On December 19, 2019 White Gold (V.WGO) released drill results from its Vertigo Discovery on the JP Ross property in Yukon. We asked the company to give us a bit of background on the results and what its plans are for the Vertigo Discovery going forward.
What is the Vertigo gold discovery and how were your latest diamond drill results?
The Vertigo is one of White Gold Corp’s recent high-grade, near surface, gold discoveries generated through its methodological and data-driven exploration strategy. Drilling to date has encountered significant high-grade gold structures with mineralization noted in every completed hole. The high-grade structures encountered are located within a broad mineralized zone with the structures and mineralized zone open in multiple directions, including at depth. The Vertigo discovery is primarily comprised of a 1.5km mineralized trend, which forms part of a currently estimated 250km2 mineralized system with numerous newly identified targets being tested.
You talk about “fence drilling”. Can you describe what that is and why WGO does it?
As the Vertigo has only seen limited drilling prior to this year, we wanted to establish the basic geometry of these multiple mineralized structures through a ‘Phase 1’ of drilling. This allows us to obtain initial visibility on the scale, size and direction of the Vertigo trend, and allows us to make evidence-based decisions on the targeted, follow up ‘Phase 2’ drilling. This Phase 1 consisted of a series of 3 widely spaced ‘fences’ of drill holes, with each fence 100m apart, and approximately 110m between each of the 4-6 holes on the fence. This provided an invaluable initial understanding of both the vertical and lateral continuity of the mineralized structures, with the Phase 2 drilling also intercepting the multiple high-grade, near surface WNW trend of the Vertigo structures, including drill hole JPRVER19D0049 intersecting 3.92 g/t Au over 1.68 metres of from 19.9m depth and 4.31 g/t Au over 11.60m from 31.00m depth, and hole JPRVER19D0050 returned 2.6 g/t Au over 3.1m from 13.1m depth, 15.85 g/t Au over 0.5m from 25.5m depth and 0.86 g/t Au over 53.6m from 48.00m depth. Individual assays on the Vertigo were up to 141 g/t gold.
Are most of these latest reported gold intercepts at Vertigo near surface?
You’ve touched upon one of the best characteristics of the Vertigo discovery and the majority of our gold discoveries in the White Gold District of Yukon, the near surface factor of our high-grade mineralization. Although it is still early days on the exploration at Vertigo, we consistently encounter high-grade gold mineralization at relatively shallow depths, which indicates the strong future economics of these gold structures.
Looking forward, any plans for more drilling at Vertigo next season?
Follow is definitely warranted as we have tapped into what looks to be a major structurally controlled mineralized zone. Each year our technical team uses the winter season to process all the exploration data, so planning for our 2020 season is ongoing. With these latest exciting results on the Vertigo, combined with our previous positive results on Titan, Golden Saddle & Arc and other targets, we are in an enviable position as we are spoiled for choice for strong projects to concentrate on for next year. Once we have sufficiently processed all of our data from this season, we will finalize and announce our exploration strategy for next year. We definitely have a lot of exciting results to follow up on.
In the release you talk about your exploration methodologies, can you give us some description on that?
We own the largest land package in some of the most prospective and gold rich territory in the world, for which we have developed a proprietary methodical data-driven exploration strategy customized for this unique unglaciated terrain which is known as our “Drones to Drills” approach. This systematic exploration method combines geophysics, extensive soil sampling and other techniques, with cutting-edge technologies such as LiDAR, airborne mag-radiometric surveying and the unique GT Probe, a replacement for trenching that samples bedrock quickly and with minimal environmental impact. This allows White Gold to quickly and cost effectively build an extremely detailed picture of a particular area, identifying the most attractive drill targets. The approach has been very effective to date and resulted in several very significant gold discoveries in the district, including the Coffee deposit which was acquired by Goldcorp in 2016 for over $500M.
You can read our Q&A with White Gold on its Titan Target at the company’s Hen property here and go to the White Gold website here.