The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
CKR: TSX-V
President and CEO: Pierre Vella-Zarb
Executive Vice President: David Lajack
Vice President, Mining: Bernard Stannus
Caribou Copper Resources Ltd. returned to Caribou Dome in 2010 for its first full exploration season at the high-grade copper property located about 160 miles, or 257 kilometers, northeast of Anchorage. Acquiring Caribou Dome in early September 2009, the Ottawa-based junior hastily organized a drill program to begin its investigation of the high-grade copper prospect. The company completed 621 meters of drilling in two holes before early winter snows ended the program. Though the first hole encountered only anomalous copper, the second, hole 104, cut 2.1 meters averaging 1.83 percent copper. An additional 2 meters of deeper mineralization returned grades of 0.51 percent copper.
Taking a more methodical approach in 2010, the company cut trenches across the eastern portion of mapped surface mineralization at the 10,240-acre property.
Peeling back the tundra, geologists collected copper-bearing chip samples in nine of the 11 trenches.
Highlights include: 4.03 percent copper over 7 meters, including 7.13 percent over 3 meters and 6.18 grams per metric ton silver over 7 meters in trench 4; 2.96 percent copper and 6.35 g/t silver over 2 meters in trench 5; 1.99 percent copper over 2 meters and 17.8 g/t silver over 3 meters in trench 6; and 3.78 percent copper over 2.5 meters in trench 11.
The results of this field work were used to identify drill targets in zones 3, 7 and 8, which have seen very little historic drilling.
Caribou Dome was known as the Denali copper prospect when it was staked in 1963.
Exploration and development work on the property through 1971 - including trenching and some 11,000 meters of surface and underground drilling - outlined a non-NI 43-101-compliant resource for zones 4, 5 and 6 of about 550,000 short tons averaging 5.84 percent copper with about one-third of an ounce of silver per short ton.
"The exploration completed to date on the Caribou Dome prospect has documented the occurrence of multiple high-grade sedimentary copper deposits.
Of these, only three have been explored in any detail and the bulk of the expenditures to date have been focused on the No. 4, 5 and 6 zones," Donald Stevens wrote in an NI 43-101 technical report on Caribou Dome in 2009.
"All of these zones remain open at depth and the mineralized trend is open along strike in both directions." Stevens was the field manager of an underground exploration program in 1969 that included driving an adit nearly 1,400 feet from the 4,360-foot level.
The following year a spiral decline was driven from the 4,510-foot level down a vertical distance of 1,706 feet, which exposed mineralization at depth and provided platforms for the underground drill program.
The historic exploration program outlined a high-grade copper deposit on the property, but due to the fine-grained nature of the mineralization, recovery of the ore was deemed difficult.
Modern advances in metallurgy are believed to have overcome this problem.
Copper bio-leach and heap leach techniques could make development of the advanced-stage copper project more viable.
Cash and short-term deposits:
C$190,524 (at June 30, 2010)
Working capital: C$112,321 (at June 30, 2010)
Market capitalization: C$2.09 million (at Sept. 7, 2010)
(Private placement of up to 10 million units at C10 cents per unit announced July 15)
50 O'Connor St., Suite 1500 Ottawa, Ont. Canada K2P 6L2
Tel: 613-232-1642 x206 Fax: 613-364-4165
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