The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Much of the drilling to target historic high-grade gold veins North of 60 Mining News – June 11, 2021
Strong alteration and cross-cutting veins at Taurus, a one-million-ounce bulk tonnage gold deposit at Cassiar.
Snow-capped mountains reflect off the water on a tailings facility from previous high-grade gold mining at the Cassiar property in northwestern British Columbia.
Cassiar Gold Corp. June 8 announced the start of a 15,000-meter drill program at its Cassiar Gold project in British Columbia's Golden Triangle.
Roughly 12,000 meters of this drilling will test high-grade gold targets in the Cassiar South section of the 56,000-hectare (138,380 acres) property and 3,000 meters testing the lower grade bulk tonnage Taurus at Cassiar North.
Taurus hosts 21.8 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 1.43 grams per metric ton (1 million ounces) gold, using a cut-off grade of 0.7 g/t gold.
This year's Cassiar South drilling will focus on upgrading and expanding this resource.
Initial drilling at Taurus will include infill drilling in areas where widely spaced holes have encountered significant gold mineralization, with the goal of upgrading the resource by defining better continuity of higher-grade mineralized areas.
The deposit also remains open in all lateral directions, and this year's drilling will target prospective corridors where higher-grade portions of the resource remain open.
One such target is Taurus West, where one hole drilled in 1995, T95-29, cut 84 meters averaging 2.4 g/t gold, and is more than 100 meters away from other holes in the area.
Hole 20TA-119, drilled by Cassiar last year, cut 32.8 meters averaging 1.78 g/t gold in the hanging wall of the Taurus West fault. Cassiar says this hole, along with T95-13, another 1995 hole that cut 25.45 meters averaging 3.05 g/t gold, defines the southernmost holes of a significant gently plunging zone of gold mineralization that is open to the south. The southern extensions of this gold mineralization will be targeted this year.
The 2021 drilling at Taurus will also target other areas where last year's drilling encountered higher-grade gold, such as the 18.22 meters of 5.43 g/t gold in hole 20TA-116 at the Taurus Sable zone.
The bulk of the 2021 drilling, however, is expected to be carried out at North Cassiar, an area that hosts multiple historical high-grade gold mines.
Roughly 315,650 oz of gold was recovered from 686,700 metric tons of South Cassiar vein material averaging 15.76 g/t gold. Most of this gold mining occurred at South Cassiar from 1979 to 1997.
Table Mountain, another South Cassiar high-grade vein occurrence, hosts 21,470 metric tons of historical (2010) indicated resource averaging 18.02 g/t (13,650 oz) gold and 65,750 metric tons of inferred resource averaging 24.3 g/t (56,360 oz) gold, using a cut-off grade of 3 g/t gold.
This 2021 South Cassiar drilling will target high-grade veins extending from the historically producing Bain-Cusac and Main mine areas. In addition, new areas are planned to be tested where veins remain open or favorable geology and vein periodicity suggest the potential for new high-grade targets.
"Over the last few months our technical team has been busy preparing a geological model at North and South Cassiar to define strategic targets," said Cassiar Gold CEO Marco Roque. "We are excited to kick off this campaign at our existing Taurus deposit in North Cassiar and to also focus on the South Cassiar targets which will be the first time the Company drills this high-grade target area."
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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