The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Silverado drills benches above the frozen, gold-bearing gravels of Nolan Creek
Silverado Gold Mines Ltd. is seeking the lode source of the more than 23,000 troy ounces of placer gold it has recovered from the frozen gravels at its Nolan Creek gold mine, located about 175 miles, or 280 kilometers, north of Fairbanks, Alaska.
During its placer operations at Nolan Creek, Silverado has recovered several large nuggets, including a 41.53-troy-ounce nugget that the company found below Pringle Bench.
Recognizing that much of the gold found during placer operations at Nolan Creek is crystalline in nature, the Vancouver, B.C.-based miner deduced the lode source of the soft mineral must be close and set out in 2006 to discover the gold-bearing veins of the coarse alluvial gold.
Silverado concluded that the large nuggets recovered in the valley originated in the five-mile-long Solomon shear zone that runs along the east side of Nolan Creek.
During its 2006 fall exploration program, the company completed 920 feet of trenching where the Solomon shear zone crosses the Pringle bench. The trenches intersected three separate zones containing antimony-gold-quartz veins, providing confirmation that the Solomon shear, in fact, contained high-grade lode gold, the company said.
The A Vein
Encouraged by the trenching program the explorer began drilling the prospective areas, identifying a specific vein under the Workman's and Pringle Bench. This vein, named the "A Vein", was the focus of the company's 2009 exploration program.
In September, Silverado reported that drill crews intersected the "A Vein" in Workman's Bench nine times and seven holes had pierced the target in Pringle Bench.
The best intersect at Workman's Bench in 2009 was in hole 09SH07 cut 2.4 feet (true thickness estimated to be 1 foot) with an average grade of 0.734 ounces of gold per short ton and 43.31 percent antimony. Hole 09SH08 was drilled 1.1 feet (0.6 feet true thickness) averaging 0.566 ounces per short ton gold and 53.38 percent antimony.
Assay results from Pringle were still pending in September, but Silverado reported that observations of the core revealed multiple stibnite-quartz carbonate mineralized zones have been intersected.
The company said the 2009 program has nearly doubled the amount of exploration information it has on the Solomon Shear Zone. The exploration also has connected the Workman Bench and Pringle Bench areas, expanding the length of continuous gold and antimony mineralization from 950 feet to about 2,300 feet.
"With the weather and working conditions along the Arctic Circle being what they are, we have achieved great progress in our drilling program this year," said Karl Sharp, the lead geologist at Nolan Creek. "We look forward to beginning our assay result reporting as those results are received by the company. We are continuing to drill until the snow and freezing temperatures force us to cease drilling."
Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.
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