The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
From Rolling Thunder to Pyramid, junior makes significant finds across state
From its search for White Gold-style mineralization in the Fortymile placer gold district just across the border from the Klondike in eastern Alaska to exploration of the Pyramid copper-gold project some 900 miles, or 1,450 kilometers, to the southwest, Full Metal Minerals Ltd. returned to the Alaska mining exploration scene in 2010.
The Vancouver B.C.-based junior also worked with fellow junior and senior mining companies on projects across Alaska's vast expanse. Beyond exploration, Full Metal and partner Harmony Gold Corp. are completing underground development in advance of re-opening the historical high-grade gold mine at the Lucky Shot property in Southcentral Alaska.
"It's been a great season so far," Full Metal CEO and Vice President of Exploration Rob McLeod told Mining News.
White Gold in Alaska
Rolling Thunder, an intriguing program launched by Full Metal in 2010, is a staking and exploration initiative targeting the source of more than half a million ounces of placer gold recovered historically from streams draining the rolling hills of the Fortymile Mining District.
"We are finding some really exciting stuff out there," said McLeod.
Recognizing that the belt of Cretaceous-age deposits, prospects, and placer gold mines that hosts the White Gold deposit in the Yukon Territory trends northwest into Alaska - Full Metal geologists surmised that similar mineralization could be the undiscovered lode of the prolific alluvial gold producing streams in the Fortymile district.
Full Metal shared its managers and geologists with Underworld Resources Inc. during that junior's exploration of White Gold. The Rolling Thunder geology team applied this firsthand understanding of the geologic controls, geochemistry and targeting methods that led to discoveries at White Gold to Alaska's Fortymile gold district some 60 miles, or 100 kilometers, to the northwest.
"Full Metal and Rolling Thunder is in a unique position for advancing exploration in the area. Our relationship with Underworld Resources has provided the Rolling Thunder technical staff with exploration techniques that were successfully used on the White Gold property," said Rolling Thunder Project Manager Chris Siron.
Using placer gold producing streams to vector their search, Rolling Thunder geologists traversed the hilltops and ridges of some 145,500 acres of Rolling Thunder claims in search of rock formations similar to those that are found in and around the White Gold mineralization.
Employing sampling techniques successfully used by Dawson City prospector Shawn Ryan at the White Gold property, Full Metal's Rolling Thunder team collected 428 rock and 1,536 soil samples from 16 target areas.
"Rolling Thunder staff has spoken with Shawn Ryan directly about sampling protocols and methodologies used at White Gold. These methods are being employed at our claims," Siron explained.
This reconnaissance sampling and mapping has identified multiple areas of strong alteration and quartz veining reminiscent of White Gold.
Soil samples collected from the Pika claims ranged from trace to 1090 parts per billion gold, averaging 108 ppb gold. Strong silver values were also returned. Two samples of gossan from this property assayed 0.3 g/t gold with 4,730 g/t silver and 0.96 g/t gold with 788 g/t silver.
Other encouraging results include; a 7.16 g/t gold soil sample from the McElfish claims, up to 3.3 g/t gold and 98 g/t silver soil and chip samples from the Willow property and grab samples up to 5.5 g/t gold from the 20X prospect.
With assays rolling in, Full Metal redeployed the Rolling Thunder geologist in mid-September to conduct additional sampling.
Return to Fortymile zinc
Though Rolling Thunder is a new initiative in the district, its Fortymile zinc-lead-silver property has been the target of nearly 20,000 meters of drilling completed by Full Metal since 2006.
After taking a year hiatus from drilling its Fortymile property, Full Metal returned to the silver-rich zinc-lead-copper project in 2010 with a 6,000-meter program focused on expanding the LWM high-grade carbonate replacement style system.
The drilling at LWM has outlined a zone of continuous zinc-lead-silver mineralization extending 700 meters along strike and 300 meters down dip.
Previous drill results from LWM include 44.6 meters averaging 15.9 percent zinc, 5.3 percent lead and 76.6 g/t silver, 15.6 meters averaging 21.2 percent zinc, 8.7 percent lead, and 127.0 g/t silver; and 6.48 meters averaging 464.2 g/t silver, 31.6 percent zinc, 11.3 percent lead and 1.41 percent copper.
Silver-rich mineralization was also discovered at the Eva prospect. Assay results from 14 rock samples of CRD style mineralization averaged 957 g/t silver, 23.6 percent zinc, 12.6 percent lead, and 0.9 percent copper. Eva and West Eva were also targets of the 2010 drill campaign.
At the time of this report assay results were still pending from the 2010 program.
Alaska Peninsula copper
At the opposite end of the state, on the Alaska Peninsula, Full Metal and Chile-based copper producer Antofagasta Minerals S.A. mounted a drill campaign at the Pyramid copper-gold-molybdenum porphyry project.
