The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Geologists to ready gold discovery for August drill program North of 60 Mining News – June 12, 2020
White Rock's exploration camp at Red Mountain, a district-scale property in the Alaska Range that hosts zinc-rich VMS deposits and the intriguing Last Chance gold discovery.
White Rock Minerals Ltd. June 10 said a team of geologists is slated to explore the Last Chance prospect in preparation for the first drilling at this gold discovery on the company's Red Mountain project in Interior Alaska.
A detailed regional stream sediment program carried out last year led to the discovery of Last Chance, which is located on the west end of White Rock's 216-square-mile (559 square kilometers) property about 60 miles (100 kilometers) south of Fairbanks.
While this district-scale property is best known for its zinc-rich volcanogenic massive sulfide (VMS) deposits and occurrences, Red Mountain does lie within the Tintina Gold Belt, a particularly gold-rich province that sweeps across Canada's Yukon Territory and Alaska.
The Tintina Belt hosts the famed Klondike Gold District, Northern Star Resource's Pogo Mine, Kinross Gold Corp.'s Fort Knox Mine; International Tower Hill Mines 11.5-million-ounce Livengood gold project; and Donlin Gold, a world-class gold mine project being advanced by Barrick Gold Corp. and Novagold Resources Inc.
"The Tintina Gold belt of Central Alaska hosts a diverse range of world-class gold deposits including Donlin Creek (45 million oz), Pogo (10 million oz) and Fort Knox (13.5 million oz). Each of them different, but a compelling reward for dedicated greenfields exploration," said White Rock Minerals CEO Matt Gill.
White Rock says a six-square-mile (15 square kilometers) gold anomaly at Last Chance is situated along a regional gold-arsenic-antimony trend that extends to the east and is associated with a suite of exposed Cretaceous granites that are the same age as those associated with major gold deposits distributed across the Tintina Gold Belt.
This gold anomaly is defined by 27 stream sediment samples grading as high as 418 parts per billion gold. White Rock says this gold anomaly has a highly anomalous core, with samples returning greater than 100 ppb gold in first order stream catchments over 3,500 meters of strike. While this anomaly is at the headwaters of Last Chance Creek and upstream from significant placer mining, there are no indications the area has previously been explored for lode gold.
White Rock's 2020 field program, slated to get underway on June 15, will get started with a team of experienced Alaskan exploration geologists carrying out a comprehensive geological reconnaissance across the entire Last Chance gold anomaly. At the same time, detailed soil geochemical sampling will be conducted over the highly anomalous core area.
"The initial field work of geological reconnaissance and detailed geochemical sampling is designed to rapidly define targets for drill testing," said Gill.
White Rock plans to complete an initial 2,000-meter drill program by early August.
In late-May, White Rock raised A$1.4 million in the first tranche of a planned A$7.35 million financing, which provided the Australia-based company the funding for the gold exploration at Red Mountain.
"Our recent capital raising has attracted some keen interest in our Last Chance exploration story from prominent resources investors and we look forward to announcing results as we progress through the 2020 field season," Gill said.
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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