue to explore around the discovery it just keeps showing its massive potential; we really have something special here.
3. What is the significance of your sampling program also reported in the December 10 release?
As mentioned, soil and surface sampling is a main step in our exploration program. Across the Vertigo zone, surface samples returned superb grades including 304.3 g/t Au, 156.2 g/t Au and 105.0 g/t Au, with 7 samples grading over 50 g/t Au, 16 samples grading over 10 g/t Au and 29 samples grading over 2 g/t Au.
Along with being some of the highest grades ever encountered in the entire White Gold District, these soils also identified a brand new 180m wide undrilled area on the Vertigo target approximately 300m west of JPRVERRC18-009 (14.23 g/t Au over 6.10m from surface). This specific zone produced 24 samples that returned values ranging from trace up to 58.4 g/t Au, with samples averaging 10.1 g/t Au; even more high-grades of gold indicating what we have underneath.
High-grade surface samples have also been encountered on multiple other undrilled target areas along Vertigo’s 18km structural trend, with results of up to 105 g/t Au. Follow up work still needs to be completed on these targets, such as GT Probe sampling, geophysical surveys and drilling, but we believe the prospecting results in these areas are very comparable to those found at Vertigo, and thus very strong potential for these other targets to produce the same mineralization. These results indicate that we could have several other Vertigo type discoveries right under our feet! So stay tuned…
4. From a larger perspective, how do these new results fit into your overall understanding of the Vertigo area?
Whether its the new soil or grab samples or drilling results the data expands the known gold mineralization across additional parallel structures and potential on the Vertigo, and has significantly increased the footprint of the overall system. The structural zones hosting the high-grade mineralization on the Vertigo, highlight this potential for expansion of the known mineralization at the Vertigo and on the additional new discoveries on other targets in the area.
The high-grade material is also widely spread across the area is some of the most impressive in the whole Yukon. The Vertigo and the entire White Gold District is unfolding as a large-scale gold system which is just beginning to be uncovered. We look forward to receiving the remainder of the results from Vertigo and the surrounding targets and on our other properties which will be released in due course.
We are extremely happy with these results thus far!