The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Identifies compelling porphyry targets near world-class Casino North of 60 Mining News – April 7, 2023
White Gold's Bridget and Hayes porphyry copper-molybdenum targets are located within 30 kilometers of Western Copper and Gold's world-class Casino project in the Yukon.
A skarn sample collected from the Bridget porphyry copper target on the Pedlar project in 2018.
White Gold Corp. April 5 announced that it has identified two large copper-molybdenum porphyry targets on its Pedlar and Hayes properties in the southern portion of the company's 350,000-hectare (865,000 acres) land package in the Yukon.
"Our primary exploration focus is discovering new orogenic gold deposits in the White Gold District and growing our existing gold resources. However, the Yukon is rich in various other metals which is also the case in our large land package," said White Gold Vice President of Exploration Terry Brace.
This includes the Bridget target at Pedlar, a large exploration property located about 25 kilometers (16 miles) northeast of Western Copper and Gold Corp.'s Casino mine project.
Casino, which hosts 7.6 billion pounds of copper and 14.8 million ounces of gold in the indicated category, and 3.1 billion lb of copper and 6.3 million oz of gold in the inferred category, has recently attracted investments from Rio Tinto and Mitsubishi Materials Corp.
The Pedlar property was first explored by Silver Standard Mines Ltd. and Asarco Exploration Company of Canada Ltd. after the discovery of the Casino deposit in the early 1970s.
The initial discovery work and intermittent follow-up exploration at Pedlar defined a 3,000- by 3,500-meter soil anomaly at the Bridget target that is geochemically zoned with a molybdenum-copper-bismuth core and a silver-zinc-lead-tungsten halo.
"The Bridget porphyry target on the Pedlar property has been known for decades but has seen minimal exploration and no diamond drilling," said Brace.
White Gold acquired Pedlar in 2016 and has advanced the project through soil sampling, mapping, prospecting, and rotary air blast drilling. In 2018 the company drilled 10 shallow RAB holes. One of these holes, PEDBRGRAB18-009, cut two narrow intervals of molybdenum mineralization – 1.5 meters of 622.3 parts per million molybdenum from a depth of 12.2 meters, and 1.5 meters of 631.9 ppm molybdenum from 30.5 meters.
Rock grab samples collected by White Gold geologists at Pedlar in 2022 returned grades as high as 1,425 ppm copper, 0.42 grams per metric ton gold, and 5.59 g/t silver. The best rock samples were collected about 3,000 meters east of the main Bridget target, suggesting the potential for further expansion of the already large footprint.
Situated about 30 kilometers (19 miles) east of Casino, Hayes hosts a new 2,000- by 1,500-meter geochemical anomaly with characteristics similar to Bridget that was discovered by White Gold during 2021.
"The Hayes is a recently identified porphyry target and has seen only soil sampling and limited mapping and prospecting," Brace said.
Anomalous copper occurs in the southern portion of the core of the geochemical anomaly at Hayes, and a relatively small area of anomalous molybdenum occurs near the core's northern margin.
Rock grab samples collected at the Hayes target returned grades as high as 1,269.2 ppm copper.
Geologically the soil anomaly is associated with a plug of Late Cretaceous Prospector Mountain suite, which is known to be prospective for porphyry copper-gold-molybdenum and epithermal style mineralization.
"The soil geochemistry anomalies at both targets have the earmarks of large porphyry systems, with apparent mineralization footprints in the order of several kilometres each, which in combination to their proximity to the Casino deposit, make them very compelling targets warranting further exploration work," Brace added.
White Gold said the next phase of exploration at Pedlar and Hayes should involve induced polarization-resistivity geophysical surveys and initial diamond drilling to further evaluate their potential.
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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