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
PolarX focused its 2020 Alaska Range exploration on Zackly East, a robust skarn discovery made at Stellar in 2018.
Core from a one-foot section of hole ZX‐18020 that averaged 27.3% copper, 2.5 g/t gold and 82.5 g/t silver.
Australia-based PolarX Ltd. has refocused its Alaska exploration on the Zackly high-grade copper-gold-silver skarn on its roughly 100-square-mile (261 square kilometers) Alaska Range property.
Blanketing 22 miles (35 kilometers) of copper-rich geology stretching across the southern slopes of the mountains for which it is named, Alaska Range consists of two adjacent copper and precious metal projects – Stellar and Caribou Dome.
Zackly skarn is found in the middle of a 7.5-mile- (12 kilometers) long mineralized corridor that runs across Stellar, the eastern project. This corridor is bookended by two porphyry targets, Mars to the west and Saturn to the east, that may have the source of fluids that transformed limestone at Zackly into a metal-rich skarn deposit.
The Zackly Main deposit hosts 3.4 million metric tons of Australian Joint Ore Reserves Committee- (JORC) compliant inferred resource averaging 1.2% (90.4 million pounds) copper, 2 grams per metric ton (213,000 oz) gold, and 14 g/t (1.5 million oz) silver.
After carrying out preliminary tests of Saturn and Mars porphyry targets during 2019, PolarX refocused its 2020 drilling on Zackly East, a particularly robust skarn discovery made in 2018.
"We aim to grow Zackly to a size where it could underpin a stand‐alone project or tie into any exploration success at the nearby Mars and Saturn porphyry targets," said PolarX Managing Director Frazer Tabeart.
ZX‐18020, a 2018 hole drilled about 850 meters east of the Zackly Main resource boundary, cut 54.6 meters averaging 2.8 g/t gold, 0.6% copper, and 9.4 g/t silver, including a 0.3-meter (one foot) section averaging 27.3% copper, 2.5 g/t gold and 82.5 g/t silver.
ZX‐18024, drilled about 40 meters north of hole 20, cut 46.7 meters of 3.1 g/t gold, 0.6% copper, and 3.3 g/t silver from a depth of 37 meters.
PolarX says the mineralization encountered in these Zackly East discovery holes may be suitable for low cost open‐pit extraction.
Trenching and mapping carried out during the 2019 season indicated this mineralization could extend roughly 600 meters further east.
To further refine drill targets, PolarX carried out an ultra-high-resolution drone magnetic survey over a 3,500- by 1,500-meter area that covers the entire Zackly system.
The company used this information to help refine targets for a 23-hole drill program carried out at Zackly East during 2020.
Hole ZX20035, drilled 60 meters east of ZX18020, cut 11.6 meters averaging 1.86 g/t gold and 0.38% copper.
ZX20040, drilled about 60 meters further east, cut 68.6 meters averaging 0.6 g/t gold and 0.3% copper, including 24.5 meters of 1.24 g/t gold and 0.6% copper.
Strong skarn mineralization was observed in the core of holes drilled further east and to the north but assay results from these intercepts were not available at the time of this report.
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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