The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Cuts skarn, CRD, and porphyry-style mineralization near Atlin North of 60 Mining News - July 20, 2022
Copper staining on a limestone outcrop south of the Laverdiere target on Core Assets' Blue property in Atlin Mining District, northwestern British Columbia.
Leveraging substantial advancements in the understanding of porphyry, skarn, and carbonate replacement type deposits over the past 40 years, Core Assets Corp. is making news discoveries at the long overlooked Blue property in British Columbia's Golden Triangle.
Located in the gold-rich Atlin Mining District, Blue is a 111,649-hectare (275,890 acres) land package covering high-grade skarn and carbonate replacement and porphyry prospects enriched with silver, gold, copper, zinc, and lead.
The Blue property is also transected by the Llewellyn Fault Zone, a major structural feature that extends roughly 140 kilometers south from the Tally-Ho shear zone in southern Yukon to the Juneau Ice Sheet on the Southeast Alaska Panhandle.
Core believes the Llewellyn Fault Zone, which plays an important role in the mineralization of near-surface metal occurrences across Blue, has been neglected since the last major exploration of the structural corridor in the 1980s.
Since assembling the district-scale Blue land package and listing on the Canadian Securities Exchange in 2020, Core has been carrying out early exploration in preparation for 2022 drilling at two primary project areas on the Blue property – Laverdiere and Silver Lime.
Laverdiere
Core's inaugural drill program began at Laverdiere, a prospect area in the southern part of the Blue property that hosts three areas of skarn exposure with massive and disseminated sulfide.
Historical drilling at Laverdiere cut 46 meters averaging 1.76% copper from surface; and 175 meters averaging 0.27% copper from surface.
Out of 18 samples collected by Core geologists at Laverdiere, 15 returned 1.25% to 8.36% copper.
In early June, Core launched an 1,806-meter drill program at Laverdiere targeting a high-grade iron-copper-gold skarn and copper-molybdenum mineralization mapped over 800 meters on surface.
Core says all six of the holes drilled at Laverdiere cut massive to semi-massive iron-copper skarn mineralization, and this maiden drilling extended porphyry copper mineralization along an open strike length of 850 meters.
"The porphyry-style mineralization and alteration we've seen near surface and at depth is a game changer for Laverdiere, and we look forward to planning a more aggressive phase II deep drilling program for 2023 after receiving this year's assay results," said Core Assets President and CEO Nick Rodway.
Assay results from the first two holes drilled this year at the Laverdiere are expected to be reported in late July.
Silver Lime
Following the early July completion of drilling at Laverdiere, the HQ-sized diamond drill rig was moved to Silver Lime, which lies about 10 kilometers (six miles) to the east.
An extensive first pass exploration program carried out by Core at Silver Lime in 2021 defined a 3,700- by 1,800-meter area of high-grade carbonate replacement and skarn mineralization within a broad 6.6-kilometer (4.1 miles) mineralized corridor that remains open.
Highlights from Core's 2021 rock sampling include:
• 91 samples with 0.20% to 9.92% copper, including 10 samples with greater than 1.04% copper.
• 58 samples with 110 to 2,020 grams per metric ton silver, including 17 samples with greater than 417 g/t silver.
• 115 samples with 1.04% to more than 30% zinc, including 41 samples with greater than 10.15% zinc.
• 53 samples with 1.01% to more than 20% lead, including 33 samples with greater than 5.59% lead.
• Nine samples with 1.03 to 6.75 g/t gold.
On July 19, Core reported that it had completed 1,299 meters of drilling in four holes at the Jackie silver-zinc-lead-copper carbonate replacement target as Silver Lime.
All four holes, drilled in different directions from the same location, cut multiple intervals of replacement style massive to semi-massive zinc, lead, silver, and copper mineralization hosted in limestone and metasedimentary lithologies from near surface to depths of up to 284 meters.
"We are thrilled to have completed the first ever drill holes at the Jackie CRD Target," said Rodway. "2022 diamond drilling efforts have successfully tapped into what we interpret as an impressive expression of distal CRD mineralization. The Core Assets team is excited to continue to track the Silver Lime carbonate replacement system back to its source, following the exploration model that massive sulfide occurrences within the 6.6 by 1.8 km mineralized corridor at Silver Lime are structurally controlled and connected in the subsurface."
Having confirmed massive to semi-massive replacement style sulfide mineralization at Jackie, crews have now mobilized to Sulphide City, another Silver Lime project that lies about 2,000 meters to the northwest.
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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