The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Discovery drilling at Alaska prospect to begin on August 1 North of 60 Mining News – July 24, 2020
The exploration camp at Red Mountain, a 308-square-mile property in Alaska that where Australia-based White Rock is exploring zinc-rich VMS deposits and gold rich prospects.
White Rock Minerals Ltd. July 22 said sampling carried out this year has provided further evidence of a potentially large gold system at the Last Chance target on the Australian mineral exploration company's Red Mountain property in Alaska.
While Red Mountain is best known for its zinc-rich volcanogenic massive sulfide (VMS) deposits and occurrences, this 308-square-mile (798 square kilometers) property about 60 miles (100 kilometers) south of Fairbanks lies within the Tintina Gold Belt, a particularly gold-rich province that sweeps across Canada's Yukon Territory and Alaska.
A detailed regional stream sediment program carried out last year led to the discovery of Last Chance, which is on the west end of the district-scale Red Mountain property.
To better understand the gold mineralization at Last Chance and refine targets for a drill program slated to get underway in August, a team of six geologists completed geological reconnaissance and systematic soil sampling across the target.
Despite a heavy talus cover leaving only about 5% outcrop exposure, these geologists collected more than 500 rock chip samples and 2,800 soil samples.
White Rock has received assay results from 365 of the rock chips and 2,052 of the soil samples.
The soil sampling identified a roughly 3,550- by 500-meter core within the larger Last Chance target. The most intense zone of gold and arsenic anomalism extends from Sidewinder West, a prospect area at about the center of the Last Chance core, about 2,000 meters southwest to the Pickle prospect.
Two soil samples from Sidewinder West returned 2.2 grams per metric ton and 7.1 g/t gold, very high grades for soils.
One rock chip sample collected from a narrow quartz vein southwest of Sidewinder West, in an area known as SW Blowout, contained 77.3 g/t gold. Two rock chip samples collected at Pickle returned assays of 2.11 g/t and 1.05 g/t gold, and samples from the Double Down prospect, about 500 meters south of Sidewinder West, contained 2.77 g/t and 1.16 g/t gold.
In addition to the broad distribution of highly anomalous gold across the greater target area, White Rock said the isolated high grade gold sample from a narrow quartz vein proximal to the Sidewinder Blowout and the very high gold soil anomalies of 7.1 g/t and 2.2 g/t gold at Sidewinder West, provide clear indication the Last Chance mineralizing system is fertile and capable of generating high-grade gold mineralization.
White Rock reported that some of quartz veins sampled also contained very strong silver, including 3,150 and 1,625 g/t silver in two of the samples.
Earlier this month, the company announced that it had staked an additional 375 mining claims covering a 93-square-mile (240 square kilometers) area surrounding the Last Chance target. This increased the size of the overall Red Mountain land package to 308 square miles (798 square kilometers).
White Rock plans to kick off the first ever drill program at Last Chance on Aug. 1.
This drilling has two priorities – test a number of immediate targets to assess the potential for shallow economic gold mineralization; and test for potentially high-grade gold mineralization at depth with a series of deeper holes.
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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