Bonanza gold tapped in new area of Snip

Skeena Resources Ltd. Dec. 18 reported that its 2019 drilling discovered a new occurrence of very high-grade gold at its Snip project in British Columbia's Golden Triangle.

Located about 200 kilometers (125 miles) northwest of Stewart, B.C., Snip hosts a historic underground gold mine that produced 1.1 million ounces of gold from 1.25 million metric tons of ore averaging 27.5 grams per metric ton gold over a nine-year span that began in 1991.

Barrick Gold Corp., the owner of this 1990s-era mine, sold the Snip property to Skeena in 2017.

With gold prices sitting at a five-fold increase from the US$300/oz since Barrick opted to wind down operations at Snip, coupled with the recent infrastructure improvement in the Golden Triangle, Skeena is exploring the potential of resuming operations at this historic high-grade mine.

Toward this goal, the company completed 1,934 meters of surface drilling in 10 holes at Snip this year aimed at validating an isolated high-grade intersection from historical drilling at Snip that was never followed up on.

This high-grade gold was encountered in 200 Footwall, a zone that has historically only been targeted with limited underground drilling.

The original target in the 200 Footwall was identified by Barrick in a 1997 underground hole, UG-2610, which cut 3.4 meters of 26.83 g/t (36.9 ounces per metric ton) gold. A half-a-meter section of this intercept contained abundant visible gold and assayed at 3,390 g/t (109 oz/t) gold.

Skeena said this new high-grade gold occurs roughly 50 meters deeper into 200 Footwall than the mineralization encountered by UG-2610, which was already beyond the boundaries of this zone.

"We are quite excited about this new discovery and the confirmed exploration potential of this area," said Skeena Resources Vice President of Exploration Paul Geddes "Previous operators were not focused on exploring the footwall portions of the former Snip Mine and as such, there is a lack of drilling in these areas. Furthermore, historic drill holes often did not extend to the necessary depths to test this target and historic sampling of the mineralization was selective and incomplete. As we have demonstrated with the 2019 exploration program, considerable discovery upside exists at Snip."

In addition to the bonanza gold grades in S19-044, Skeena reported results from hole S19-040, which cut 6.65 meters of 7.37 g/t gold from a depth of 41 meters.

Assay results from the other eight holes drilled this year at Snip are pending, including a second exploratory hole targeting the same occurrence encountered in hole S19-044 but roughly 100 meters further downdip.

–SHANE LASLEY