Great Bear Resources continuing to make excellent finds at Dixie as drilling remains on track

One of the largest new gold discoveries in Canada Early-stage discovery with initial resource expected in 2021 Well financed into 2021 What Great Bear Resources does: Great Bear Resources Ltd (CVE:GBR) (OTCMKTS:GTBDF) struck a deal five years ago to acquire the Dixie mining claims in Ontario’s prolific Red Lake gold mining district. Wholly-owned Dixie consists of 9,140 hectares of contiguous claims that extend over 22 kilometers (km). The project lies around 25km southeast of the mining town of Red Lake and is accessible by a highway. Over the last two years, the Dixie property has played host to multiple high-grade gold discoveries, namely at the Dixie Limb, Hinge, Bear-Rimini, Yuma, Auro, Yauro, Viggo and Gap zones. Six of these are now considered one zone that is hosted by the LP Fault zone, which is basically an 18km target that is being continuously explored by the company. Currently, the firm is embarked on a fully-funded giant C$21 million exploration program, including 300 planned drill holes, which are expected to be sunk before the end of 2020. Vancouver-headquartered Great Bear now controls more than 300 square kilometers of highly prospective ground across four projects in the district. As well as Dixie, these are all properties in which the firm is earning a 100% interest. They are the Pakwash property, the Dedee property and the Sobel property. The renowned Red Lake gold district has historically produced around a huge 30 million ounces of the yellow metal from 29 mines. How is it doing: Significant progress has been made already this year in Great Bear's huge exploration program, including results from an airborne SkyTEM survey to identify new drill targets similar to the LP Fault zone and the Hinge and Dixie Limb zones, where high-grade gold was discovered last year. On April 9 this year, the firm hailed what it called 'excellent' continuity of gold mineralization at the LP Fault as it posted latest drill assays. So far, it has sunk 83 holes of a planned 300 for this year. Most significantly, Great Bear has expanded the shallow, high-grade gold mineralization identified. In one hole, 42.70 grams per ton (g/t) gold over 3 metres was unearthed, including 118 g/t gold over 0.5 metres, within a broader interval of 4.24 g/t gold over 52.15 metres. Another hole hit the same on-strike continuation of shallow mineralization. In addition, a series of nine holes were completed within a previously undrilled gap in the LP Fault system (formerly called the Gap zone), which also hit the yellow metal. Indeed, Great Bear noted that gold mineralization had been found in all holes, for which assays have been returned. Like many other mining companies, the firm has implemented new operational procedures in the light of the coronavirus pandemic.  Among the many mitigation measures against the spread of the virus the firm is taking, only crew members that live in Red Lake or within a safe driving distance are currently working on-site, while extra cleaning measures have been introduced. "Under current Federal and Provincial government guidelines, we anticipate being able to continue the current drill program throughout 2020 and into 2021 and do not require additional funding for this work," the company said in a statement on March 20. At the end of January, the firm revealed a plan to spin out a newly-created royalties subsidiary, Great Bear Royalties. The spinout company will take ownership of a 2% net smelter return royalty on any future production, in addition to C$1 million in marketable securities and C$500,00 cash, which will form the new company’s initial assets. The group said the spinout would be carried out by a plan of arrangement, whereby the owners of Great Bear shares would receive one-fourth of a share in Great Bear Royalties for each Great Bear share held immediately prior to the closing. Inflection points: More Dixie drill results Other newsflow What the boss says: On March 20, from his home office, Great Bear CEO Chris Taylor joined Steve Darling from Proactive in Vancouver and explained the current state of play amid the coronavirus issue. "We're on top of a very exciting gold discovery. From our point of view we want to make sure that Great Bear maintains a lead position in the market and the way that we do that is maintain drill results coming out, gold results." He also suggested that as the world moves eventually past the pandemic, it could be a very good market for gold miners and gold stocks, because their operational costs, including fuel, would potentially going down.