The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Snowline encouraged by consistent results, knowledge grows North of 60 Mining News – July 21, 2023
Snowline recently welcomed a group of investors and interested parties to a site visit for the Invest Yukon tour coordinated by the Yukon Mining Alliance.
Cross-section of V-23-035 showing the results received (top) and vein densities alongside instances of visible gold observed during logging (bottom). Click to see larger image.
Snowline Gold Corp. July 18 announced the latest analytical results from the second and third holes drilled at the Rogue property in Canada's Yukon for its 2023 exploration season, causing the company to begin supporting the idea of its Valley target being a single, large, recoverable body of gold-rich rock.
Found within the Selwyn Basin near Yukon's eastern border with Northwest Territories, Snowline's flagship property, Rogue, is an 11,227-hectare (27,743 acres) land package that comprises 442 mineral claims with a main block that covers a roughly nine-kilometer (5.6 miles) trend of metamorphic rock hornfels complemented by anomalous gold in rocks, soils, and stream sediment samples.
Within Rogue, the company's primary target of interest in recent months has been Valley, an intrusive stock with sheeted gold-bearing quartz veins within the intrusion and visible gold found in sulfide veins in the surrounding hornfels.
With some of its best holes to date drilled at Valley, the company is eager to uncover its scope and scale for a future estimate at this highly prospective gold project.
"Today's results highlight the significant exploration upside present within the broader footprint of last season's widely spaced, first-pass drilling of the Rogue project's Valley target," said Snowline Gold CEO Scott Berdahl. "This is particularly true when it comes to Valley's extensive zone of near-surface, multiple-gram-per-tonne gold mineralization."
Following shortly after the surprising results from its first hole drilled for the season, the latest holes have returned strong mineralization that continues to highlight Valley's potential.
Intended as a step-out from the mineralization encountered last year in hole 007 (410 meters averaging 1.89 grams per metric ton gold) and hole 014 (285.2 meters averaging 1.45 g/t gold), hole V-23-036 is a 75-meter step-out drilled to test the southeast edge of Valley's near-surface corridor of extensive gold mineralization.
V-23-036 cut 143.5 meters averaging 2.92 g/t gold from a depth of 23.5 meters, within a broader interval of 414.5 meters averaging 1.53 g/t gold from bedrock surface. These numbers aren't too far from Snowline's recent "second-best" intercept reported earlier this month.
Intersecting abundant sheeted quartz veins in granodiorite, with multiple generations of gold-bearing quartz veins observed, similar to V-23-034, the entire hole was mineralized.
The second hole of the season, hole V-23-035 was collared near the southwestern boundary of the Valley intrusion, over 130 meters from the nearest hole, 22-028 (363.5 meters averaging 1.4 g/t gold), and drilled further to the southwest than any other hole at Valley to date.
Drilled toward the northeast, 035 tested near-surface mineralization in proximity to the southwest edge of the intrusion and mineralization at depth beneath Valley's well-mineralized near-surface corridor.
This 509-meter hole was found entirely within granodiorite of the Valley intrusion, with dominantly moderate quartz vein densities throughout, and returned a consistent initial intersection of 396.5 meters averaging 1.01 g/t gold from bedrock surface at a depth of 20 meters.
Below this, from 420 meters downhole, a separate mineralized interval cut 40.1 meters averaging 0.44 g/t gold. The hole ended in weak, intermittent mineralization, with the final 3.5 meters averaging 0.23 g/t gold.
"The gold grades and continuity in V-23-036 add a large tonnage of potentially high-value rock to this zone, which remains open further to the southeast," added Berdahl. "In addition, the breadth of the mineralized interval in V-23-035, drilled from the western margin of the intrusion, highlights the breadth of strong mineralization present outside of the highest-grade core at Valley, both laterally and to depth."
Snowline believes that such robust gold grades encountered along the southwest margin of the known mineralized system provide strong support for the idea of a single, large, recoverable body of gold mineralization at Valley with a very low strip ratio and minimal internal dilution.
"This has strong favorable implications for a favourable strip ratio, low internal dilution, and of course overall gold content in any potential future operation at Valley," said Berdahl. "With our exploration season still ramping up, we are encouraged by these early results, and we look forward to additional results from Valley as well as from additional targets."
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