The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Mining Explorers 2020 - Published January 19, 2021
A drill tests depth extensions of strong gold mineralization identified on the surface of Avidian's Amanita project.
Following the July closing of a C$2 million private placement in which Eric Sprott acquired 20 million Avidian Gold Corp. shares, the junior explorer resumed exploration of its expanded portfolio of exploration properties in Alaska.
Avidian has two properties adjacent to the Fort Knox Mine property, which makes them ideally located to be potential future sources of the higher grade ore Kinross Gold Corp. is seeking for its underused mill at Fort Knox.
Avidian, which already owned the 3,608-acre Amanita property south of Fort Knox, signed a deal to acquire the 1,032-acre NE Amanita (formerly Fish Creek) about five miles east of Fort Knox in June.
Avidian focused much of its 2020 exploration on Amanita, where previous exploration identified gold mineralization within the Tonsina trend, an 800-meter-wide structural corridor that extends northeast onto the Fort Knox property.
Highlights from previous drilling along the Amanita portion of the Tonsina trend include 4.6 meters of 11.4 grams per metric ton gold; 12.2 meters of 2.28 g/t gold; and 13.7 meters of 3.02 g/t gold.
In 2019, Avidian sampled a 3,000-meter section of this trend with widely spaced trenches. Highlights from this work included 94.5 meters of 3.04 g/t gold and 27 meters of 4.22 g/t gold.
The company says these trench results, combined with the historical drilling, highlight the wide distribution of oxide gold mineralization with significant widths and grades.
This year, the company completed 1,945 meters of drilling in nine holes testing depth extensions of the strong gold mineralization encountered during the 2019 trenching as well as new targets turned up with high-resolution lidar and drone magnetic surveys carried out earlier in the 2020 season.
Avidian also had lidar and drone magnetic surveys flown over NE Amanita, which lies between Gil-Sourdough, a deposit Kinross said it plans to begin mining by the end of this year, and the Fort Knox mill.
Avidian has significantly upgraded the existing dataset at Amanita NE in preparation for drilling.
"Our plan was always to explore the Amanita NE project in early 2021 so our timing will be perfect as we drive value into this project as the spotlight turns to the Gil projects expected development," said Avidian Gold President Steve Roebuck.
Avidian also flew a lidar and orthophoto survey over its entire Golden Zone property during 2020.
Located about midway between Anchorage and Fairbanks, Golden Zone hosts numerous gold targets along a roughly nine-mile trend. Breccia Pipe, the most advanced of these, hosts 4.19 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 1.99 g/t (267,400 oz) gold and 10.4 g/t (1.4 million oz) silver.
A drone magnetometer survey was flown over the Breccia Pipe deposit area last year. Results from this and mapping is being analyzed to refine targets for future 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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