The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Program confirms high-grade veins above 'Gold Rush' placers North of 60 Mining News – November 20, 2020
Hardolph Wasteneys takes field notes during the 2020 exploration of Constantine Metal's Big Nugget Gold project.
Constantine Metal Vice President of Exploration Michael Vande Guchte inspects the outcropping Vug vein alongside McKinley Creek at the Big Nugget Gold project in Alaska.
Constantine Metal Resources Ltd. Nov. 19 reported that this year's prospecting and soil sampling has confirmed historically reported high-grade gold mineralization at Big Nugget Gold and has helped refine drill targets for follow up drilling at this project associated with the company's Palmer project in Southeast Alaska.
"The Big Nugget Gold project represents a rare, untested and undrilled, high grade gold quartz vein system that is unusual to find in this day and age," said Constantine Metal Resources President Garfield MacVeigh.
Constantine has traditionally focused its exploration efforts on the discovery and expansion of volcanogenic massive sulfide deposits rich in a wide variety of base and precious metals. This work has outlined 4.68 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 5.23% zinc, 1.49% copper, 30.8 grams per metric ton silver, 0.3% gold and 23.9% barite; plus 9.59 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 4.95% zinc, 0.59% copper, 69.3 g/t silver, 0.39 g/t gold and 27.7% barite.
This year, the company decided to investigate gold prospects on its 100% leased lands about five miles east of the Palmer project.
Golden Eagle and McKinley Creek Falls, two of the key prospects on this area known as Big Nugget Gold, are located upstream from placer gold operations along McKinley Creek, made famous by Discovery Channel's Gold Rush series.
This area has been known for its gold potential since 1898, when prospectors working as supply packers on the Dalton trail discovered placer gold in Porcupine Creek.
While placer mining has been carried out intermittently in this area for the past 120 years, there has been no modern, systematic exploration of the upstream source of the Porcupine placer gold deposits.
Reconnaissance level rock sampling by the United States Bureau of Mines at the Golden Eagle gold prospect in the 1980s returned assays with as much as 531.1 g/t gold from the Vug vein. Rock sampling downstream of the Vug vein toward the placer mining areas returned grades as high as 182.13 g/t.
Bureau of Mines geologists also collected samples with 1.37 to 8.96 g/t gold from discontinuous veins at McKinley Creek Falls. A 0.76-meter chip sample at this prospect averaged 24.83 g/t gold and 280 parts per million zinc.
Constantine's 2020 Big Nugget Gold field program consisted of the collection of 95 rock samples along McKinley Creek ; 566 soil samples collected on 100- to 200-meter spaced lines along the east side of McKinley Creek; and the evaluation of the geological setting of gold mineralization in this area.
The company says this work has confirmed the high-grade gold mineralization at Golden Eagle.
Outcrop grab samples from Vug vein have returned assays as high as 44.7 g/t gold.
Chip samples across the four-meter-wide Vug vein zone returned 2.3 meters averaging 9.8 g/t gold and one meter averaging 3.6 g/t gold.
Quartz vein grab samples from outcrops located 140 and 185 meters downstream of the Golden Eagle prospect returned 22.4 g/t and 38.9 g/t gold, respectively. A boulder sample collected about 400 meters upstream returned 8 g/t gold, along with 34.5% zinc, and a sample of vein material a further 400 meters upstream returned 8.1 g/t gold.
Constantine says the soil sampling outlined a 250- to 300-meter- gold-in-soil anomaly at the McKinley Creek Falls prospect with samples returning grades as high as 970 parts per billion gold. This anomaly extends roughly 650 meters to the east along a previously interpreted fault zone. Soils appear to be an effective exploration tool and additional sampling is required to determine the full extent of the anomaly.
"The initial exploration program has outlined a significant gold-in-soil anomaly associated with high grade gold mineralization in a very favorable geological setting with similarities to the large, past producing Alaska-Juneau (AJ) gold mine," said MacVeigh. "The Big Nugget project is an exciting new gold opportunity in the immediate vicinity of our flagship Palmer JV project that warrants follow-up diamond drilling."
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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