StrataGold to drill Hyland

A $700,000 drilling program is planned for the “Carlin-type” gold project known as Hyland, 70 km northeast of Watson Lake, Y.T.

Owner StrataGold (SGV-V) will perform the drillling, which is to be funded by Northgate Exploration (NGX-T). Northgate is earning a 51% interest in the project in return for spending $5 million on exploration over four years.

Once Northgate completes its initial funding requirements and makes cash payments totalling $210,000, it can take over as operator and boost its interest to 60% by funding and completing a feasibility study.

The property is being explored for its potential for hosting a bulk-tonnage, sediment-hosted gold deposit similar to those found in Nevada’s Carlin district.

Previous work focused on a 14-km-long structural zone in sedimentary rocks and resulted in the discovery of a shallow oxide gold deposit with an inferred resource of about 3.2 million tonnes grading 1.1 grams gold per tonne. The resource is just south of the core of a large magnetic anomaly, which in turn corresponds to a 3,200-metre-long zone of highly anomalous gold, bismuth and arsenic soil geochemistry.

This year’s drilling will focus on extending an area of gold mineralization defined last year.

New drill targets will be defined as well. Toward this end, ground geophysical surveys will be carried out over areas coincident with geochemical anomalies.