ATAC Resources (ATC-V) has kicked off the first phase of its two-phase drill campaign this year at its 100%-owned Rackla gold project 55 km northeast of Keno City in Central Yukon.
The company is planning 15,000 metres of drilling in the first phase with the majority of work focused on the Nadaleen trend where ATAC has identified four priority zones of what it describes as Carlin-style gold mineralization.
Expansion and definition diamond drilling will target the Conrad, Osiris, Isis and Isis East zones, while scout drilling will test structural targets along the Nadaleen feeder fault and other structures that exhibit surface pathfinder element signatures to examine “leakage anomalies” for potential mineralization at depth, the company announced on May 15.
ATAC plans to have three drill rigs working at the Isis East Zone and test a 450-metre gold in soil geochemical anomaly where initial drill testing last year intersected strong Carlin-type gold mineralization of 3.33 grams gold per tonne over 38.10 metres and 3.13 grams gold over 51.82 metres.
Another two drills will expand the Conrad zone, which the company describes as having multiple stacked, continuous tabular zones of Carlin-type gold mineralization related to the Nadaleen feeder fault system. The zone already has a strike length of 475 metes and has been explored to a depth of 490 metres. Results from last year’s drilling in the zone returned intercepts including 82.29 metres grading 4.08 grams gold and 41.5 metres grading 7.33 grams gold.
A sixth diamond drill will be boring down into the Osiris zone to the north, looking for the intersection of the Nadaleen feeder fault system and the Osiris limestone unit. Highlights from last year’s drill campaign ranged from 32.01 metres of 4.25 grams gold to 26.12 metres grading 6.08 grams gold.
Meanwhile, about 20 km west of Osiris, auger drilling got underway in mid-April at the Pyramid target within the Nadaleen trend. Pyramid, along with over fourteen other early stage gold targets, were identified last year.
Pyramid is defined by an extensive glacially dispersed orpiment/realgar (arsenic sulphides) cobble field measuring 150 by 80 metres that lies within a larger 500 metre by 200 metre arsenic/thallium soil anomaly. Arsenic sulphides and thallium are strong gold pathfinder elements similar to those found in the Conrad, Osiris, Isis and Isis East zones, the company says.
The company will drill about sixty auger holes “through glacially transported overburden to vector in on the bedrock source of the cobble field float train.”
The Rackla gold project was a grassroots discovery ATAC made in 2006 and since then the company has acquired over 160 kilometres of favorable structure and stratigraphy through staking.
The project is over 1,600 sq kilometres and is situated between the regional-scale Dawson thrust and Kathleen Lakes fault, within a Paleozoic carbonate inlier of the Selwyn Basin tectonic province. Replacement-style, gold-bearing sulphide and oxide mineralization occurs in Bouvette Formation shallow water limestone, dolomite, and calcareous siltstone of Cambrian to Devonian age.
ATAC’s other exploration programs this year will include geophysical surveys on the Ocelot silver-lead-zinc discovery within the Rau trend and follow up prospecting, geological mapping and detailed soil sampling of fifteen gold and pathfinder geochemical anomalies identified last year along the 185-km-long Rackla claim block.
At presstime ATAC was trading at $2.33 per share within a 52-week range of $1.90-10.34 per share.
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