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The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Cuts two trenches across Tourmaline Ridge on Pogo West block North of 60 Mining News – October 29, 2021
Resolution Minerals cut two trenches at Tourmaline Ridge, a gold prospect southwest of Northern Star Resources Ltd.'s Pogo Mine in Alaska's Goodpaster Mining District.
Resolution Minerals Ltd. announced the completion of the first trenching program at Tourmaline Ridge, a gold prospect at the company's 64North project in Alaska's Goodpaster District.
Located about 1,000 meters southwest of the Aurora prospect on the West Pogo claim block at 64North, Tourmaline Ridge lies on a trend of mineralization that extends northeast to the Northern Star Resources Ltd.'s Pogo gold mine. Northern Star's Goodpaster discovery, which is currently undergoing around $20 million of resource drilling, lies along this trend between the Aurora prospect and Pogo Mine.
"The Tourmaline Ridge prospect is in a great neighborhood for gold mineralization, said Resolution Minerals Managing Director Duncan Chessell. "The prospect is about two kilometers (1.2 miles) along the ridge line from Resolution's Sunrise Prospect, which has demonstrated a 280-meter-wide intrusion-hosted gold mineralization zone identified in drilling earlier this year."
Previous prospecting and sampling, including surface rock chip sampling that returned grades as high as 118 grams per metric ton gold, has outlined a 1,000- by 750-meter zone at Tourmaline Ridge.
Resolution cut two trenches for a total of 820 meters across this zone to test for a large-scale gold system that is a hybrid of vein-hosted mineralization similar to Pogo and bulk tonnage mineralization similar to the deposits at Kinross Gold Corp.'s Fort Knox Mine north of Fairbanks, Alaska.
The presence and grade of gold in rock chips over a large area highlights the potential for significant mineralization close to the surface," said Chessell. "Trenching is a highly effective, low-cost method to define the scale and structures of the gold mineralization."
Resolution says that the samples from the trenching at Tourmaline Ridge have been submitted to BV Laboratories in Fairbanks for assaying, but the company anticipates it will take around nine weeks to get the results due to the long lab turnaround times resulting from COVID-related delays and extremely high demand for assays at the conclusion of the North American field season.
Once the assay results come back, the company will decide whether to carry out further trenching, geophysics, and drilling at Tourmaline Ridge.
Resolution says it was only during the summer months that on-ground assessment could be made of the best location for trenching at Tourmaline Ridge using historical rock chip data. A new exploration trail, however, provides year-round access to this gold prospective area.
"A road was bulldozed to enable vehicle access from the existing all-weather Pogo Gold Mine Road. A significant advantage for an Alaskan project is all-year around road access," Chessell said.
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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