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Junior gold explorers live and die by the drill. When a company pulls its first assay results of the year from a 1,093-metre hole and finds gold running continuously for nearly 274 metres, it tends to get attention. That is exactly what happened when Sitka Gold Corp. (OTCQX: SITKF, TSX-V: SIG) released results from drill hole DDRCCC-26-121 at its RC Gold Project in Canada’s Yukon Territory.
The hole is the deepest ever completed at the RC Gold Project, and the numbers coming out of it are the first assays from a fully funded 60,000-metre 2026 drill campaign. The headline interval: 273.8 metres grading 1.10 grams of gold per tonne (g/t Au), which includes a tighter 94.0-metre section running at 1.79 g/t Au and, within that, 19.3 metres at 5.04 g/t Au. Two sub-intervals came in even higher, at 1.7 metres of 15.85 g/t Au and 2.0 metres of 17.10 g/t Au. For context, anything above 1.0 g/t Au over a meaningful width is generally considered attractive in open-pit exploration. Finding grades above 5.0 g/t over nearly 20 metres at depth is the kind of result that makes people pay closer attention.
What makes this result particularly significant is where the mineralization sits. The high-grade zone encountered in this hole extends approximately 370 metres below the base of the existing Blackjack resource pit and 110 metres laterally along strike from the previous deepest drill intercept. In practical terms, this means gold does not stop at the boundary of what is currently modelled. It keeps going, and it keeps going with strong grades. The company’s CEO noted that these findings reinforce confidence in the exceptional scale and expansion potential of the Blackjack deposit, and that RC Gold is developing characteristics consistent with a large, district-scale gold system.
To understand why this matters, it helps to know a bit about how gold projects get valued. A deposit that only works as an open-pit mine has a defined resource envelope and a finite mine life. When high-grade mineralization is confirmed at depth, that opens the door to a potential underground mining component. Sitka has been careful to frame this as a confirmed potential rather than a settled development decision, but the structural picture is becoming clearer with each deep hole.
The Blackjack deposit, which is one of three deposits within the RC Gold Project alongside Rhosgobel and Eiger, currently holds an indicated resource of 1.29 million ounces of gold and an inferred resource of 1.04 million ounces of gold. All three deposits begin at surface and are potentially open-pit minable, according to the company. The broader RC Gold Project sits within a 447-square-kilometre land package in the Tombstone Gold Belt, approximately 100 kilometres east of Dawson City, and is accessible year-round via a secondary gravel road from the Klondike Highway.
The 2026 drill program is substantial by any measure. At 60,000 metres total, it will roughly double the cumulative metres drilled at RC Gold to date. The program has four diamond drill rigs currently operating on site, with approximately 13,000 metres completed as of this announcement. The budget covers expansion drilling at all three known deposits as well as follow-up work at several other high-priority targets within the Clear Creek Intrusive Complex. Assays are still pending for all other holes completed so far this season, meaning more results batches are expected as the year progresses.
For those who follow junior explorers, the timing here is notable. Gold has been trading near record highs in 2026, which tends to increase the premium the market places on in-ground ounces, particularly when a company can demonstrate resource growth potential. The deeper the high-grade zone extends, and the more lateral continuity it shows, the stronger the case for a meaningful resource upgrade later in the year.
Drill hole DDRCCC-26-121 is one data point, not a verdict. But as opening shots of a major campaign go, it delivers exactly the kind of deep-system continuity that changes how a project gets discussed. Whether that translates into a resource re-rating will depend on what comes next from the remaining 47,000 metres still to be drilled.
