The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Mining Explorers 2019 – Published Nov. 1, 2019
Crews prepare a pad for drilling at the Massive Sulfide zone on Cantex Mine's North Rackla property in the Yukon.
Cantex Mine Development Corp. is focused on expanding massive sulfide zones on its North Rackla property in the Yukon that are rich in zinc, lead, manganese and silver.
Located about 20 kilometers (12.5 miles) north of ATAC Resources Ltd.'s Rackla Gold property, North Rackla is a relatively new discovery.
Prospecting, sampling and trenching from 2014-16 showed the potential of the Discovery zone at North Rackla but the real excitement began with the spectacular mineralization tapped during the 2018 drilling into a new zone known as Extension.
Highlights from this drilling include: 9.19 meters averaging 18.04 percent zinc, 8.09 percent lead, 3.67 percent manganese and 150.6 g/t silver; 7.1 meters of 23.12 percent zinc, 6.04 percent lead, 1.58 percent manganese and 158 g/t silver; and 9.3 meters of 10.97 percent zinc, 7.33 percent lead, 4.7 percent manganese and 122.6 g/t silver.
Following the outstanding success of the 2018 drill program, Cantex raised C$15 million to fund 2019 exploration at North Rackla.
This included roughly 17,000 meters of drilling primarily focused on Massive Sulphide, a 2,400-meter-long zone that encompasses the Discovery and Extension subzones.
In a step toward the company's goal of defining a world-class zinc-lead-silver deposit, much of this drilling focused on testing a 1,000-meter section of this zone to a depth of up to 550 meters.
In order to determine the exact location of the massive sulfide mineralization, Cantex Mine Development completed ground-based geophysics – gravity, electromagnetic, resistivity and magnetic – over the Massive Sulphide zone prior to drilling.
The company also completed an airborne geophysical survey over the area during the summer months.
The results from these surveys were used to fine tune the drill program, especially in the glacial till covered area between Discovery and Extension, as well as test areas at the extremities of the mineralized zone.
With three drills turning, Cantex tested Massive Sulphide with around 75 holes. Elsewhere on the North Rackla property, drills tested a zone of anomalous soil and rock samples parallel to the Massive Sulphide zone and recently discovered gold mineralization at the north end of the claim block.
Prospecting, rock sampling and trenching of the gold mineralized area, which outcrops over a 120- by 150-meter area, have returned results as high as 15.75 g/t gold, 377 g/t silver, 32.5 percent zinc and 11 percent lead.
Cantex' exploration at North Rackla continues to draw strong investor interest, witnessed by an oversubscribed C$12 million private placement financing in August that included the issuance of 1.08 million charity flow-through shares at C$6.53 per share and 824,000 flow-through shares at C$6 per share.
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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