The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Despite challenges of complex structures, weathering of veins North of 60 Mining News – January 15, 2021
Coarse visible gold in a quartz sample collected during 2020 surface sampling at Mount Hinton.
Strategic Metals Ltd. Jan. 13 reported strong gold and silver mineralization in the final batch of assay results from the 2020 drill program at the company's road accessible Mount Hinton project in Yukon's Keno Hill District.
Located about 35 kilometers (22 kilometers) southeast of Victoria Gold Corp.'s Eagle Gold Mine, Mount Hinton is an early staged gold and silver exploration project where 2019 surface sampling collected rocks with up to 2,340 grams per metric ton (75.23 ounces per metric ton) gold and 597 g/t (19.2 oz/t) silver.
Following two phases of sampling, mapping, and prospecting during 2019, Strategic carried out a 6,978-meter maiden drill program that targeted three zones with 32 holes.
Granite North, where the highest-grade silver and rock samples were collected during 2019 was the target of 24 of the holes drilled last year.
Highlights from the 2020 Granite North drilling include:
• 7.25 meters averaging 6.74 g/t gold and 186 g/t silver in hole MH-20-019.
• 1.47 meters averaging 9.57 g/t gold in hole MH-20-023.
• 1.56 meters averaging 17 g/t gold in hole MH-20-032.
Strategic said all 24 holes drilled at Granite North intersected abundant quartz veining of differing types. Many of the veins are limonite (an iron mineral) stained and contain vuggy cavities. Some veins host residual sulfide minerals, and native gold was observed in a few of them.
The company also drilled five holes at Southwest, a zone about 2,000 meters south of Granite North where a chip sample collected in 2019 returned 200 g/t gold with 90 g/t silver over 1.2 meters.
Highlights from the drilling at Southwest include:
• 9.75 meters averaging 3.86 g/t gold in hole MH-20-018.
• 12.14 meters averaging 4.78 g/t gold in hole MH-20-022.
Much like Granite North, Strategic reports that all five holes drilled at Southwest intersected strong structures containing quartz veining. The company, however, now says two of the holes drilled toward the east encountered a broad, previously unknown fault structure and were halted before reaching mineralized veins.
Strategic also drilled three holes at the northern structural corridor, a 4,000-meter-long zone immediately north of Granite North that was the primary focus of historical work on the Mount Hinton property. Historical grab samples from this up to 750-meter-wide corridor have returned up to 436 g/t gold and 1,342 g/t silver and chip samples assayed more than 40 g/t gold and 600 g/t silver over widths of 1.05 to 2.3 meters.
The company says all three holes drilled in the northern corridor intersected mineralized veins but were terminated for various reasons short of their ultimate target depth.
The best intercept from this drilling was 1.7 meters averaging 2.18 g/t gold and 298 g/t silver in hole MH-20-002.
"Results from the company's maiden drill program at Mt. Hinton have successfully confirmed the presence of a large, well mineralized, precious metal system consisting of numerous quartz veins containing coarse gold," said Strategic Metals President Doug Eaton. "The recessive weathering nature of the veins, the complex structural setting and the irregular distribution of the gold have presented challenges, but additional drilling is definitely warranted to expand the areas of drill-confirmed mineralization and evaluate other promising targets elsewhere on this camp-scale project."
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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