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StrikePoint crews overcome 2020 hurdles

Explore Porter Silver while awaiting assays from Willoughby North of 60 Mining News – September 11, 2020

Series: COVID-19 coverage | Story 61

StrikePoint Gold Inc. Sept. 9 said its 2020 exploration programs in British Columbia's Golden Triangle are being challenged by COVID-19, weather, and a slow return of assay results. Despite these difficulties, however, crews have met their targets at the company's high-grade Willoughby gold-silver and Porter Silver projects near the mining town of Stewart, BC.

"I am exceptionally proud of our team's productivity and success in meeting operational milestones and goals, despite challenging weather conditions all summer and heightened safety protocols being implemented," said StrikePoint Gold President and CEO Shawn Khunkhun.

So far, StrikePoint's 2020 field work has focused on improving continuity of high-grade mineralization at Willoughby and testing broad zones of disseminated gold and silver mineralization encountered in previous drilling and surface sampling on this intrusion related gold-silver project about four miles (seven kilometers) east of Ascot Resources Ltd.'s Red Mountain Mine project.

Crews began surface exploration at Willoughby on July 29 and drilling began on Aug. 10.

The surface sampling targeted newly exposed high-grade mineralization identified on the property with the goal of generating targets for drilling during the second phase of the 2020 program. StrikePoint says assay results are pending from all 262 surface samples collected from the property.

The phase-1 2020 drill program involved roughly 1,700 meters of drilling in seven holes.

"While the company awaits assay results from drilling and surface sampling for Willoughby, we will keep our drill pads and infrastructure in place for potential follow-up drilling," said Khunkhun.

While waiting for assays that will direct further work at Willoughby crews are investigating Porter, a past producing high-grade silver property on Mount Rainey overlooking the town of Stewart, BC.

Early 20th century mining of the vein systems that run through Mount Rainey produced roughly 2.2 million ounces of silver from 27,123 metric tons of ore averaging 2,542 grams per metric ton silver.

This mineralization is hosted within shear-hosted, silver-rich vein systems. So far, individual structures have been traced through surface mapping for over 200 meters along strike and 1,000 meters down-dip with widths ranging from one to thirteen meters.

StrikePoint believes the ore mined from Prosperity-Porter Idaho and Silverado, the historic mines on Mount Rainey, could represent opposite ends of a larger mineralized system. Recent glacial retreat has exposed the ground between these past-producing mine sites, providing the opportunity to explore for a connection between the deposits.

"We are currently focused on exploring for new and extension veins at the high-grade Porter Silver property," said Khunkhun. "Our primary goal is to discover new silver veins in order to connect the Silverado mine on the north side with the Prosperity-Porter Idaho mines on the south side of the mineralized structural corridor."

Author Bio

Shane Lasley, Publisher

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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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