The exploration, funded by Antofagasta as part of its option to earn a 51 percent interest in the property, targeted a deposit outlined by shallow drilling in the 1970s. The 1,695 meters of historical drilling produced a pre-NI 43-101 resource of 125 million tons of grading 0.403 percent copper and 0.025 percent molybdenum in a near-surface zone at the 37,296-hectare, or 92,160-acre, Pyramid project.
Full Metal said the deposit's potassic core, which was not reached with the shallow drilling conducted in the past, was the target of this year's 1,670 meters of core drilling
PY10-01, the first hole of the 2010 program, cut copper mineralization from bedrock at 32 meters to the bottom of the hole at 500 meters. This 467.6-meter intercept averaged 0.27 percent copper, 0.02 percent molybdenum, and 0.06 percent gold (0.41 percent copper-equivalent). Within this was a 57.7-meter higher grade interval grading 0.48 percent copper, 0.02 percent molybdenum and 0.11 percent gold (0.65 percent copper-equivalent).
At the time of this report assays are pending on four additional holes.
"We drilled five holes out there and all of them are very well mineralized starting at surface and some seem visually to be better grade than this first hole," said McLeod. "There is significant supergene enrichment, which is pretty rare to get in Alaska, so metallurgically that bodes well."
The 2010 drilling covered a 900-meter-by-750 meter-area within a 2,000-by-1,000-meter zone of surface mineralization.
"It's a big system and only four miles away from the ocean," he said.
Pyramid is but one prospect on 1.4 million acres of prospective Alaska Native-owned lands being explored by Full Metal on the Alaska Peninsula.
Unga-Popov, an epithermal gold project, is another Alaska Peninsula property that show promise for partnership. This property - which lies on an island about 20 miles, or 32 kilometers, south of Pyramid - hosts two historical resources; Apollo with 280,000 metric tons averaging 27.7 g/t gold and 92.6 g/t silver and Centennial, which has about 6 million metric tons at 1.5 g/t, or 290,000 ounces of gold.
Grizzly-Butte porphyry
The Grizzly-Butte property, located in the Talkeetna Mountains of Southcentral Alaska, is another Full Metal project that saw drilling in 2010.
After cutting a deal with Rio Tinto subsidiary Kennecott Exploration Co. in April to acquire 97 State of Alaska mining claims, Full Metal increased its land position at Grizzly-Butte to 12,680 acres by staking an additional 220 state claims over the prospective area.
While geologists conducted an initial mapping and geochemical program, Zonge Engineering flew overhead conducting a resistivity-induced polarization survey.
This initial field work combined with historical exploration, including reconnaissance soil and rock sampling completed by Kennecott in 1999, outlined a copper anomaly that measures 2,500 meters from east to west and up to 700 meters in north-south dimension.
"It looks like quite a sizeable system; a one-square-mile geochemical anomaly with some good grades on surface," McLeod said.
This horseshoe-shaped prospect was the target of the 1,000-meter drill program that began in August.
Partner advances Lucky Shot
Harmony Gold, Full Metal's joint venture partner at the Lucky Shot project about 145 kilometers, or 90 miles, north of Anchorage, is targeting reopening the historic high-grade gold mine in 2011.
Harmony plans to begin mining the Coleman Zone, which has produced the highest grade gold intercepts of the 30,000 meters drilled by Full Metal at Lucky Shot, in 2011.
In order to tighten up the block model at Coleman, Full Metal completed a 26-hole drill program in November of 2009. Highlights from the program include hole C09-171, which cut 7.3 meters averaging 36.38 grams per metric ton gold, including 1.9 meters averaging 125.48 g/t gold. Hole C09-153, completed about 50 meters up-dip of the historic Coleman block workings, intersected 0.9 meters averaging 102 g/t gold.
Once Harmony Gold drifts back to Coleman zone, it plans to extract a 12,000-metric-ton bulk sample, which it will run through an existing gravity recovery circuit at the property.
Pebble South partnership
Full Metal and the Pebble Partnership signed an option agreement for the company co-owned by Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. and Anglo American plc to earn a 60 percent interest in the junior's 85,750-acre Pebble South property adjacent to the claims that encompass the enormous Pebble deposit.
Full Metal believes Pebble-style mineralization trends to the southwest from the Pebble Partnership's massive deposit onto its property. Geochemical and geophysical surveys have delineated 11 promising prospects at Pebble South. The Partnership conducted its own airborne geophysical survey of the property in 2010.
In Alaska Full Metal has joint ventures on its Boulder Creek and McCarthy March uranium projects, its Moore Creek gold project and its Kuskokwim (formerly referred to as Russian Mountain) gold project. In the Yukon the junior has the Nadaleen and Angie-Cat zinc-lead-silver projects.
Keeping with its generative strategy Full Metal said it will likely be announcing joint venture deals with juniors on Alaska properties in the near future.
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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