The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
RAB drilling confirms new model and targets for core drilling North of 60 Mining News – November 13, 2020
Tectonic Metals VP of Exploration Eric Buitenhuis investigates Flanders, an intriguing gold exploration target at Seventymile.
Tectonic Metals Inc. Nov. 12 announced that its 26-hole rotary air blast drill program at Seventymile has confirmed the company's geological model for this eastern Alaska gold exploration property and identified several large targets that warrant aggressive follow up drilling.
"Tectonic is pleased to report exciting new results from our first drilling campaign at Seventymile, the first drill holes at the property in twenty years, and the first to test Tectonic's shear zone gold model," said Tectonic Metals Vice President of Exploration Eric Buitenhuis.
Situated along the northern margins of the Tintina Gold Belt and about 35 miles (55 kilometers) west of the Alaska-Yukon border, Seventymile is a large land package where previous exploration has shown the potential for multiple gold deposits.
While gold has been identified across the breadth of a 25-mile- (40 kilometers) long greenstone belt that spans the property, the 8,000-meter-long Flume trend toward the northwest end of this prospective belt is one of the most intriguing targets at Seventymile.
Previous drilling at Flanders, a 1,500-meter-long prospect within Flume, has encountered grades as high as 187.9 g/t gold over 1.1 meters. Other intercepts at Flanders include 1.31 meters of 12 g/t gold and 4.87 meters of 7.8 g/t gold. About 5,000 meters northeast of Flanders, in the Bonanza zone, one historical hole cut 44.2 meters of 1.34 g/t gold.
Tectonic focused its 2020 reconnaissance drilling largely targeting previously overlooked shear zones believed to be conduits for the gold mineralization along the Flume trend that were not tested by previous drilling.
The company said the structurally controlled mineralization was intersected where predicted by its new structural interpretation of Seventymile.
Highlights from this drilling includes:
• 19.81 meters averaging 1.37 grams per metric ton gold in blind shear-hosted mineralization discovered at Bonanza.
• 6.1 meters averaging 2.07 g/t gold in the previously undrilled Flume-Bonanza connector zone.
• 4.57 meters averaging 1.2 g/t gold in previously unrecognized structure south of historical drilling at Flanders.
Additionally, an infill hole testing extensional, tension-gash quartz-pyrite-arsenopyrite veins at Flanders cut 6.1 meters averaging 4.38 g/t gold. The company says the relationship between the tension veins and the parallel shear zones has yet to be determined, with the possible intersection between the two structures presenting a priority drill target.
Anomalous gold mineralization was intersected at every hole that tested Tectonic's newly defined shear-hosted targets along a 6,000-meter stretch of the Flanders trend.
Buitenhuis says this reconnaissance drilling "successfully confirmed our hypothesis of previously unknown, shear-hosted gold mineralization directly below our 2018 and 2019 soil and top-of-bedrock anomalies."
Given this success, the company believes five of the zones tested with this year warrant follow-up diamond drilling to expand and refine the newly defined anomalies while also obtaining structural data from oriented drill core.
Each of these targets exhibit scale potential to extend for at least 1,000 meters and remain open along strike, especially where permafrost cover obscures and masks the surface expression of mineralization. Additionally, high-grade quartz vein mineralization was confirmed at the historically drilled region of Flanders, which remains open for expansion to the north, west and east.
"Our 2020 RAB program has now identified targets warranting aggressive follow up in the future," said Buitenhuis.
Beyond drilling along the Flume trend, Tectonic completed a three-week mapping and prospecting program along the entire 25-mile- (40 kilometers) long Seventymile property it leased from Doyon Ltd.
The company's mapping crews followed up on limited ridge and spur soil sampling completed in 1990, with the goal of identifying additional shear-hosted exploration targets for detailed soil or Geoprobe top-of-bedrock sampling follow up.
Results from the mapping program are pending.
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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