The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Bonanza silver grades tapped in Eskay Creek-like geology North of 60 Mining News – October 9, 2020
Electrum in a quartz vein encountered in P20-2211, a hole drilled at Silver Hill that cut one meter grading 1,320 g/t silver.
Ascot Resources Ltd. Oct. 8 reported that drilling has tapped high-grade silver mineralization at the aptly named Silver Hill, an exploration target about 2,000 meters northeast of the planned underground development at Big Missouri on the company's Premier gold-silver mine project in Northwest British Columbia.
Big Missouri is one of four mine areas slated to deliver ore to the existing 1990s era mill at Premier, according to a feasibility study completed earlier this year for re-establishing the Premier gold-silver mine near Stewart, BC.
Six holes were drilled at Silver Hill this year as part of Ascot's 2020 resource expansion and exploration program at Premier.
Ascot geologists collected two high-grade grab samples from Silver Hill last year. One of these samples contained 14,898 grams per metric ton silver, 9.37 g/t gold, 5.75% zinc, and 5.9% lead; and the other returned assays of 12,393 g/t silver, trace gold, 4.86% zinc, and 3.42% lead.
Following up on the success of the surface sampling, the company drilled four holes at Silver Hill late last year. One of the holes cut two high-grade silver intercepts – one meter averaging 880 g/t silver and one meter averaging 787 g/t silver.
Two geophysical profiles were also completed to collect chargeability and resistivity data over the prospective area. This survey detected strong chargeability anomalies that appear to extend for several hundred meters between the profiles.
After completing additional geophysical work, Ascot drilled another six holes at Silver Hill this year. Highlights from the first four holes include:
• One meter of 1,320 g/t silver from a depth of 14.4 meters in hole P20-2211.
• One meter of 446 g/t gold from 12 meters, and one meter of 4.31 g/t gold from 11.8 meters in P20-2219.
• 7.12 meters of 154.3 g/t silver in P20-2220.
"The results from Silver Hill are very exciting," said Ascot Resources President and CEO Derek White. "This prospect represents an area with different geology and a different target type than at the rest of the PGP (Premier gold project)."
The near surface silver encountered in holes 2211 and 2219 is very similar to the mineralization drilled last year.
Ascot said the intercept in hole 2220 is very encouraging as it shows strong mineralization over a more significant width. This intersection and the deeper intercepts in holes 2211 and 2219 are significant as mineralization occurs very close to the contact between the sedimentary and volcanic packages, which is prospective for Eskay Creek style massive sulfide deposits.
"The northeastern part of our claims contains a volcanic-sedimentary contact similar to that which hosts the Eskay Creek deposit," said White. "In 2019 we intersected high-grade silver at the edge of much younger dykes and suspected that this mineralization was remobilized from a deeper source. The new results show mineralization to occur over a significant strike length and not exclusively related to dyke contacts. We believe that there is a hydrothermal system at the contact of volcanic and sedimentary units with the potential to have formed a deposit at this stratigraphic level. This interpretation is preliminary, but we are anticipating additional supportive results and are extremely keen to conduct further follow-up work in this area next year."
With assay labs backed up due to COVID-19 protocols and a surge of late season exploration, Ascot is still awaiting results for the other two holes at Silver Hill and for additional holes from Day, a gold-rich zone immediately west of the Big Missouri deposit.
In the meantime, the company has moved drills back to the lower elevations near the mill at Premier and currently has two rigs testing Woodbine, a prospect roughly 1,000 meters northwest of the 609 and 602 resource zones in the main Premier deposit.
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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