The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
North of 60 Mining News - May 3, 2024
Kicking off the season in early March, Sitka Gold was able get drills turning before the spring thaw hit.
Sitka Gold Corp. May 1 announced the first hole from its 2024 drill campaign has struck gold, intersecting 191 meters averaging 1.16 grams per metric ton gold, which confirms the high-grade mineralization discovered the previous year.
"The results from Hole 57 are very significant as they confirm that the higher-grade gold mineralization discovered in Hole 47 last year continues a further 45 metres to the southeast and 175 metres to vertical depth and remains wide open," said Sitka Gold CEO Cor Coe.
Announcing in early April that its first holes had visible gold upon receipt of the core, Sitka was eager to send it out for testing while waiting for spring thaw, and the wait has paid off.
Drilled to a length of 550.2 meters and as a step-out to the west from last year's DDRCCC-23-047, DDRCCC-24-057 was designed to test the southeastern extension of the well-mineralized quartz monzonite intrusion found in Hole 47.
The first hole to be completed for its planned 15,000-meter program at RC Gold, the overall results from 58 have been promising indeed.
• 191 meters averaging 1.16 g/t gold from a depth of 327 meters, including 89 meters averaging 2.03 g/t gold from 419 meters, 11 meters averaging 5.8 g/t gold from 459 meters, and two meters averaging 21.2 g/t gold from 468 meters.
"While hole 57, which was a fairly aggressive step out from our discovery at Hole 47, has successfully demonstrated the potential of this area to add significant, higher-grade tonnage to our growing gold resource, it also highlights the persistent gold mineralization being exhibited within the metasediments, in addition to the intrusive rocks of this system," said Coe.
With drilling underway, Sitka has done all the prep work for a strategically focused year of exploration. The key objectives are to further expand and define targets within the well-endowed Clear Creek Intrusive Complex area, which currently hosts the Blackjack and Eiger gold deposits – both of which remain open in all directions – and the Saddle zone.
According to an inaugural calculation completed last year for its Blackjack and Eiger deposits at RC, the former hosts 33.7 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.83 grams per metric ton (900,000 ounces) gold at a cutoff grade of 0.25 g/t gold, while the latter hosts an additional 27.4 million metric tons averaging 0.5 g/t (440,000 oz) gold at the same cutoff.
In addition to its high-priority targets, drilling aims to advance other drill-ready targets elsewhere across the district-scale, 386-kilometer (229 miles) RC Gold project.
"We believe that this will ultimately contribute to a very large gold endowment within the cluster of intrusive rocks and surrounding metasediments that make up the Clear Creek Intrusive Complex," added the gold explorer CEO. "Our 2024 diamond drilling program at RC Gold is off to a great start and we are eagerly awaiting the pending assay results for Hole 58."
Announcing its intention last week to complete the option to fully acquire the Barney Ridge property, one of five underlying properties that Sitka has been exploring, the company has quickly followed up with similar intentions for the RC and BeeBop properties.
Adjacent to the Clear Creek property on its east end, which hosts the Blackjack and Eiger deposits, Sitka has announced that it has completed all exploration requirements as well as all property cash and share payments pursuant to the initial option agreements from 2019.
Similar to Barney Ridge, future exploration expenditures will be waived, and Sitka need only make a final payment of $60,000 and issue 375,000 shares to acquire 100% interest in the RC property, and a final payment of $20,000 and 125,000 shares for 100% interest in BeeBop.
"Upon completion of these amendments, the company will have secured a 100% ownership in all the underlying properties that comprise our flagship RC Gold project," said Coe. "The RC and BeeBop claims contain the two kilometre by three kilometre Big Creek stock, one of nine known intrusions with associated gold mineralization that are present across our 386 square kilometre RC Gold project."
Lying between Victoria Gold's Eagle and Brewery Creek gold mines, the RC Gold project comprises five underlying properties – RC, BeeBop, Mahtin, Clear Creek, and Barney Ridge. And now that it has completed its final option agreement for RC and BeeBop, Sitka solely owns this prospective property that has already outlined over one million oz of gold.
"While exploration on the RC and BeeBop claims has been limited, these road accessible properties have multiple intrusion related gold deposit targets that have mineral characteristics similar to the mineralization present at our expanding Blackjack and Eiger gold deposits, which remain open in all directions," said Coe "While our primary focus remains on expanding the current resource contained within the Blackjack and Eiger gold deposit area, we look forward to following up on the promising targets at the RC and BeeBop claims as well as elsewhere across project."
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