The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Rock samples with as much as 1,800 g/t silver grabbed at DC North of 60 Mining News – February 12, 2021
HighGold geologists carried out a large-scale reconnaissance program across the 7.5-mile-long mineralized trend that spans the Johnson Tract project in Southcentral Alaska.
HighGold Mining Inc. Feb. 11 announced that surface sampling has turned up zones of high-grade silver and copper at the Difficult Creek prospect about 2.5 miles (four kilometers) northeast of the JT deposit on the company's Johnson Tract property in Southcentral Alaska.
While drills were expanding upon the high-grade gold, copper, and zinc mineralization at JT, HighGold geologists carried out a large-scale regional reconnaissance program across the 21,036-acre (8,513 hectares) Johnson Tract property, which covers a series of underexplored regional prospects that span a 7.5-mile- (12 kilometers) long mineralized trend.
This work included reconnaissance mapping, prospecting, and sampling to evaluate historic showings and to explore for new zones of mineralization at DC.
This surface exploration led to the discovery of a high-grade silver-gold-zinc vein field covering a 250- by 700-meter area south of the historical gold showing at DC.
Highlighted assays from the rock samples collected from this area include:
• 1,800 g/t silver, 0.4 g/t gold, and 0.5% zinc.
• 1,280 g/t silver, 1.9 g/t gold, and 0.9% zinc.
• 574 g/t silver and 0.5 g/t gold.
• 517 g/t silver, 1.1 g/t gold, and 2.8% zinc.
• 211 g/t silver, and 1.5% zinc.
• 201 g/t silver, 0.8 g/t gold, and 0.6% zinc.
The 2020 exploration field program also significantly expanded a 'gold-in-soil' anomaly previously defined by HighGold during 2019, including delineation of a new 320-meter-long sub-parallel gold-in-soil anomaly.
At the northern end of the DC prospect and at lower elevation, rock sampling has also identified an area of high-grade copper mineralization. Rock samples from this area returned grades as high as 9.87% and 3.98% copper.
"We are very encouraged by the high silver, gold, zinc and copper values in our first round of reconnaissance sampling across the DC prospect," said HighGold Mining President and CEO Darwin Green. "The high-grade and widespread nature of the mineralization is a testament to the regional prospectivity of Johnson and highlights the potential for making additional mineral deposit discoveries along the 12-kilometer-long mineral trend."
Two holes were drilled at DC in the 1990s.
DC-001, cut three meters of 7.54 g/t gold, 3.72% zinc, 0.11% copper, 1.15% lead, and 27.4 g/t silver; and DC-002 encountered 13 meters of 8.57 g/t gold, 4.7% zinc, 0.5% copper, 0.9% lead, and 37.7 g/t silver.
With the encouraging results from the 2020 reconnaissance exploration, HighGold plans to carry out its first DC drilling this year.
"An apparent vertical zonation is observed at the DC Prospect mineralizing system, from gold-rich at deeper levels to silver-rich classic low-sulfidation epithermal style veining at higher levels. The new vein field is an attractive target both for shallow, high-grade silver mineralization and at greater depth for gold where the vein structures project into underlying dacite tuffs that host most of the high-grade gold mineralization elsewhere on the property," said Green. "We are looking forward to carrying out the first drill test of these new grassroots targets in the approaching field season concurrent with our planned expansion drilling program at the main JT deposit."
HighGold is still awaiting assay results from 12 holes drilled in the JT deposit area last year, as well as soil and rock samples collected from other surrounding regional prospects at Johnson Tract.
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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