HighGold Mining has an exciting exploration story, backed up by high grade ounces in the ground

Aiming to be Top Tier gold explorer Working in highly favorable mining jurisdictions Johnson Tract asset is very high grade and akin to advanced-stage discovery What HighGold Mining does: HighGold Mining Inc (CVE:HIGH) (OTCMKTS:HGGOF) is a spin-out of the gold assets of Constantine Metal Resources and shares began trading on Toronto's venture exchange in September 2019. The group's shares also began trading in January 2020 on the US over-the-counter market. It has two wholly-owned projects, which are found in the well-established mining jurisdictions of Alaska and Timmins, Ontario, and the company says its management team has a track record of finding, growing, and advancing mineral resources. The group's flagship property is the high-grade polymetallic Johnson Tract gold project in southcentral Alaska, which the firm says has 'tremendous' exploration upside potential. This asset was acquired as part of a lease agreement with CIRI, a native Alaskan firm. HighGold is targeting a potential multi-million ounce, multi-deposit system at the property. Under the lease deal, HighGold must pay US$10 million over 10 years with a minimum of USS$7.5 million payable in the first six years. Upon completing a feasibility study and a positive decision to construct a mine, CIRI has a one-time buy back-in right to a 25% participating interest. Elsewhere, in the Timmins gold camp in Canada, HighGold has a strategic footprint of  200 square kilometres (km) in an area along the Porcupine-Destor Fault, which has generated over 110 million ounces. The firm wants to apply new exploration ideas to a mature district. The main Munro Croesus property in Timmins spans 355 hectares and includes the past-producing Croesus mine that yielded some of the highest grade gold mined in Ontario. The grouo's Golden Mile property covers 8,600 hectares on the Pipestone Fault System and lies 9km from Newmont's multi-million-ounce Hoyle Pond deposit, while the Golden Perimeter property covers around 12,000 hectares and played host to around 10,000 meters (m) of past drilling in the 1980s. How is it doing: A big milestone in 2020 for HighGold was the announcement in April of a maiden resource for the flagship Johnson Tract project, which positioned the property as among the highest-grade undeveloped gold projects in North America. The higher confidence indicated resource was 2.1 million tons grading an impressive 10.9 grams per ton (g/t) gold for 750,000 gold equivalent ounces. The NI 43 101 inferred resource was pegged at 600,000 tons of 7.2 g/t for 134,000 gold equivalent ounces. Notably, nearly 80% of the total resource tonnage is in the indicated category, including 85% of the total gold equivalent ounces The resource, which is open to expansion, is a steeply-dipping deposit with horizontal thickness of between 25m and 50m, including a strike length of 300m and continuous grade to a depth of 275m, HighGold reported. "We view this resource as our starting point and, after lying dormant for 25 years with no exploration until HighGold's recent 2019 drill program, it provides an excellent springboard for what lies ahead for the project," said CEO Darwin Green, who added the firm now aims to expand the JT Deposit at the property and test multiple well-developed peripheral targets. in March, HighGold said it had temporarily suspended drilling at its Timmins area gold properties in Ontario due to the coronavirus outbreak, having completed 12 holes for 2,524m of diamond drilling out of the planned 5,000m winter program. But on May 20, the firm posted encouraging drill assays for those holes, which were drilled at the  Munro-Croesus and Golden Mile properties.  A significant highlight at Munro-Croesus was a vein hit 80m southeast of the historic shaft returning 29.1 g/t gold over 0.30m at a downhole depth of 90.7m. "This shows the persistence of the gold-bearing system away from the historic workings and supports our working theory for the environment in which the Croesus-type mineralization was generated. We look forward to continued testing of this and other high-quality targets on the property when we complete the remainder of our planned program later this year," said the firm. It is worth noting that the company is in good financial shape with working capital of around C$11 million and a budget for the pending summer field season of C$5.5 million with room to expand. Inflection points: Start of more drilling in Alaska Precious metals moves What the boss says: HighGold chief executive Darwin Green told Proactive in May that it was 'imperative' that work gets completed in Alaska this year but in a safe manner. The Alaskan government has defined mining as an 'essential service', he noted, adding that he was comfortable the company could execute the program safely amid the coronavirus pandemic. "We're planning for an early July start, which is about a month later than we originally planned, " he said. "We're looking at now a minimum of two drill rigs starting in July and we'll get a heck of a lot done." He said the minimum would be 7,000m but it would likely be a lot more. The firm can drill there all the way to October, he added. On the positive Johnson Tract resource, Green said: "It's really backstopped our value. I think we're still fundamentally this really exciting exploration story but now we're also backstopped by ounces in the ground, high-grade ounces, over good, wide widths, really attractive setting." HighGold would now be trying to expand it, he added.