The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
North of 60 Mining News – June 15, 2018
Visible gold is prevalent across the Plateau property, including in this sample collected from the Goldbank target that averaged 33.43 grams per metric ton gold.
Goldstrike Resources Ltd. June 11 reported that a planned 10,000-meter drill program being funded and operated by Newmont Mining Corp. is now underway at the 662-square-kilometer (256 square miles) Plateau gold property in Canada's Yukon.
Newmont, which cut a C$53 million deal to earn up to a 75 percent stake in Goldstrike's expansive and gold-rich Plateau property early in 2017, invested C$6 million on an exploration program focused on understanding and modeling the controls of the high-grade gold mineralization Goldstrike had previously identified at Plateau.
This year, the global gold miner is testing the property's district-scale potential with drilling.
This drill program, which got underway on June 1, began with testing Goldbank, a large new target generated with the help of Newmont's proprietary exploration technologies.
Multiple grab samples collected from Goldbank last year contained high-grade gold, including one sample that returned 287.1 grams (8.39 ounces) per metric ton gold and another with 639.75 g/t (18.66 o/t) gold. While grab samples are selective by nature, these bonanza grade samples, coupled with Newmont's interest in drilling the area early, indicate the potential at Goldbank.
In addition to using Newmont's proprietary geochemical technologies and airborne geophysical system carried out last year, surface mapping and an induced polarization (IP) geophysical survey, which indicates the presence of a significant subsurface chargeability anomaly, were used to generate the drill target at Goldbank.
A second drill, which arrived on June 6, and is to begin testing Goldstack, one of Goldstrike's earliest discoveries at Plateau.
The discovery hole at Goldstack, drilled in 2013, cut a gold mineralized shoot averaging 10.91 g/t gold over 10 meters within a larger intersection of 2.28 g/t gold over 53 meters.
Other highlights from some 3,600 meters of drilling previously completed at Goldstack include 17.5 meters of 13.25 g/t gold and 45.5 meters of 6.05 g/t gold.
This year's drilling will focus on extending this high-grade gold, which remains open to the west and at depth.
A 3,000-meter IP survey was also recently completed on the Goldstack target and the results will be used in modelling and delineating additional drill targets along strike.
Beyond Goldstack and Goldbank, extensive diamond drilling will also take place on up to seven additional targets along a 70-kilometer- (43 miles) long trend, aimed at confirming the district-scale gold mineralized system at Plateau.
Gold Dome, Gold Rush, Big Bang, Devils Gate and Goldback are among the targets slated for drilling this year.
–SHANE LASLEY
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