Juggernaut to drill Midas and Empire projects in BC

Juggernaut Exploration Ltd. [JUGR-TSXV] said Tuesday July 31 that it has commenced diamond drilling and IP programs on its Empire property northeast of Terrace, British Columbia.

Juggernaut is focused on two project areas – Empire and Midas – which are located south of BC’s Golden Triangle. Drilling on the Midas Project will begin next week, the company said.

Both projects were identified within the last two years by prospecting in areas of receding snow and ice covering. Little work has been completed on either project apart from first-pass rock-chip sampling, preliminary mapping and drone imagery.

Both projects are held under option agreements with DSM Syndicate, a private prospecting firm, which is 20%-owned by Juggernaut. The option agreements require Juggernaut to pay $4.1 million in cash over five years and issue 20.5 million Juggernaut shares and 8.2 million warrants at 8 cents a share. That adds up to a spending commitment of $13.35 million per project.

The Empire property covers 16,000 hectares and is 100% owned by Juggernaut. It consists of several targets revealed by the retreat of glaciers and snow packs, with extensive porphyry dikes and potassic and propylitic alteration believed to be associated with a porphyry-style deposit along an area known as the Inca Trend.

The Empire inaugural drill program will start on the Max Min Zone, which measures 170 metres by 100 metres and remains open in all directions, including at depth. Channel samples from Max Min assayed 4.8 g/t gold, 0.26% copper, 3.73% zinc, 4.85% lead over 4.6 metres.

Juggernaut has said gold and polymetallic mineralization confirmed at the Max Min, Metalworks, Metallic, Rockstar and Olympus targets, coupled with the widespread porphyry dykes and extensive potassic and propylitic alteration within the 5.5-km Inca Trend are consistent with porphyry-style mineralization on the Empire property.

It also said the extension of the Inca Trend during the 2017 program resulted from multiple new polymetallic discoveries in just over a month of field work.

The Empire inaugural drill program will focus on targeting the widespread gold and polymetallic mineralized zones along the Inca Trend. “The mineralization and alteration at Max Min and Metalworks at the north end of the Inca Trend strongly indicates the presence of a polymetallic feeder system at depth,” the company said.

Meanwhile Juggernaut said it plans to begin its inaugural drill program on the Midas property with a second drill rig to start within a week. Drilling will target several zones of bedrock polymetallic and gold mineralization on the King Solomon Zone that contains channel cuts of up to 4.43 metres of 10.28 g/t gold.

At this early stage, published reports say investors appear to be betting on the expertise of a management group that includes Bill Chornobay, a senior exploration and corporate development consultant to the company.

Chornobay’s  previous successes include the staking of part of what is now the Coffee Gold Project in the Yukon, now held by Goldcorp [G-TSX; GG-NYSE]. More recently, he was involved in the discovery of another Yukon project – Plateau South – which is held by Goldstrike Resources Ltd. [GSR-TSXV].

Juggernaut shares rose 3.03% or $0.015 to 51 cents in early trading Tuesday. The stock valuation has more than doubled from around the 20 cent level in mid-April 2018, leaving Juggernaut with a market cap of $43.5 million, based on around 80.6 million shares outstanding. The 52-week range is 59 cents and 17 cents.