The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
North of 60 Mining News - March 8, 2024
Gold nuggets found from Granite Creek placer in 2020 on Mount Hinton.
Strategic Metals Ltd. March 4 announced it has approved Trifecta Gold Ltd. the right to earn up to 100% interest in 11 highly prospective, reduced intrusion-related gold projects located within the prolific Tombstone Gold Belt in Yukon, Canada.
Often maintaining a low-key approach to its business operations, Strategic Metals is less a project miner and more a project generator that currently holds 12 royalty interests, 15 projects under option to others, and a portfolio of 85 wholly owned projects that are the product of over 50 years of focused exploration and research.
Under the terms of its latest venture, Trifecta will be able to acquire up to an initial 70% interest in the properties by incurring aggregate exploration expenditures of $6 million by Dec. 31, 2027, as well as the issuance of Trifecta shares to Strategic upwards 9.99% of its holdings in the first option, while the second option entails Trifecta obtaining the remaining 30% interest in the properties by issuing an additional 9.99% shares prior to March 31, 2028.
For both options, Strategic will retain a 1% net smelter royalty interest in the properties for a total of 2%, leaving Trifecta the choice to purchase the second royalty interest from Strategic for a payment of 1,500 ounces of gold or cash equivalent.
Based in Canada, Trifecta is a precious metals explorer with projects in Yukon and Nevada. These include the Yuge gold project in Nevada, the Eureka project in Yukon's southern Klondike Goldfields, and the Treble project located between Western Copper and Gold's Casino project and Rockhaven's Klaza project.
The newest properties it is seeking from Strategic, fall within the prolific Tombstone Gold Belt, a stretch of earth that extends for more than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) from Alaska into Yukon and which hosts numerous large reduced intrusion-related gold system (RIRGS) deposits such as Kinross Gold's Fort Knox gold mine in Fairbanks, Victoria Gold's Eagle gold mine in Yukon, the past-producing Brewery Creek, Snowline Gold's Rogue property, Sitka Gold's RC Gold deposit, Banyan's AurMac property, the list can go on.
The portfolio covers approximately 30,000 hectares (74,132 acres) of land within the Yukon portion of the Tombstone Gold Belt. This will be across 11 properties including the flagship Mount Hinton property and the Rye, Lance, Liam, Lois, Leroy, Luke, Leah, Lisa, Husky, and Naws properties.
Located adjacent to Hecla Mining Company's Keno Hill Silver project, Mount Hinton is a road-accessible, camp scale property with over 60 precious metals veins identified to date.
A direct extension of the stratigraphy that hosts Hecla's Keno mine, much of the historic exploration at Hinton focused on these veins. Visible gold has been found in many of the known veins resulting in many bonanza grade assays being reported from surface grab and chip samples.
Highlights from these past exploration forays include:
• A 2,340 grams per metric ton gold rock sample reported by Strategic in Aug. 2019.
• A 202 g/t gold grab sample from the Granite North target at Mount Hinton in Sept. 2019.
• A sample of over 200 g/t gold over 1.2 meters reported in July 2020.
• Discovery of 85 Vein with float samples averaging 273 g/t gold and 138.5 g/t gold; outcrop samples from 15 veins up to 126.5 g/t gold, and sampling from 19 Vein returning float samples up 101 g/t gold reported as recently as Jan. 2023.
Reported by Trifecta, there are active placer mines on all the creeks draining on Mount Hinton. Based on both metal zonation within the area and the regional magnetic signature at the property, a reduced intrusion in the region is theorized to be the driver for much of the mineralization in the district.
Further, many recently identified gold-in-soil anomalies have yet to be prospected and a large magnetic low in the southeastern part of the project has not been investigated – both will be priority targets for Trifecta.
Breaking down the other projects, Rye is located about 14 kilometers (9 miles) south of Fireweed Metals' Macmillan Pass project in eastern Yukon, near the border of Northwest Territories. It hosts a gold- and bismuth-in-soil anomaly associated with a known intrusion as well as multiple gold-rich veins more distal to the intrusion.
Found midway between Mount Hinton and Rye, Lance is centered on a multi-square-kilometer gold- bismuth- and arsenic-in-soil anomaly that coincides with a magnetic low. Prospecting in the western part of the project in 2023, sheeted quartz veining was discovered within a secondary soil anomaly of similar characteristics.
Liam is similarly centered on a large, coincident gold- bismuth- and arsenic-in-soil anomaly that is partially defined through grid soil sampling. The anomaly is reported as also having significant copper-in-soil that ranges from 200 to 847 parts per million, indicating the potential for porphyry-type mineralization as well.
Lois, Leroy, Luke, Leah, Lisa, Husky, and Naws are all earlier-stage targets that were staked on the same regional stream sediment signatures that mark all of the known deposits and major discoveries in the Tombstone Belt.
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