The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Mining Explorers 2023 - January 18, 2024
To boost annual gold production, Victoria Gold has begun stacking ore on its heap leach pad throughout the winter.
Beginning the year with a nearly 55% increase in gold production at its Eagle Gold mine, Victoria Gold Corp. could never have predicted nearly half a month of downtime due to ongoing wildfires that approached as close as four kilometers (2.5 miles) to its facilities. Despite this close call, gold production remained higher than in 2022 by third-quarter calculations, and exploration of its growing Raven deposit has the company prepped and ready for an updated resource estimate.
Despite the East McQuesten fire forcing an evacuation of the Eagle Gold Mine beginning at end of July, the operation produced 124,749 ounces of gold during the three quarters of 2023, which was 17% higher than the same period of 2022.
While the wildfire came within 4,000 meters of Eagle, the facilities at the mine were not damaged, and crews were able to quickly resume full operations.
"We would like to thank our employees and contractors for their excellent response to this situation, which allowed a smooth restart of production," Victoria Gold President and CEO John McConnell said at the time.
Despite the encroaching wildfire, Victoria's 2023 exploration of the higher-grade Raven gold deposit roughly 15 kilometers (nine miles) east of the Eagle Mine was a success.
From its discovery in 2018 to its maiden resource calculation in 2022, Raven quickly swelled to 19.96 million metric tons of inferred mineral resource averaging 1.67 g/t (1.07 million oz) gold.
This higher-grade gold deposit was the primary focus of Victoria's 2023 exploration efforts, with over 13,200 meters of diamond drilling completed in 39 holes. The work consisted of systematic fence drilling to the east of the current deposit bounds coupled with exploratory drill holes around the promising high-grade mineralization identified last season.
Highlights from this drilling include:
• 38 meters averaging 1.77 g/t gold and 3.81 g/t silver in hole NG23-167C.
• 78.4 meters averaging 1.4 g/t gold and 3.01 g/t silver in hole NG23-172C.
• 144 meters averaging 0.81 g/t gold and 10.58 g/t silver in hole NG23-179C.
• 23 meters averaging 2.31 g/t gold and 45.56 g/t silver in hole NG23-189C.
• 240.2 meters averaging 0.96 g/t gold and 3.37 g/t silver in hole NG23-200C.
Victoria says this and past drilling has confirmed mineralization over a strike length of 1,700 meters.
"A busy 2023 exploration program served to validate and expand the mineralized footprint of Raven while increasing overall confidence in the Raven deposit," said McConnell.
"Work on an updated Raven resource is now underway and we look forward to seeing two full seasons of drilling added to the maiden resource estimate," he added.
Adding in the 1,282 meters of surface trenching at Raven, as well as the Lynx target, the 2023 exploration season continued to show the vast potential of the greater Dublin Gulch property.
While drills continued to turn and assays began to roll in, Victoria Gold announced the acquisition of Sabre Gold Mines Corp.'s Brewery Creek gold mine for roughly C$13.5 million (US$10 million) around mid-September.
A past-producing heap leach project that produced roughly 280,000 oz of gold over seven years of mining that began in 1996, Brewery Creek covers a 181-square-kilometer (70 square miles) land package about 55 kilometers (34 miles) east of Dawson City and roughly 120 kilometers (75 miles) west of Victoria's own Eagle Mine.
In addition to Brewery Creek, Victoria also acquired full ownership of two other Yukon gold projects held by Golden Predator Mining Corp., a subsidiary of Sabre Gold Mines – Golden Dome and Grew Creek.
"With our track record of exploration, permitting, development and operations in Yukon, we believe we can add value to this portfolio of assets," said McConnell.
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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