The Quest for Northern Gold: Exploration of Vast Property in Northwest Territories Has Many Optimistic About Its Prospects

VANCOUVER, British Columbia, Sept. 8, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Canada has been fortunate in developing a half-dozen gold belts yielding enormous wealth for investors.

The one that comes most readily to mind is the Abitibi gold belt stretching from Val d'Or in northwestern Quebec to Kirkland Lake and Timmins in northeastern Ontario.

Another productive belt has been a zone adjacent to Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. It resulted in exceptional yields for the Giant and Con gold mines. But the nearby area was neglected.

The geology suggests there is more gold to be found along with other metals and junior miner TerraX Minerals Inc. (TSX-V:TXR) has begun exploring the area with some very encouraging results.

In less than two years, it has accumulated an enormous property of 93.5 sq. km adjacent to Yellowknife — where mining is the biggest game in town — starting with the acquisition of the highly promising Northbelt property of 3,562 hectares.

"It's highly unusual for a junior exploration company such as TerraX to tie up a whole gold belt," says company president Joe Campbell, a geologist with 34 years of mining experience in major finds around the world.

The company's property consisting of mineral claims and mining leases puts it in the top half-dozen gold belts in Canada, says Campbell, and comparable to the geology of the Abitibi gold belt.

Among the people who have high hopes for a bonanza on the TerraX Minerals property are many residents of Yellowknife, who know a thing or two about mining and the quest for gold in particular.

"We're very visible in Yellowknife. They see us going to work every day," said Joe Campbell, president and chief executive officer of TerraX Minerals Inc. "They run their boats up our lakes and drive their ATVs on our drill trails. In the winter they cross-country ski on our property."

Results of the first year of exploration and shallow drilling show much promise for the future.

Partly because of its high visibility, the company raised approximately $500,000 from investors in Yellowknife as part of a larger financing completed in December 2013 after Campbell did the rounds to outline to local people TerraX's plans for the huge property and address any concerns that the local community might have.

Yellowknife has a population of about 20,000 people, and many are employed in the mining services sector.

There are also many assets that make the TerraX project attractive to investors.

There is the Northbelt gold property, acquired for $211,000 at auction after the bankruptcy of Century Mining Corp. It covers 121 leases over 13 kilometres of strike of the Yellowknife Gold Belt, all within 15 kilometres north of the city.

There is the extensive infrastructure in place. The property is accessible by road, so workers can commute daily from Yellowknife; the company can avoid the high cost of flying workers into remote mines and putting them up in camps. This also allows the company to work year-round on the property, which is unusual for many northern projects.

The recently re-built Bluefish Hydro Dam on TerraX's Walsh Lake property can provide electricity for the future development of the company's project. Further enhancing the property was the opening of the $200-million Deh Cho Bridge across the Mackenzie River near Great Slave Lake in November 2012, giving Yellowknife year-round highway access to the rest of Canada for the first time. "Yellowknife is now connected to the rest of Canada like any other major city," says Campbell.

There is also ready access to Yellowknife Airport, eight kilometres from the property and the site of TerraX's core storage facility, which now contains over 30,000 metres of drill core from the project area.

Superior transportation links help to ease the concerns of potential investors unsettled by the drop in the price of gold from over $1,800 to a price fluctuating around $1,300.

The Northbelt zone is an extension of the Yellowknife Gold Belt where the Giant and Con mines produced 8.1-million ounces and 6.1-million ounces of gold respectively at an average grade of 16 grams of gold per tonne over their almost 60-year mine life.

In July and August, TerraX announced results from three sites, and they included a drill intercept of 5.16 metres of 18.4 grams of gold per tonne at the Barney Shear Zone as well as grab samples grading 141 grams of gold per tonne from the Ryan Lake-Pluton area and 547 grams of gold per tonne from the Crestaurum area. There were also significant finds of silver and base metals, including copper, molybdenum, zinc and lead.

TerraX has also located 250 drill hole collars and recovered core from 200 holes drilled in the 1980s and '90s that had been stored at the Giant mine site. This core is being re-assayed, providing extensive information that TerraX has been able to use to fast-track its exploration efforts and advance the project while reducing costs.

One of the areas drilled this summer is the old Crestaurum zone, where 187 drill holes already exist over 1.4 kilometres of strike length. TerraX recovered core from 74 holes and assay results from one shallow hole showed 62.9 grams of gold per ton over five metres. Assay results from the drilling this summer are expected by mid-September.

Campbell expects that drilling over the next few years will define the resource of gold and other base metals on the TerraX property, although it will take eight to 10 years in total "before we'll be pouring ounces," he says, "which is common for projects of this size."

In all, the company has spent $3-million on its first phase of exploration and drilling produced 4,500 metres of drill core, including 1,172 metres from five holes at the Barney shear that supports the popular theory that it is the northern extension of the shear that hosted the Con and Giant Mine.

Drill results to date from this limited drilling have been excellent, with the remainder of the assays from the summer program expected later this month. Once these are released, the company plans to use this data to raise additional funding for the second phase of drilling to allow it to complete up to 20,000 metres of drilling over the winter and next summer.

Lawrence Roulston's Resource Opportunities newsletter initiated coverage of TerraX in October 2013. The newsletter says it's no surprise Virginia Mines Inc. has taken a 10% position in the company considering "the similarities between the Yellowknife trend and the Abitibi." The company, one of the most successful explorers in Quebec, has also acquired an option to acquire a 2% net smelter royalty on the project for $2-million, according to Roulston.



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