The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Extensive prospecting in mineral-rich Selwyn Basin sets up Snowline Gold Corp. for potentially identifying a new gold district North of 60 Mining News – October 7, 2022
A little over 18 months after its organization, Snowline Gold Corp., a junior mining company with deep prospecting roots in Yukon Territory and savvy investment partners with deep pockets, is emerging as one of northern Canada's most active and enticing gold explorers.
In March, the company outlined plans for its 2022 field season, citing exploration of prospective zones in its flagship 72,000-hectare (195,120 acres) Einarson and Rogue projects with two drills in hopes of completing more than 8,000 meters of drilling in what could soon become North America's newest gold district.
Snowline wanted to build on the favorable results of intensive initial exploration that it completed in 2021 within a seven-project portfolio covering 90,000 hectares (243,900 acres), including Einarson and Rogue.
"We've got multiple projects moving ahead, multiple projects operating and others that are nearing that stage. So, the Yukon is proving to be a place where things can happen," said Snowline CEO and co-founder Scott Berdahl. "We've really gone out to new parts of the Yukon that haven't been looked at intensively before."
"Our competitive advantage was to go out to places and get onto the green areas that are not on the beaten path. We really bring a lot of parts that haven't been seen before. We've really shone a new light on the Yukon. We're happy to be shining light on that potential," he explained.
In mid-September, Snowline reported multiple high-grade intersections in gold zones on both projects as well as impressive gold-rich samples at new targets.
The explorer also more than doubled its land position to 254,000 hectares (688,340 acres) by staking 37,000 hectares (100,270 acres) of additional claims around its recent discoveries and acquiring 127,000 hectares (344,170 acres) in nearby claims from StrikePoint Gold Inc., another junior with exploration properties in the Yukon and Northern British Columbia.
Snowline said discoveries on its Rogue project also led the company to acquire the land package from StrikePoint that is believed to be prospective for a similar style of mineralization (reduced-intrusion related gold systems).
Snowline is a company short on history but long on heritage. Berdahl and his father, Ron – a legendary prospector and 1997 Yukon Mining Hall of Fame inductee, have explored virtually every prospective region of Yukon Territory over the course of 30 years. Scott Berdahl is also a trained geologist who spent his summers growing up prospecting with his father across the Yukon.
The company's inaugural exploration program followed a comprehensive geological review of an extensive privately owned exploration database of about 30,000 soil samples and roughly 6,500 silt samples built by the Berdahls in the Yukon over decades. Two accomplished geoscientists concluded that the bulk of Snowline's properties likely covered the tip of the iceberg in an area of extensive gold mineralization.
The analysis spurred the junior's principals, including CEO Scott Berdahl, to undertake several rounds of new staking that expanded the footprint of its properties to better cover high-priority exploration targets and to cement Snowline's position in the Selwyn Basin, an under-explored area in Southwest Yukon near the Northwest Territories border.
Snowline believes three different gold mineralization systems converge in the Selwyn Basin., making it potentially "elephant country."
The junior made two significant greenfield gold discoveries in the basin in 2021 (the Jupiter and Valley zones) with high grades and visible gold in drill core on both. The discoveries demonstrate the presence of multiple deposit types and the prospectivity of the largely unexplored district, Snowline told investors in September.
The three mineralization styles are:
• Epizonal orogenic gold at the Einarson project's Jupiter, Avalanche Creek, and Mars zones, with similarities to Fosterville in Australia and Queensway in Newfoundland.
• Reduced intrusion-related gold at Rogue's Valley zone. High-grade surface samples and a nine-kilometer (5.5 miles) alteration trend makes Rogue highly prospective for multiple of these mineralized systems.
• Multi-kilometer-scale gold and pathfinder element anomalies for Carlin-style gold at Einarson's Mars, Odd and Misty zones, with geological potential to host multiple trends.
The Einarson project encompasses several multi-kilometer-scale geochemical anomalies prospective for Carlin-type gold deposits, as well as instances of structurally controlled quartz mineralization with grab samples grading up to 34.2 g/t gold.
In contrast with the host geology of the adjacent Nadaleen trend's Carlin-type deposits, discovered in 2010 by ATAC Resources Ltd. some 10 kilometers (nearly seven miles) from the northwest boundary of the present-day Einarson property, geological units at Einarson are relatively flat-lying, though structurally prepared at smaller scales through tectonic shortening.
Snowline said it benefits from the work of past operators Anthill Resources and 18526 Yukon Inc., which secured the large Einarson mineral tenure, collected more than 25,000 soil samples and 4,500 stream sediment samples on and around the property, and conducted preliminary prospecting and geological mapping as well as performed limited drilling.
This work revealed large gold and Carlin-pathfinder element (arsenic-antimony-mercury-titanium) anomalies up to 30 kilometers (19 miles) in length and multiple new gold occurrences. The discoveries are entirely novel – prior to 2010, no exploration for gold is known to have occurred anywhere on or in the vicinity of the district-scale Einarson project, the junior said.
The junior also celebrated its first anniversary last spring by reporting positive results from its 2021 exploration program.
Already flush with C$8.5 million in cash when the 2022 field season began, Snowline also raised another $25.2 million in gross proceeds from a private placement during the summer as news of the junior's ongoing exploration success trickled out of the bush.
Ongoing drilling at Snowline's Valley Zone has encountered additional long intervals of high-density sheeted quartz veins, similar in character to that encountered in holes V-22-005 (331.3 meters averaging 1.03 grams per metric ton gold, including 192 meters averaging 1.52 g/t gold) and V-22-007 (282.9 meters averaging 2.3 g/t gold, including 146 meters averaging 3.24 g/t gold.) Other holes for which assays have yet to be received show similar character.
"Our drill discoveries provide strong proof-of-concept for the gold potential of this part of the Selwyn Basin, particularly for reduced-intrusion related gold systems like Valley," Berdahl said. "Our recent staking and the acquisition of the Yukon exploration property portfolio from StrikePoint Gold add significantly to our exploration pipeline. While our primary focus remains on our flagship Rogue and Einarson discoveries, these expansions add great depth to Snowline's exploration pipeline, giving shareholders the potential to participate in multiple future discoveries of this type."
In late September, drilling at Valley totaled 9,919 meters so far this season, totaling 10,718 meters drilled on the target to date. Assays for more than 22 holes drilled at Valley in 2022 remain pending, including assays for the bottom 31% of V-22-007. In total, this represents roughly 8,991 meters of drilling (and counting), or 91% of the current season's results from the Valley Zone, which were still pending in early October, though drill core shows the presence of a gold-bearing vein system present at varying intensities.
At Gracie, trace instances of fine visible gold have been observed in bismuthinite-bearing quartz veins in four of five holes. A total of 2,152 meters has been drilled at Gracie, though drilling has yet to encounter the buried intrusion responsible for mineralization. Assays are pending for all holes at Gracie.
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