Atac’s drilling scores 10 out of 11

Vancouver – The first drill result out of Atac Resources‘ (ATC-V) Rau gold project in the central Yukon impressed investors enough to give the junior a nice share price lift.

Hole 2 returned 1.24 grams gold per tonne over 68.7 metres, starting 53 metres downhole. Alone the intercept is interesting but what likely snagged investors’ attention was the fact that nine subsequent holes all cut very similar intercepts.

“The biggest thing about this is the continuity,” says Graham Downs, Atac’s CEO. “It’s just amazing that from the second hole to the eleventh hole we hit large intersections that all really do look similar.”

The first hole did not intercept the mineralized strata; it was collared near a ridge crest at the southeast end of the soil anomaly that guided the drill program and appears to have passed above the fold hinge. Results from holes three to 11 are still pending; Downs predicts they will be available in four to six weeks.

News of the drill results boosted Atac’s share price 12.5 or 50% in August 6th trading. The company has a 52-week trading range of 19.5 to 55 and has 46.2 million shares issued.

Atac picked up the Rau project in early 2007. The project had seen no prior exploration attention and the clue to what lay beneath was subtle.

“There’s a little tiny pinpoint of intrusion that pokes up that one of the regional government geologists mapped,” Downs says. “It had the right kind of characteristics, so we blind staked it.”

A soil grid survey then outlined a zone 600 metres long by 300 metres wide, with results grading as high as 11 grams gold. The company mobilized a drill to the project this year.

The gold mineralization encountered in hole 2 is stratabound, hosted in porous reefal limestone and dolomite of the Bouvette formation. From information to date it appears the mineralized strata are on the outer fringe of a large and well-zoned hydrothermal system developed above and around a late Cretaceous granitic intrusion.

Host rocks are dolomitized and contain up to 20% sulphide minerals, including pyrite, that occur as coarse disseminations and replacements. A talc-altered cap overlies the mineralized unit and may have acted to channel fluids into the porous dolomite.

Based on its initial success Atac decided to extend the Rau drill program through the fall and now has plans to complete more than 20 holes in the zone before the onset of winter. The company has also significantly expanded its land position, staking an additional 1,297 mineral claims to bring Rau to 1,393 claims. The project now covers an area 30 km long and up to 12.5 km wide on the northern edge of the prolific Tintina gold belt.