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
Significant investments, expansion acquisitions, and substantial exploration, Snowline Gold continues to build a future Yukon gold mining legacy in the North.
Snowline Gold Corp. May 2 announced the discovery of three new reduced intrusion related gold system (RIRGS) targets at the company's flagship Rogue project in Yukon, Canada, as well as an additional RIRGS target at the adjacent Cynthia project, for a total of four new prospects that could rival its leading Valley target.
"While consistent drill results have dominated our headlines, Snowline's regional surface exploration team has done exemplary work behind the scenes bolstering our exploration pipeline and demonstrating widespread gold fertility within the regional-scale Rogue Plutonic Complex," said Snowline Gold CEO Scott Berdahl. "The presence of our Valley discovery shows that the geological ingredients needed to produce a uniquely robust form of RIRGS mineralization are present at Rogue."
Running down the new lineup, Snowline introduces:
• Livia, a cluster of at least three mineralized zones located roughly 3,000 meters east of the company's recently identified Aurelius target;
• Ramsey, which is similar to Valley in that it occupies a topographical low, with limited outcrop and a large component of transported surface cover; and,
• Duke, a target characterized by a 1,500- by 1,000-meter granodiorite stock partially covered by colluvium (material that builds at the foot of a slope) and moraine (similar buildup of material in glaciated regions, sometimes referred to as glacial till) deposits, and found roughly 11 kilometers (7 miles) southeast of Valley.
Further south, the Sydney target found on Cynthia is the last of its newly discovered targets currently understood as an open, 250- by 200-meter zone of sheeted quartz veins hosted in a 3,000-meter diameter granodiorite stock.
"The results of our regional work suggest a strong potential for locating other such instances of gold endowment across much of the broader, greater than 1,100 kilometre-squared project area," said Berdahl. "With essentially the entire Rogue Plutonic Complex under full ownership, we are thrilled to have the opportunity to systematically explore this nascent gold district, along with the resources and the team to make the most of this opportunity."
In addition to the new targets, Snowline also identified a zone of abundant gold-bearing intrusive float in glacial till on the Rogue project roughly 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) down-valley from (west-northwest of) the Valley gold discovery, associated with locally anomalous (17,237 and 768 parts per billion gold) stream sediment geochemistry.
The company adds that it is unclear at present whether this float is derived from an undiscovered mineralized intrusion or whether it could have been transported as till from Valley at high enough concentrations to produce the observed gold anomalies in stream geochemistry.
Additional targets, including the Rogue's JP target (formerly Scronk) and others, were advanced by the company during the 2023 field season and could potentially see drill testing in 2024.
Historical surface sampling near the south end of Livia returned grab samples of up to 16 g/t gold. Follow-up by the company identified a 1,000- by 300-meter northeast-trending structural corridor defined by two parallel structures hosted in mudstone and volcanic rocks, extending northeast from the historical sample site.
A continuous rock chip sample from the southernmost fault returned 3.3 meters averaging 5.12 g/t gold, including 0.3 meters averaging 14.40 g/t gold (and 39.9 g/t gold), with similar silicification and pathfinder elements association to the Aurelius target.
Additional selective rock chip samples from 200 meters to the northeast within the same corridor returned seven mineralized vein samples out of eight with an average of 4.47 g/t gold (up to 7.39 g/t gold).
Serendipitously, the granodiorite stocks at Livia were initially identified and mapped by Snowline's Chair Craig Hart during the field component of his undergraduate Honours thesis, before his role in developing the RIRGS deposit model.
The stocks are hosted by the same volcanic and sedimentary rocks hosting mineralization at Aurelius and are located between steep NW-SE and N-S structures. Mineralization is characterized by sheeted quartz vein arrays with arsenopyrite and galena.
A 110- by 50-meter corridor of sheeted veins, with a vein density up to five veins per meter, was identified in one of these granodiorite stocks. This showing returned 18 mineralized vein samples out of 19, hosted both in granodiorite and the surrounding hornfels lithologies, with an average of 2.22 g/t gold (up to 7.17 g/t gold, and 41.4 g/t gold).
Like Valley, the Ramsey target occupies a topographical low, with limited outcrop and a large component of transported surface cover. The target, located 23 kilometers (14 miles) west of Valley, was initially identified as a magnetic high anomaly in historical aerial magnetic data.
Surface investigation revealed the presence of low density (approximately equal to one vein per meter) sheeted quartz veins in an intrusive host rock, with outcropping bismuth minerals and visible gold observed in the veins.
Out of ten grab samples collected from the isolated outcrops, which occupy only a small (roughly 60 by 30 meters) portion of the broader 4,000- by 2,000-meter magnetic anomaly, eight were mineralized, with an average grade of 0.53 g/t gold, not including a visible gold bearing grab sample of quartz vein material with abundant bismuthinite which returned 86.5 g/t gold.
A soil sample grid established over the area returned elevated (greater than 10 ppb gold) background gold values and localized anomalies up to 105 ppb gold associated with elevated bismuth and tellurium.
Snowline adds that it is unclear to what extent transported surface material (tills, colluvium and alluvium) might be masking bedrock influence on soil geochemistry across the target.
Duke exhibits a similar geophysical response in historical Z-Axis Tipper Electromagnetic (ZTEM) data to Valley, with a resistive anomaly marking the location of the intrusion.
Initial reconnaissance work identified sheeted quartz-sulfide veins with densities consistently greater than 10 veins per meter over an open, 500- by 350-meter area.
Representative grab samples returned values up to 0.56 g/t gold in outcrop and 0.91 g/t gold in float. These results are seen as encouraging indicators of fertility, and the target itself extends the known gold endowment along a general NW-SE corridor to greater than 25 kilometers (16 miles) stretching from Aurelius in the northwest and including the Valley target.
The Sydney target is hosted in a N-S structural corridor with subvertical faults with up to 26 veins per meter.
This zone returned a two-meter chip sample at 2.93 g/t gold, a 2.8-meter chip sample at 0.53 g/t gold and a selective rock sample with 8.01 g/t gold. The rest of the target is characterized by an average of 10 veins per meter.
A second granodiorite stock located on the Cynthia Project remains largely unexplored.
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