Alaska Range expansion drilling underway

PolarX Ltd. June 19 reported the start of a 5,000-meter drill program focused on expanding the high-grade Zackly copper-gold skarn deposit at the company's Alaska Range project.

Millrock Resources Inc., which owns a 9.76 percent interest in PolarX, managed a drill program last year aimed at updating a historical resource for Zackly. Based on the results of this 13-hole program, Zackly currently hosts 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, areas that are being targeted by the two drills currently on site.

The Australia-based exploration company said it aims to substantially increase the current resource at Zackly with this drilling program.

Overall, PolarX aims to rapidly accumulate sufficient copper-gold inventory between Zackly and Caribou Dome, a high-grade sediment hosted copper deposit about 12.5 miles southwest of Zackly, to support feasibility studies on a combined operation or one or more standalone operations.

The total JORC-compliant resource (measured, indicated and inferred) for Caribou Dome includes 1.6 million metric tons of near-surface material averaging 3 percent (107.8 million lb) copper; and 1.2 million metric tons of underground mineable resource averaging 3.2 percent (82.3 million lbs.) copper.

While expanding the high-grade skarn mineralization at Zackly, drilling will also vector toward a deeper and much larger potential porphyry source indicated by a prominent magnetic anomaly at Zackly SE.

Zackly SE lies at the eastern end of a 6,000-meter corridor where sampling and geophysics are showing the potential of deeper porphyry deposits.

The Mars prospect, which brackets the west end of this prospective corridor, is another area PolarX would like to investigate further this year.

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.

–SHANE LASLEY