The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
North of 60 Mining News – August 24, 2018
Geologists Howard Marcus and Shawn Vandekerkhove inspect historical core during Seabridge Gold's initial investigation of Iskut in 2016.
Exceptional gold samples were collected from a cliff face at Quartz Rise. The geology seen here is providing clues for orienting the 2018 drill program.
Seabridge Gold Inc. Aug. 21 announced that a 3,000-meter drill program is now underway at Quartz Rise, a high-grade gold target on the company's Iskut project in northwestern British Columbia.
Situated about 30 kilometers (19 miles) west of Seabridge's enormous KSM gold-copper project, Iskut was acquired by the company in 2016.
Integrating extensive historical data with results from Seabridge's 2016 work, the company believed a gold-bearing intermediate sulfidation epithermal system lies beneath the Quartz Rise lithocap, an alteration zone that is often found above porphyry-type deposits.
Last year's drill program, the first ever at Quartz Rise, cut several narrow, discontinuous intervals of high-grade gold. While this drilling confirmed Seabridge's concept for Quartz Rise, it may not have been oriented correctly to encounter the targeted zone.
A subsequent 3D induced polarization geophysical survey, together with detailed geological mapping and sampling of available rock faces is helping to target this year's drilling. This includes exceptional gold results from cliff face sampling that appear to correspond with a favorable IP chargeability anomaly under Quartz Rise.
"The Quartz Rise target began as a theoretical concept based on our understanding of porphyry gold-copper systems at our KSM project. In 15 months of work, we have learned a great deal and the concept has become a real, data-driven target," said Seabridge Gold Chairman and CEO Rudi Fronk. "We believe we can now find the source of the high-grade gold associated with sulfide-bearing quartz veins at Quartz Rise. Our research continues to uncover compelling reasons why the lithocap may be hiding a significant, near surface epithermal precious metals system."
Coarse lithic tuff – a rock-type composed of volcanic ash with fragments of rock – at Quartz Rise tends to show much more intense leaching and acid alteration than do the overlaying densely-welded tuff units that appear to have capped the fluid flows. Seabridge says exposures of the lithic tuff host in the cliff face have yielded exceptional gold values in more intensely-altered intervals found in proximity to IP chargeability anomalies.
This year's drilling is designed initially to follow gold-bearing veins in the lithic tuff away from the cliff face into the chargeability anomaly. Additional holes will test other chargeability targets.
Depending on the success of early drilling, Seabridge said it may expand the 3,000-meter drill program originally slated for Quartz Rise.
–SHANE LASLEY
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