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
At a time when electric vehicles are driving up nickel demand, Garibaldi Resources Inc. is unveiling an extremely high-grade deposit of this battery metal at its Nickel Mountain project about 18 kilometers (11 miles) southwest of the historic Eskay Creek Mine in the heart of British Columbia's Golden Triangle.
"Increasingly, Nickel Mountain represents an important new discovery within the Eskay Rift," said Peter Lightfoot, a technical advisor to Garibaldi and nickel geology expert. "The project is ideally positioned to leverage the demand from dramatically declining nickel sulfide discoveries and the resulting depletion of high-quality nickel inventories required to fuel the electric vehicle battery revolution."
Garibaldi first tapped the nickel- and copper-rich E&L intrusion at Nickel Mountain in 2017. This discovery hole, EL-17-14, cut 16.75 meters averaging 8.3 percent nickel, 4.2 percent copper, 0.19 percent cobalt, 1.96 grams per metric ton platinum, 4.5 g/t palladium, 1.1 g/t gold and 11.1 g/t silver from a depth of 100.4 meters.
Following up on this Golden Triangle discovery, the Vancouver, B.C.-based explorer continued to drill into exceptionally high grades in what is shaping up to be a widespread deposit with multiple layered zones of nickel- and copper-rich massive sulfide mineralization.
In addition to the two massive sulfide zones at E&L tapped in 2017 – Upper and Lower Discovery – Garibaldi's 2018 program tapped a shallower zone known as Northeast.
One of the 2018 holes, EL-18-33, cut all three zones, including a 48.98-meter interval of Northeast Zone averaging 1.34 percent nickel, 0.89 percent copper, 0.04 percent cobalt, 0.23 g/t platinum, 0.34 g/t palladium, 0.23 g/t gold and 3.7 g/t silver from a depth of 37.88 meters. A 4.77-meter section of this hole averaged 7.69 percent nickel, 2.95 percent copper, 0.20 percent cobalt, 0.68 g/t platinum, 0.78 g/t palladium, 0.42 g/t gold and 7.3 g/t silver from a depth of 77.05 meters.
EL-18-30, collared from the same location as EL-18-33 but angled slightly toward the east, also cut the Northeast, Upper and Lower Discovery zones. The best intercept in this hole was 9.68 meters averaging 3.01 percent nickel, 1.61 percent copper, 0.08 percent cobalt, 0.37 g/t platinum, 0.42 g/t palladium, 0.37 g/t gold and 4.3 g/t silver from a depth of 37.88 meters.
Garibaldi said the sheet-like massive sulfides identified in the Lower and Upper Discovery zones, along with the overlying Northeast zone, are indicative of a strong sub-horizontal control on massive sulfide mineralization at the edge of the E&L intrusion.
For the 2019 Nickel Mountain drill program, Garibaldi used advanced heli-portable drill rigs mounted on rotating turntables that allow for rapid azimuth and dip change. This eliminates the need to use costly helicopters to realign drill rigs when targeting multiple anomalies from the same pad. The drills also feature data logging capabilities, providing drilling metrics on a per shift basis.
These state-of-the-art drills also require less water and fuel than comparable rigs, which results in higher production and lower costs.
Initial results from this drilling returned the widest massive sulfide intercepts yet drilled at Nickel Mountain.
The first hole of the 2019 season, EL-19-47, cut 50.57 meters (estimated true width is 40.45 meters) containing 1.5 percent nickel and 0.94 percent copper (plus cobalt, platinum, palladium, gold and silver), including 9.32 meters of 6.1 percent nickel and 2.8 percent copper. Drilled about 64 meters southeast of EL-17-14, this hole expands Lower Discovery Zone (LDZ) at E&L in this direction.
Drill hole EL-19-53 has cut the widest massive sulfide intersection to so far at Nickel Mountain. While the assays were pending at the time of this report, Garibaldi reports this hole cut through 18 meters of massive sulfide featuring a characteristic Nickel Mountain "leopard print texture," within 86 meters (estimated true width is 68.8 meters) of nickel- and copper-rich mineralization from 67 meters to 153 meters. This mineralization in EL-19-53 thickens and extends the robust LDZ along a shallow western plunge on the south flank of the E&L intrusion.
In addition to successful step outs beyond the known mineralized zones at E&L, objectives of 2019 drilling are to confirm the presence of an olivine gabbro (mafic intrusive igneous rock with significant olivine) chamber beneath the LDZ while also linking the Northwest and Crevasse zones. The company is confident in terms of achieving these objectives and eagerly awaits more assay results.
"Our understanding of the structural controls on mineralization continues to improve, allowing for very productive targeting for infill and step out drilling," said Hanson.
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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