The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Reassessing historical data has led to new prospective target North of 60 Mining News – November 17, 2023
An easterly view of the surface workings of the old Little Chief mine near Whitehorse with a clear color anomaly on the face.
Plan view of the recently collated Little Chief and Middle Chief drill hole data showing historic open pit as well as areas of historical production and unmined copper mineralization. Click image for larger map.
Gladiator Metals Corp. Nov. 16 announced an update from its ongoing data compilation over the Whitehorse Copper project, identifying significant widths of unmined, copper-gold skarns within the historic Little Chief mine trend in Yukon, Canada.
Whitehorse Copper is a 5,380-hectare (13,294 acres) copper-molybdenum-silver-gold skarn exploration project that covers a significant portion of what has historically been known as the Whitehorse Copper Belt.
Located practically in the backyard of Yukon's capital city, from which it gets its name, the Whitehorse Copper project is a 35-kilometer (22 miles) by five-kilometer (three miles) contiguous high-grade copper belt with 30 known prospective targets that saw production of approximately 267.5 million pounds copper, 225,000 ounces gold, and 2.84 million oz of silver from 11.1 million tons of mineralized skarn ore milled between the years 1967 and 1982, with most of this coming from Little Chief.
Of these known targets, some of the more well-established and advanced, and some being past-producing mines, are the War Eagle, Pueblo, Best Chance, Arctic Chief, North Star, Cub Trend, Chiefs Trend, Little Chief, and Cowley Park.
As for Little Chief, the former mining trend is the largest historically producing mine in the Whitehorse Copper Belt.
Production from the Little Chief's open pit mine commenced in 1967, with mining of the open pit finishing in 1969. From there, underground mining development began in 1971 before finally shuttering in 1982 due to the prevailingly low copper price environment.
While Gladiator has paid most of its attention to its Cowley Park target, with exploratory work at Arctic Chief as well, the company felt it prudent to reassess these historic locations and what better location than the previous largest operation in the district.
Recently completing collating historic drilling for the Little Chief production area, as well as lidar survey and reconnaissance prospecting and outcrop sampling proximal to the previous mine site, the company says it has confirmed the existence of significant mineralization that was previously drilled from a decline constructed to access the former underground mine.
The historical drilling data further identifies a significant, greater than 200-meter-long body of shallow mineralization (roughly 120 meters below surface) located underneath the decline and to the north of the prior Little Chief open pit and underground mine.
Now referred to as the Middle Chief prospect, Gladiator says this mineralization appears to remain intact despite drilling completed to date being limited in scope and size but ultimately has not closed off the unmined high-grade copper skarn mineralization.
"With the identification of the Middle Chief mineralization, Gladiator continues to define areas of high-grade copper skarn mineralization with significant exploration upside from its data compilation of historic drilling datasets," said Gladiator Metals CEO Jason Bontempo. "The Middle Chief mineralization represents a near surface area of mineralization open in all directions with limited exploration or development away from historical underground infrastructure."
Highlights from the historic drilling include:
• 49.83 meters averaging 3.06% copper from a depth of 70.3 meters in hole LCU-009.
• 54.1 meters averaging 2.05% copper from 77.4 meters in LCU-017.
• 33.99 meters averaging 2.1% copper from 148.9 meters in LCU-023, including 15.24 meters averaging 3.26% copper.
• 32.22 meters averaging 2.11% copper from 83.9 meters in LCU-503, including 17.07 meters averaging 3.47% copper.
• 13.72 meters averaging 1.28% copper from 66.1 meters in LCU-543, including 41.15 meters averaging 2.22% copper.
• 50.99 meters averaging 1.87% copper from 18.1 meters in LCU-610, including 39.84 meters averaging 2.19% copper.
"Historical drilling and past production from the Little Chief mine area as a whole remains shallow, and this data compilation represents an opportunity to review the deposit in 3D for the first time to begin to appreciate the exploration potential of the high-grade copper-gold skarn, which remains open in all directions, for future resource growth," added Bontempo.
Ultimately, this reevaluation has determined the potential of more than 700 meters of strike at this historic mine.
"Planned diamond drilling is scheduled to commence in the coming months and will be testing the Middle Chief target as well as near mine extensions to the historic Little Chief mine," finished the Gladiator CEO.
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