The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Fall resource, metallurgical drilling will inform mine study North of 60 Mining News – October 2, 2020
An open pit from 1990s era mining along the Keg resource area at Golden Predator's Brewery Creek gold mine project in the Yukon.
Golden Predator Mining Corp. Sept. 28 announced the start of a more than 3,000-meter drill program focused on expanding the resource at its Brewery Creek gold mine project about 35 miles (55 kilometers) east of Dawson City, Yukon.
According to a calculation published in August, Brewery Creek hosts 22.2 million metric tons of indicated leachable resource averaging 1.11 grams per metric ton (789,000 ounces) gold, plus 16.8 million metric tons of inferred leachable resource at 0.92 g/t (497,000 oz) gold.
The project also hosts 30.6 million metric tons of inferred sulfide resource at 0.84 g/t (828,000 oz) gold, which will be considered for mining in later phases of Brewery Creek operation.
The mineral resource estimate and model confirms that the 2019 drilling at Brewery Creek connected the Fosters, Canadian, Kokanee and Golden deposits into a 3,500-meter-long pit shell that has been renamed Keg.
Last year's drilling also indicated that a 400-meter gap between Keg and the Lucky deposit is well mineralized and oxidized but requires increased drill density to calculate a resource in this area that could extend the Keg gold mineralization by a further 1,000 meters to the northeast.
Golden Predator is targeting this gap with in-fill drilling this fall. The goal is to incorporate the Lucky resource into the much larger Keg pit shell for mine planning that is part of a feasibility study currently underway for Brewery Creek.
The fall program will also include wide-spaced drilling at a large intrusive porphyry system about 3,000 meters south of Keg.
The Classic and Lonestar gold zones at this 20-square-kilometer (eight square miles) porphyry system have been identified by outcrop, geophysics, surface sampling and previous drilling. Golden Predator says the mineralization at this porphyry system is clearly a separate younger mineralizing event not associated with the mineralization included in the resource estimate.
Significant intercepts from previous drilling at the Classic zone include:
• 41.2 meters of 1.04 g/t gold from a depth of 131.1 meters.
• 33.5 meters of 0.95 g/t gold from a depth of 99.1 meters.
• 200 meters of 0.38 g/t gold from surface.
• 148 meters of 0.32 g/t gold from a depth of two meters.
The Lonestar mineralized area lies immediately southeast of the Classic zone. Three styles of gold mineralization occur at Lonestar – skarns, disseminated gold in intrusive rocks, and sheeted quartz veins.
Significant intercepts from previous Lonestar drilling include:
• 32 meters of 0.81 g/t gold from a depth of 172.2 meters.
• 10.7 meters of 1.14 g/t gold from a depth of 25.9 meters, and 21.3 meters of 2.24 g/t gold from 166.1 meters.
• 27.4 meters of 1.24 g/t gold from a depth of 1.5 meters.
• 93 meters of 0.27 g/t gold from the surface.
This year's drilling will include at least 1,000-meter step-outs to test newly defined extensions of the Classic-Lonestar porphyry-style intrusive.
Initial metallurgical testing indicates this intrusive-hosted mineralization is leachable to a depth of at least 200 meters, which could provide additional ore for a heap leach operation at Brewery Creek.
"We are excited to be exploring these new targets which have the potential to make large additions to our mineral inventory very rapidly," said Golden Predator Mining President Janet Lee-Sheriff. "Based on our knowledge of the Classic and Lonestar zones, this porphyry-style system has the advantages of near-surface expression and extensive oxidation when compared to many similar targets attracting attention in the Golden Triangle of BC."
In addition to the resource drilling, Golden Predator will be completing 700 meters of large diameter core drilling to obtain samples for further metallurgical testing at the Keg and Lucky zones.
These tests are being conducted to confirm the recent results of column leach tests run at various crush sizes on material from the historic heap leach pad where the data showed slightly better recoveries of gold in solution for the coarser three-quarter-inch crush size.
The exploration and metallurgical drilling are expected to be completed by the end of October and the feasibility study for reprocessing material stacked on the heap leach pad and mining new oxide gold mineralization at Brewery Creek is expected by the end of 2020.
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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