The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Mining Explorers 2021 - January 27, 2022
A technician logs core at the Nugget exploration camp on Victoria Gold's Dublin Gulch gold property in the Yukon.
The Dublin Gulch district exploration is headquartered out at Nugget camp, which lies about 13 kilometers (eight miles) east of the Eagle Mine.
Continuing to expand upon the intriguing trenching and drilling over the previous three seasons, Victoria Gold Corp. carried out C$12.5 million of exploration at Dublin Gulch during 2021, "one of the largest programs in company history," Victoria Gold President and CEO John McConnell said in November.
This included deep drilling below current reserves and resources being mined from the Eagle deposit at Dublin Gulch.
According to a late 2019 calculation, Eagle hosted 148 million metric tons of proven and probable reserves averaging 0.64 grams per metric ton (3.06 million oz) gold. The Olive deposit about 3,000 meters northeast of Eagle hosts another 7 million tons of reserves averaging 0.95 g/t (200,000 oz) gold.
Looking to expand the Eagle resources and eventually reserves to depth, Victoria completed 6,200 meters of drilling in 10 holes early in the 2021 program and completed additional drilling later in the year.
The 2021 Dublin Gulch exploration program, however, focused largely on establishing a maiden resource at the Raven gold target about 13 kilometers (eight miles) east of the Eagle Mine.
Discovered with soil sampling and trenching during 2018, Raven is a large, near-surface gold target associated with Nugget, the second largest known intrusive body on the Dublin Gulch property – the Dublin Gulch stock, which hosts the deposit delivering ore on the Eagle Gold Mine heap leach pad, is the largest.
Trenching in 2018 and 2019 began to unveil Raven's potential to host a large gold deposit that is higher grade than what is currently being mined at Eagle. Highlights from this trenching include 124 meters of 3.51 grams per metric ton gold; 50 meters of 4.15 g/t gold; and 12 meters of 7.91 g/t gold.
Drilling has continued to tap high-grade gold within a wider bulk tonnage deposit. Highlights from the 2019 and 2020 drilling include: 88.1 meters of 0.6 g/t gold, including 2.8 meters of 7.72 g/t gold; 166.4 meters of 0.46 g/t gold, including 5.9 meters of 4.48 g/t gold; 174.2 meters of 0.76 g/t gold, including 19 meters of 3.95 g/t gold; 126 meters of 0.68 g/t gold, including 10.5 meters of 2.13 g/t gold; and 107.2 meters of 0.92 g/t gold, including 13.7 meters of 4.48 g/t gold.
Victoria says the structural control of the high-grade gold mineralization encountered so far at Raven is evident over the entire strike length tested to date and has led company geologists to develop a mineralization model defined by these repeated high-grade veins contained within what is interpreted to be a dilatational fracture zone within the Nugget granodiorite intrusion that Raven is associated with.
With the goal of establishing a meaningful inaugural resource at Raven, Victoria's 2021 drilling targeted extensions of gold mineralization that would more than double the previous 750-meter strike length of Raven.
In addition to this fence-based drill program, geological crews carried out trenching, as well as additional detailed structural analysis and mapping in this expansion area.
While primarily focused on Raven, the 2021 exploration program at Dublin Gulch also included trenching, drilling, and detailed mapping of veins at the Lynx target about nine kilometers (5.6 miles) southeast of the Eagle Mine.
This follows up on the success of a 2020 exploration program at Lynx that included 720 meters of trenching and four holes drilled.
Highlights from the 2020 trenching include 46 meters averaging 1.62 g/t gold; 32 meters averaging 4.65 g/t gold; and 80 meters averaging 1.35 g/t gold.
The best intercept from the 2020 Lynx drilling was 153.8 meters averaging 0.49 g/t gold, including 8.4 meters of 6.14 g/t gold.
Victoria says the Lynx target exhibits similar characteristics to the Nugget and Raven exploration targets, which are located about five kilometers (three miles) to the northeast.
Another roughly 4,000 meters of drilling was completed at Rex-Peso, which hosts high-grade silver veins just west of the Eagle Mine. These veins were mined by previous operators in the 1960s, with only limited exploration conducted beyond the footprint of the underground workings.
Significant backlogs at assay laboratories slowed results from the 2021 exploration at Dublin Gulch, and as of late November, no assay results had been released.
"Delayed laboratory results are an annual challenge in our industry. However, this year has been much worse than usual," said McConnell.
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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