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The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Exploration turns up intriguing new targets for 2022 drilling North of 60 Mining News – January 28, 2022
Sampling and geophysics have identified priority targets for this year's drilling at HighGold Mining's Johnson Tract project.
HighGold Mining Inc. Jan. 25 reported that the geological mapping, geochemical sampling, geophysical surveys, and exploration drilling carried out during 2021 has shown that the strong gold-rich mineralization identified in the JT deposit and encountered with discovery drilling at the DC prospect is widespread across the 20,942-acre Johnson Tract property in Southcentral Alaska.
"We are seeing encouraging results across the length and breadth of the property and believe that systematic exploration will continue to generate new discoveries at Johnson Tract," said HighGold Mining President and CEO Darwin Green.
According to a calculation completed prior to the start of 2020 drilling, the JT deposit hosts 2.14 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 6.07 grams per metric ton (417,000 ounces) gold, 5.8 g/t (397,000 oz) silver, 5.85% (275.3 million pounds) zinc, 0.57% (26.8 million lb) copper, and 0.71% (37.6 million lb) lead.
While the 2021 program at Johnson Tract continued to include drilling focused on expanding and upgrading this deposit, it also included regional exploration focused on assessing the potential for new zones of high-grade mineralization across the district-scale property.
HighGold says this reconnaissance exploration has successfully outlined multiple priority target areas for future drilling related to the 6,000-meter-long regional Milkbone Fault system while also advancing the geological knowledge base for the project.
One of the highlights of the regional program was a bonanza-grade gold intercept from drilling at the Middle DC (Difficult Creek) target. Reported in October, hole DC21-010 cut 6.4 meters averaging 577.9 g/t (18.58 oz/t) gold, 2,023 g/t (65 oz/t) silver, 2.15% zinc, and 0.3% copper.
This intercept ranked as the No. 3 drill intercept in the world during 2021 according to Opaxe, an independent Australian mining database company that compiles the best drill intersections reported around the globe and then ranks them based on gold-equivalent grams per metric ton.
"This is the second time in three years that Johnson Tract has made the Top 10 best drill intersections list, placing No. 7 in 2019 in the company's first drill program and only narrowly missing the list in 2020," said Green.
Now, further surface exploration has shown that Middle DC may be part of a more than 1,000-meter-long prospective corridor that has emerged as a high-priority exploration target for HighGold.
Rock and soil sampling has turned up strong gold, silver, copper, and zinc mineralization at the Milkbone prospect, which lies about 1,000 meters southwest of Middle DC.
Highlights from this sampling include:
• 7.85 g/t gold and 599 g/t silver in quartz vein breccia (rock grab sample).
• 8.38 g/t and 4.4 g/t gold-in-soil sample; near a 184 g/t gold rock float sample collected in 2020.
• 14.3 g/t gold, 6.1% zinc, 4.4% lead, and 0.5% copper in quartz-sulfide vein (rock grab sample).
• 11.1 g/t gold and 68.7 g/t silver in low-sulfidation quartz vein (rock grab sample).
• 4.53 g/t gold, 38.6 g/t silver, 18.6% lead, 4.36% zinc, and 1.4% copper in quartz-sulfide vein (rock grab sample).
• 5% copper in quartz-sulfide vein (one-meter rock chip sample).
• 3.8% copper and 34.3 g/t silver in quartz-sulfide vein (rock float sample).
• Quartz-carbonate-sulfide fault breccia zone rock grab samples with 10.1% zinc, 7.6% lead, and 1.4% copper; 8.6% zinc, 6.6% lead, and 1.1% copper; and 7.2% zinc, 5.5% lead, and 1.6% copper.
With sampling from Milkbone representing the highest-grade soil and rock samples within the entire Johnson Tract surface database, coupled with the bonanza grades tapped at Middle DC, this corridor is a priority target area for HighGold.
The company says the regional Milkbone fault transects this target area, and both it and related subsidiary faults appear to have an important control on mineralization and will be drill tested for the first time during the 2022 season.
The Milkbone fault is also associated with gold mineralization at the Easy Creek prospect, another emerging priority target about 3.7 miles (six kilometers) north of DC.
Easy Creek is defined by a 1,500-by-2,000-meter strong induced polarization geophysical anomaly that is coincident with anomalous soil geochemistry, rock samples with up to 29 g/t gold, large-scale hydrothermal alteration, and a circular magnetic anomaly associated with an intrusive plug. Taken collectively, HighGold says these multiple layers of supporting data significantly enhance the priority of Easy Creek targets.
The Kona prospect, which lies about 2,500 meters west of Middle DC and bears a similar geophysical signature to Easy Creek, is another emerging Johnson Tract project. Located somewhat lower stratigraphically than the JT deposit and DC discovery, Easy Creek may represent a portion of the deeper roots of the large-scale Johnson Tract mineralized system.
In addition to the surface sampling results, HighGold reported assays from the remaining 10 scout drill holes, which tested the Central Fault and Upper DC vein field.
Highlights from these holes include:
• 1.5 meters averaging 127 g/t gold from a depth of 92.6 meters in hole DC21-017.
• 0.6 meters averaging 1.75 g/t gold and 42.2 g/t silver from a depth of 246.9 meters in hole DC21-021.
• 0.5 meters averaging 4.53 g/t gold, 11.5 g/t silver, and 1.94% zinc from a depth of 290.5 meters in hole DC21-021.
• Four meters averaging 0.29 g/t gold and 15.7 g/t silver from a depth of 176.5 meters in hole DC21-022.
While none of the rest of the drilling in the wider DC discovery area hit the world-class precious and base metals intercepts encountered in hole DC21-010, HighGold says the scout drilling and surface exploration across the wider DC and Milkbone prospect area has provided knowledge critical to vectoring and prioritizing targets for 2022 drilling.
"With approximately $23M in the treasury, HighGold is well funded to drill these new discovery-stage targets in 2022 while also following up on the highly successful 2021 drill program at Middle DC," said Green. "We also look forward to completion of an updated mineral resource estimate for the JT Deposit that is due within the next three months and continuing with deposit expansion drilling as part of the greater 2022 exploration program."
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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