Radius Gold has commenced drilling operations at its Sixty Mile project in west-central Yukon, 75 kms west of Dawson City at the Canada/US border.
The company plans 5,000m of drilling to test the epithermal gold targets in the Sixty Mile river valley.
In its 2010 exploration program, Radius made two bedrock gold discoveries – the Graben fault zone and the Thrust fault zone – while searching for the source of the extensive placer gold that has been produced from the stream and river beds of the Sixty Mile gold district.
Both target areas have the size potential to host significant gold deposits, and it is the aim of this year’s drilling to confirm the economic potential of these gold discoveries, the company said.
The first program will focus first on the Graben zone, an eight-kilometer long belt of strongly altered Carmacks volcanic rocks associated with a northeast-trending half graben fault that juxtaposes altered volcanics against a much older belt of schistose rocks.
Last year, the company drilled two holes testing the volcanic rocks proximal to the fault zone.
Both holes returned highly anomalous gold values over 50m intervals with narrower intervals of potentially ore-grade material.