The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
30,000 meters of drilling slated for the Kitsault Valley project North of 60 Mining News – May 20, 2022
Dolly Varden's 2022 program will include discovery drilling along the Kitsault Valley trend between its Dolly Varden silver and Homestake Ridge gold-silver deposits.
Click on image for larger map of the Kitsault Valley trend.
Dolly Varden Silver Corp. May 17 announced that crews are gearing up for an initial 30,000-meter drill program that will focus on upgrading and expanding the resources at Dolly Varden and Homestake Ridge, as well as explore for more gold and silver mineralization between these deposits on the company's Kitsault Valley project in Northern British Columbia.
Located about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast of the mining town of Stewart, BC, the 63-square mile (163 square kilometers) Kitsault Valley project is an amalgamation of the Dolly Varden silver project and the adjacent Homestake Ridge gold-silver project the company acquired from Fury Gold Mines Ltd.
Four Dolly Varden deposits – Torbrit, Dolly Varden, Wolf, and North Star – host 3.42 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 299.8 grams per metric ton (32.93 million oz) silver; plus 1.29 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 277 g/t (11.48 million oz) silver.
About 3.5 miles (5.5 kilometers) northwest of the Dolly Varden deposits, three deposits at Homestake Ridge host 736,000 metric tons of indicated resource averaging 7.02 g/t (165,993 oz) gold and 74.8 g/t (1.8 million oz) silver; plus 5.55 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 4.58 g/t (816,719 oz) gold and 100 g/t (17.8 million oz) silver.
This year's program will start with resource upgrade and expansion drilling at Torbrit, the largest deposit on the Dolly Varden side of Kitsault Valley. This drilling will begin with step-out drilling toward North Star and around Wolf, both located along the Kitsault trend that extends northwest toward Homestake.
Lying about 2,000 meters north of Torbrit, Wolf hosts 402,000 metric tons of indicated resource averaging 296.6 g/t (2.1 million oz) silver; plus 9,500 metric tons of inferred resource averaging 230.6 g/t (70,000 oz) silver.
DV21-273, a 2021 hole that tested the southwest projection of the Wolf vein about 94 meters down-plunge from the resource, cut 1.22 meters averaging 1,532 g/t silver, 0.44 g/t gold, 2.11% lead, and 1.07% zinc within a 17.5-meter-thick breccia zone averaging 214 g/t silver and 0.47% lead.
In late spring, drilling will commence at the Homestake Main and Homestake Silver deposits with the purpose of expanding mineralization along strike and down-dip as well as upgrading current inferred resources.
In addition to drilling in and around the known resources at Dolly Varden and Homestake Ridge, this year's program will include holes to begin exploring the trend connecting them.
Dolly Varden says mapping, sampling, geophysics, and remote sensing surveys have identified 20 exploration targets along the Kitsault Valley trend, eight of which have been classified as priority one.
Additional surface mapping and sampling coupled with induced polarization geophysical surveys will help refine drill targets to be tested this year.
"With a robust $25 million treasury, a discovery-focused technical team and a target-rich environment, 2022 is setting up to be an historic year for Dolly Varden Silver," said Dolly Varden Silver President and CEO Shawn Khunkhun. "With strategic and technical input from our supportive corporate shareholder, Hecla Mining, it is our goal to make new silver and gold discoveries as well as to dramatically grow and upgrade resource at our current deposits, setting the company up to be the next development project in the Golden Triangle."
Three diamond drill rigs are being mobilized by barge to the village of Alice Arm southwest of the Kitsault project to complete an initial 99 drill holes planned for this year. Camp expansion and infrastructure upgrades are underway to accommodate the expanded exploration team, with a significant contingent of this crew being from the Nisga'a Nation.
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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