Vancouver, BC — February 23, 2026 — Leads & Copy — Trident Resources Corp. is accelerating its Winter 2026 drilling program with the mobilization of a third drill rig. The company is well funded and encouraged by visual indications of mineralization. An additional rig will expedite and expand the initial drilling plan.
Trident (TSXV: ROCK) (OTCQB: TRDTF) plans to continue drilling throughout 2026. Extensive ground exploration will also occur through prospecting, geologic mapping, and geochemical sampling across its properties in the La Ronge Gold Belt, totaling over 130,000 hectares.
CEO Jon Weisblatt reported a third drill rig has been mobilized to the Contact Lake Gold Project to expand exploration plans in 2026. The company is pleased with visual indications of mineralization early in the winter program, as it follows up on high-grade drill results from last year and tests new targets.
The company anticipates drilling between 30,000 and 40,000 meters at Contact this year, representing one of the largest annual drill programs undertaken in the La Ronge Gold Belt in many decades. Trident currently has over CAD $32 million in cash and marketable securities.
Trident is in the position to aggressively advance the Contact Lake project in 2026. The drilling aims to discover new high-grade zones of gold mineralization, increase the size of the current mineral resource, and follow up on previously reported high-grade drill intercepts from last year. The company believes this approach will continue expanding the project’s scale and quality.
Trident currently has two drill rigs operating at the Contact Lake mine site as part of a planned 10,000-meter winter phase of diamond drilling. The addition of a third rig is expected to increase drilling capacity and advance exploration timelines across the company’s land package.
The third rig will initially drill in the Preview target area, 2.5 kilometers east of the Contact Lake mine site. This area hosts two deposits with current NI43-101 compliant Mineral Resource Estimates. The Preview SW and Preview North deposits are part of the Preview trend, a 4-kilometer mineralized corridor hosted in a NE-trending shear zone that parallels the Bakos Shear, which hosts the Contact Lake mine gold mineralization.
The current drilling at Contact Lake will focus on extending high-grade mineralization northeast and will test the BK3 zone, an area that hosts unmined historically defined high-grade gold resources. This drilling includes land-based holes following up on the high-grade zones discovered in the drilling in 2025, as well as drilling to the east on the lake to test zones that haven’t been drilled in almost thirty years.
The Preview SW deposit, 2.5 km southeast of the Contact Lake mine site, is hosted in multiple sub-parallel zones within sheared dioritic to gabbroic rocks. The Mineral Resource Estimate, with an effective date of November 26th, 2025, outlined 314,700 ounces of gold (Au) in the Indicated category, and 531,900 ounces Au in the Inferred category.
The Preview North deposit is 2.6 km northeast of Preview SW within a quartz-filled dilatant jog in a transpressional shear system that hosts both Preview deposits. Preview North hosts 40,800 ounces Au in the Indicated category and 7,400 ounces Au in the Inferred category. The planned Preview winter drill program will seek to expand the resources at Preview SW and Preview North as well as test several prospective targets along the Preview trend.
The Contact Lake Gold Project covers approximately 22,790 hectares and includes the past-producing Contact Lake gold mine, which produced approx. 190,000 ounces of gold at an average head grade of 6.16 g/t Au during active mining operations between 1994 to 1998.
At the time of mine closure, the price of gold hovered around $300/oz (USD) and Cameco Corporation reported that substantial gold resources were left unmined. The Contact Lake Property also hosts the Preview SW, Preview North and the North Lake orogenic gold deposits. Along with the Greywacke North deposit (located 40km northeast of Contact Lake), these four deposits are wholly-owned by Trident Resources and host current Mineral Resource Estimates (see news release dated November 24th, 2025) which does not include any ounces from the past producing Contact Lake target area.
Trident Resources Corp. is a Canadian public mineral exploration company listed on the TSX Venture Exchange focused on the development, exploration and acquisition of advanced-stage gold and copper exploration projects in Saskatchewan, Canada. The Company is aggressively advancing its 100% owned Contact Lake and Greywacke Lake projects which host significant historical gold resources located within the prospective and underexplored La Ronge Gold Belt, as well as the 100% owned Knife Lake copper project which contains a historical copper resource.
Source: Trident Resources Corp.
