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PolarX ready to expand Zackly skarn, explore Stellar potential North of 60 Mining News – June 2, 2018
The 2017 drill program on the Alaska Range project upgraded the Zackly resource to modern reporting standards, this year's drilling aims to expand the gold-copper mineralization found in this skarn deposit.
PolarX Ltd. is ready to kick off the initial phase of its 2018 drill program at its Alaska Range copper-gold project.
Encompassing the Stellar and Caribou Dome properties, the Alaska Range blankets a 22-mile mineralized trend that hosts Zackly, a high-grade skarn deposit with roughly 91 million pounds of copper and 213,000 ounces of gold; Caribou Dome, a sediment-hosted deposit with 280 million pounds of copper; and numerous exploration targets.
The initial 23-hole program slated for this year will focus on expanding the known high‐grade Zackly copper‐gold skarn deposit and continue to gather evidence of a potentially much larger porphyry copper-gold deposit nearby.
This year's program supports PolarX' strategy to rapidly accumulate a sufficient copper‐gold inventory between Zackly and Caribou Dome to support feasibility studies on a combined operation on one or more stand‐alone operations.
Expanding Zackly
Australia-based PolarX acquired the Stellar property early last year in a three-company deal that also involved Vista Minerals Pty Ltd., a privately held exploration company from Australia, and Millrock Resources Inc., a project generator with a portfolio of Alaska gold and copper exploration projects.
Merging Stellar with adjacent Caribou Dome property, already held by PolarX, the Down Under explorer focused its 2017 program on upgrading a historical resource for Zackly to Australian Joint Ore Reserves Committee (JORC) mineral reporting standards.
This 13-hole drill program executed by Millrock, which now owns a 9.76 percent stake in PolarX, outlined 3.4 million metric tons of JORC-compliant inferred resource grading 1.2 percent (90.4 million pounds) copper, 2 grams per metric ton (213,000 oz) gold and 14 g/t (1.5 million oz) silver.
This shallow deposit has been traced for a length of about 1,000 meters and PolarX said it is clearly open along strike and at depth.
"The fact that we have readily upgraded the resource to JORC standard while maintaining the same quantity of contained metal further underpins our confidence in the potential to significantly expand the project," PolarX Managing Director Frazer Tabeart said.
Induced polarization geophysical surveys completed at Zackly are being used to vector the 23 holes slated for Zackly, which will primarily target expansion of the deposit to depth and to the east.
Tabeart said this obvious expansion of Zackly provides the most immediate value for investors as the company continues to refine drill targets that could result in new discoveries across the Alaska Range project.
Stellar porphyry potential
When it comes to discoveries, PolarX is excited about the evidence of deeper porphyry mineralization along a 6,000-meter corridor that encompasses Zackly.
"Skarns are often associated with much larger porphyry copper-gold systems," Tabeart said in a recent interview with Proactiveinvestors.
Last year's drilling encountered porphyry‐style veins and related copper sulfides and the company hopes to gain further evidence of the property's porphyry potential as this year's drilling tests extensions of Zackly.
Zackly SE, a prominent magnetic anomaly southeast of Zackly and at the eastern end of the corridor, is one porphyry prospective area PolarX plans to investigate further this year.
Mars, situated at the west end of the 6,000-meter corridor, is another.
Broadly spaced sampling at Mars has outlined copper, gold, molybdenum and silver mineralization over a 2,000- by 1,500-meter area. Rock-chip samples collected here have returned up to 7.4 percent copper and 1.8 g/t gold.
PolarX said an induced polarization geophysical survey completed in 2017 identified a chargeability anomaly that is 100 to 150 meters below the surface of Mars. The company said these coincident geochemical and geophysical anomalies suggests the potential of a buried porphyry copper-gold system.
The Australia-based explorer is planning to carry out further ground geophysics to generate drill targets at Zackly SE and Mars.
Gemini, roughly equidistant north of Zackly and northeast of Mars, is another porphyry prospect PolarX plans to investigate further this year.
Moonwalk for gold
Besides Caribou Dome, Zackly and potential nearby porphyry copper-gold deposit, the Alaska Range property is rife with discovery targets.
Located right along the Denali Fault, which marks the southern border of the Tintina Gold Belt, the expansive property has the potential for gold mineralization found across this famous gold province that hosts world-class gold deposits in Alaska and the Yukon.
Donlin Gold, Livengood, Fort Knox, Pogo and Coffee are among the multi-million-ounce gold deposits that have been found in the Tintina Gold Belt.
Moonwalk, located about seven miles north of Zackly and in the southern margins of the Tintina Gold Belt, is one gold prospect PolarX plans to investigate this year.
In 2011, Millrock collected 19 soil samples from the main zone of alteration at Moonwalk that averaged 1.15 g/t gold over a 500- by 700-meter area. The highest grade soil sample returned 3.54 g/t gold.
Rock‐chip samples of quartz‐veins at this "Tintina-style" prospect returned assays up to 30.45 g/t gold.
A stream sediment sample collected about 2,000 meters from the alteration area assayed 0.24 g/t gold. Accompanied by an outcrop sample of what appears to be altered and veined sandstone that assayed 23 g/t gold, this downstream sample indicates the potential of a large and high-grade gold system at Moonwalk.
"This heralds an exciting period for the company as it pursues several advanced targets, each of which could be part of a much larger district‐scale system," PolarX said.
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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