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
Summer Solstice sunshine lights a 2 a.m. move of the drill rig on Klondike Gold's property near Dawson City, Yukon.
Klondike Gold Corp. continues to tap veins of high-grade gold on its Klondike District property, a 576-square-kilometer (222 square miles) land package that covers the hills above the legendary Yukon creeks that produced more than 20 million ounces of placer gold since 1896.
This year's C$2 million program included roughly 6,000 meters of drilling at the Lone Star, Gay Gulch and Nugget zones; soil sampling in areas above the legendary Eldorado and Bonanza creeks; GT Probe sampling to test extensions of the Lone Star zone; and an airborne Lidar (light detection and ranging) survey to help identify the surface position of potentially gold mineralized faults.
In August, Klondike Gold reported that this summer's drilling tapped a bonanza grade gold and silver intercept at Nugget Zone.
Lying west of Lone Star and north of Gay Gulch – two other exciting zones on the Klondike property –Nugget Zone is associated with a prominent, 8,000-meter-long magnetic low known as the Nugget fault. A 2,500-meter stretch of this fault hosts gold-bearing veins at Glacier Gulch, Nugget East and Upper Eldorado, as well as several circa-1900 lode mine workings and outcrops.
All these zones lie between the legendary Eldorado and Bonanza Creeks of Klondike Gold Rush fame.
Highlights from Klondike Gold's previous drilling at Nugget include nine meters of 9.5 grams per metric ton gold; 14 meters of 5.1 g/t gold; 45.2 meters of 1.55 g/t gold; and 1.5 meters of 31.9 g/t gold.
Drill testing along 200 meters at Nugget this year continues to cut gold mineralization and discovered a new parallel zone of high-grade gold.
Hole EC19-267 cut 2.5 meters averaging 404 g/t gold and 415 g/t silver from a depth of 104 meters, including one meter of 1,009 g/t gold with 1,035 g/t silver. Klondike Gold said this new discovery is 25 meters below the known Nugget zone.
With the goal of building a resource, Klondike Gold completed 36 holes at Nugget and expansion target known as Nugget East this year.
Glacier Gulch, another zone along the Nugget fault, was tested with four holes.
Another seven holes were drilled at Gay Gulch along the Eldorado fault.
One hole drilled at Gay Gulch in 2015 cut a 2.8-meter zone averaging 75.6 g/t gold. This intercept is 250 meters upstream from where a 72-ounce nugget was recovered from Eldorado Creek.
Drilling at Lone Star, which got underway in July, focused on expanding a wider zone of disseminated gold mineralization along strike of this gold zone that lies above the confluence of the celebrated Bonanza and Eldorado creeks.
Intercepts such as the 65.05 meters of 1.4 g/t gold and 26.2 meters of 1.33 g/t gold drilled last year are examples of the widths and grades being targeted at Lone Star.
With the goal of doubling the drilled strike at Lone Star, this year's drilling targeted a 1,000-meter eastern expansion area.
In addition to drilling, Klondike Gold utilized Dawson City-based GroundTruth Exploration's consistent methodology to collect 1,622 soil and 66 rock samples along high priority trends above Bonanza and Eldorado Creeks.
A GroundTruth GT Probe was also used to collect bedrock samples at the eastern extension of Lone Star.
Infield XRF (x-ray fluorescence) testing of the samples for pathfinder minerals such as bismuth allowed Klondike Gold to expeditiously locate the Lone Star zone horizon at a 450-meter step-out without the necessity of drilling a fence of multiple drill holes, thereby saving time and money.
Klondike Gold is also recognizing a gold-silver association that may be used as an exploration tool to target the highest gold grades, using the company's evolving structural knowledge from mapping and oriented core measurements.
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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