Pacific Ridge advances on Gold Cap project news
Pacific Ridge Exploration Ltd. [PEX-TSXV] on Tuesday July 31 said field work is underway at its 100%-owned Gold Cap Project in the Yukon’s White Gold District.
Pacific Ridge shares advanced on the news, up 10% or $0.005 to 5.5 cents in early trading, Tuesday. The 52-week range is 7 cents and 4.5 cents.
The junior’s exploration efforts are being guided by the Yukon’s best known prospector, Shawn Ryan. Named Canada’s Prospector of the Year in 2011, Ryan is renowned for his work in seeking the bedrock source of the Yukon’s infamous placer gold deposits.
It involves the use of methodical soil sampling techniques that led to the discovery of a geophysical anomaly that he optioned to Underworld Resources in 2004. In March 2010, Underworld was swallowed by Kinross Gold Corp. [K-TSX; KGC-NYSE] in a $138 million deal that sparked a staking rush as well as more discoveries, including the Coffee gold project (named after the colour of a nearby river), now being developed by Goldcorp [G-TSX, GG-NYSE]. Other significant modern discoveries, such as Comstock Metals Ltd.‘s [CSL-TSXV] QV Project (230,000 ounces of inferred gold resources) have been delineated on soil anomalies by Ryan’s team.
Pacific Ridge is using exploration techniques developed by Ryan’s company, GroundTruth Exploration, to speed up the process of finding gold-bearing anomalies. Ryan is quick to stress that high risk nature of early stage exploration.
The work will focus on previously identified targets defined as anomalous gold in soils. The objective of the program is define targets for drill testing.
The Gold Cap property covers a geological setting for White Gold style mineralization, similar to White Gold Corp.‘s [WGO-TSXV] Golden Saddle deposit, located 6 km to the southwest. The Golden Saddle deposit hosts an indicated resource of 961,000 gold ounces within 12.3 million tonnes grading 2.43 g/t gold and inferred mineral resources of 282,500 ounces within 5.16 million tonnes at 1.70 g/t gold.
Pacific Ridge has a long track record in the Yukon, where it is currently focused on early stage gold and base metal projects.
Its property portfolio includes the Mariposa, Eureka-Dome and Gold Cap gold exploration projects in the Klondike-White Gold District, RC Gold in the Tintina Gold Belt, Fyre Lake in the Finlayson District and the Spius copper-molybdenum and gold porphyry and TL zinc projects in British Columbia.
Exploration work at the RC Gold project is scheduled to commence in early August. The target is an intrusion-related gold deposit similar to Dublin Gulch, Brewery Creek and Red Mountain in the Yukon, and Fort Knox, True North, Pogo and Donlin Creek in Alaska. The planned 2018 program will include detailed mapping, sampling and an IP geophysical survey.
The company said it is awaiting permits before launching work on its Spius porphyry copper project.