The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Rigs target bonanza and bulk tonnage gold-silver in the Yukon North of 60 Mining News – July 31, 2020
Strategic Metals is drilling gold-silver targets above Granite Creek, a stream in Yukon's Keno Hill district that continues to produce placer gold eroding off Mt. Hinton.
Strategic Metals Ltd. July 27 announced the start of a 7,000-meter drill program at Mount Hinton, a high-grade gold-silver project in the Keno Hill district of central Yukon.
The Mount Hinton property hosts numerous high-grade, gold-silver veins developed in a series of structural zones that cut across the same quartzite unit that hosts the very high-grade silver veins for which the Keno Hill district is renowned.
Strategic said the 2020 program, the first large-scale diamond drilling at Mount Hinton, is designed to test potential for both high-grade veins, like those mined from Alexco Resources Corp.'s adjoining Keno Hill property, and bulk tonnage targets similar to that being mined at Victoria Gold Corp.'s Eagle Gold Mine about 50 kilometers (31 miles) northwest of Mount Hinton.
One of the two drills currently turning at Mount Hinton is targeting Granite North, where Strategic geologists collected rock samples with up to 2,340 grams per metric ton (75.23 ounces per metric ton) gold and 597 g/t (19.2 oz/t) silver last year. Follow-up chip sampling across bedrock exposed in a hand trench encountered 1.22 meters averaging 26.9 g/t gold and 49 g/t silver.
Strategic will initially drill a fence of holes across the 300-meter-wide Granite North Zone, which is a complex feature comprising multiple, sub-parallel bands of altered and veined quartzite.
The second drill is targeting the Northern Structural Corridor, an up to 750-meter-wide zone where more than 50 veins and vein segments have been traced in outcrop and talus over a strike length of nearly 4,000 meters.
Historical sampling of the Northern Structural Corridor focused on sulfide-rich vein exposures, and little sampling was done across weakly mineralized veins or adjacent wall rock.
Strategic expects the holes it is drilling in this area to cross three or more veins. This includes the 19 vein, where historical samples collected along 24 meters of exposed strike reportedly had a weighted average of 6.51 g/t gold and 68.57 g/t silver over average width of 1.7 meters; the 21 vein, where samples taken over a 22-meter-long exposure yielded a weighted average of 42.5 g/t gold and 319 g/t silver across an average width of 1.05 meters; and the 24 vein, where samples collected over a 24-meter length had a weighted average of 17.5 g/t gold and 1,546 g/t silver across an average 0.49-meter width.
A road is currently being built to access drill targets at South West, a 100-meter-wide gold-silver zone that has been traced for more than 2,000 meters along strike.
Prospecting carried out at South West earlier this year identified a new vein exposure where two chip samples, situated 10 meters apart along strike, yielded 200 g/t gold and 90 g/t silver over 1.2 meters and 80.3 g/t gold and 72 g/t silver over 1 meter. Chip samples taken from other exposures in this zone averaged 30.5 g/t gold and 53.1 g/t silver across 1.2 meters and 8.82 g/t gold and 63.48 g/t silver across 1.95 meters.
Other targets across the 6,000-by-4,500-meter area of mineralization and strongly anomalous gold-in-soil geochemistry at Mount Hinton are expected to be drilled later in the season. These targets include a vein zone that was discovered in 2019 on a mostly till covered valley floor, where a chip sample assayed 24 g/t gold and 36.1 g/t silver across 1.25 meters, and a vein in the northwestern corner of the prospective area which was intersected in a 2011 reverse circulation drill hole. Despite encountering 31.7 g/t gold and 23 g/t silver over 1.52 meters, this historical hole was never followed up on.
The 2020 Mount Hinton exploration program got underway in mid-June and has comprised camp construction, road building, mapping, prospecting and sampling, all in preparation for the current drill program.
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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