Ryan Gold looks to a strong year after challenging 2011

When The Northern Miner visited Ryan Gold‘s (RYG-V) flagship Ida Oro project last August, the company was scrambling to finish its camp and make up for lost time.

Permitting delays and a harsh winter had led the company to start camp construction only in mid-July and drilling in early August.

Continued foul weather meant that getting to the helicopter-accessed camp, located 35 km from the nearest road and 90 km east of Dawson City, was difficult. And snow was falling unrelentingly on the drill rigs high on the ridgeline as the camp below was getting pummelled by hail.

“Global warming’s a myth in this part of the world,” said Michael Skead, CEO of Ryan Gold, with a faint hope that the drill season might stretch into October.

In the end the company drilled 2,900 metres at Ida Oro over 11 holes, including two that had to be abandoned because of bad ground conditions and drilling difficulties encountered on the steep ridgeline at Ida Oro. The 11 holes, strung out along the northern 1.9-km section of the 4-km long north-south soil anomaly, were oriented to crosscut lithology, structure and intrusive-sediment contacts.

Assay results released in December showed that hole 2 hit 100 metres grading 0.62 gram gold per tonne from 78 metres depth, hole 3 cut 30 metres averaging 0.57 gram gold from 115 metres depth and hole 11 returned 25 metres carrying 2.58 grams gold from 187 metres downhole, including 1 metre of 33.10 grams gold from 197 metres. Overall, the company reports it hit mineralization in six of 11 holes in the first-ever drill program on the project.

Ryan Gold says the results suggest that gold mineralization is prevalent and concentrated within fold hinges and along flanks of steeply dipping metasediments. The geology in the core consists of siltstone, shale, mudstone, chert and minor sandstone, together with quartz monzonite to granodiorite intrusions as stocks, sills and dykes.

The terrible weather also came into play with the company’s magnetic and radiometric surveys. It completed 14,000 line km of the 24,500 line km planned during wet weather and abnormal solar-flare activity.

The reduced surveys meant neither Ida Oro nor 50 Mile were surveyed.

But while Ryan Gold had less core and survey data from which to draw conclusions than it had hoped, the company will be busy over the winter interpreting a record haul of samples from its Yukon projects. Thanks to the well-tuned Ground Truth Exploration sampling outfit, started by Ryan Gold president Shawn Ryan, the company took more than 91,000 samples in 2011, including 19,000 samples at Ida Oro alone.

Other priority sampling targets for the company included its 50 Mile project with 12,700 samples, Nug with 20,300 samples and an as-of-yet unnamed project with 9,000 samples that the company was still staking near the end of 2011.

The company has mostly released results from its Kluane group of prospects including Venus, Pluto, Kilo and Sapphire, located 200 km northwest of Whitehorse. At Pluto and Venus, anomalous gold-in-soil values greater than 100 parts-per-billion (ppb) gold and up to a maximum of 3,427 ppb gold were identified over the claim blocks covering a 16-by-7-km area. At Kilo, results ranged from between 100 ppb and 1,392 ppb covering a 6-by-5-km area, and at Sapphire values of between 100 ppb and 574 ppb were recorded over the 13-by-8-km claim block.

Sample results from the Kluane area and elsewhere led Ryan Gold to increase its property position in the Yukon, adding 6,843 claims spanning 1,430 sq. km. The company controls 5,047 sq. km spanning 83 different properties as it looks towards 2012.

Ryan Gold has yet to outline a detailed exploration program and budget for 2012, but it does have $18.2 million in flow-through funding that it has to spend by the end of the year. Comparatively, in 2011 the company spent $16.9 million, including $4.3 million on Ida Oro. The flow-through funds made up less than half the $48.6 million the company had on hand at the end of September.

Going into 2012 the company will be better placed to advance Ida Oro, with its 30-person camp finished last year and equipment stuffed into the winterized tents on-site. Ryan Gold, along with the rest of the Yukon, will also hopefully be better supplied following a winter of restocking. In August, the company was having trouble finding the most basic of supplies, such as hammers and foam mattresses.

“We are stretched to the limit,” Skead said in August. “You can’t get six-inch bolts. Everything is in short supply at the moment.”

The company will also have more time and data with which to plan its drill holes. Last year, Skead had less than two months to map and strategize drilling at Ida Oro. Ryan Gold was forced to drill faster and with less information than Skead would have liked.

“A lot of our industry lacks good science, and we don’t use it enough to make good business decisions. We drill too quickly,” Skead says. “I would have liked another two months of mapping before we had it done.”

Along with work planned on Ryan Gold’s flagship projects acquired through Shawn Ryan’s staking, the company has spending requirements on several option agreements in the Yukon. At the Bluff project the company will earn 55% if it spends $1.2 million on exploration by the end of 2012. At the Flume project it must pony up $1 million for exploration to earn 51%, and at the Chant-Echo claims it has to spend $2.3 million by late 2014, as well as make cash and share payments to earn 100%.

Ryan Gold’s share price closed at 59¢, having hit a 52-week low of 48¢ in December and a 52-week high of $2.30 in March. The company has 116.6 million shares outstanding and 19 million warrants, with exercise prices ranging from 20¢ to $3.