The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
North of 60 Mining News - May 17, 2024
Since optioning Haldane in 2018, Silver North has made extensive headway exploring Yukon property that historically produced over 200 million ounces of silver from 1913 to 1989.
Silver North Resources Ltd. May 14 announced the completion of an option agreement with three private prospectors, securing rights to the carbonate replacement deposit prospective GDR project in southern Yukon.
Rebranding as Silver North Resources (formerly Alianza Minerals) to better reflect its goals in searching for the precious metal necessary to the clean energy transition, the company's exploration has primarily focused on the high-grade Haldane silver property in Yukon's historic Keno Hill Silver District.
Located about 22 kilometers (14 miles) west of Hecla Mining Company's Keno Hill silver mine, the 8,164-hectare (20,174 acres) road-accessible Haldane property hosts a small historical mine that was first recognized for its high-grade silver mineralization more than 100 years ago.
The company has expanded its Yukon holdings with an option to acquire GDR, an easily accessible project in southern Yukon with potential for high-grade silver-zinc-lead carbonate replacement deposit (CRD) mineralization similar to the nearby Silvertip mine project being advanced by Coeur Mining Inc.
"The GDR acquisition represents a strategic move to acquire additional ground prospective for high-grade CRD silver mineralization in this under-explored district," said Silver North President and CEO Jason Weber. "Despite the early-stage nature of these properties, all three have favorable characteristics for CRD mineralization."
GDR is made up of three groups of claims – Veronica, MR, and MFW.
Under the terms of the agreement, Silver North will make staged cash payments totaling C$102,000 over a period of four years and staged share payments totaling 1.56 million common shares over a similar period to earn 100% in GDR.
Like similar agreements, the company is also subject to a net smelter return royalty of 2.4%, 0.9% of which can be purchased for C$2 million.
Of the 150 new claims added to its portfolio, the Veronica project - about 11 kilometers (7 miles) by road north of Silvertip and within 2,000 meters of its Tim property - appears to be the target Silver North is most interested in.
"In particular, the Veronica claim group has a strong, unexplained multielement soil geochemical anomaly just west of our Tim Property," added Weber. "This complements the Tim property nicely and gives Silver North access to more of the prospective stratigraphy in this district."
A 450-by-450-meter multi-element soil anomaly at Veronica with values of up to 31.1 parts per million silver, 3,100 ppm lead, and 612 ppm zinc remains open to the east.
Silver North says this anomaly that has yet to be trenched, drilled, or explained by prospecting presents a compelling target for exploration.
Further south at Veronica, along the Yukon border, high silver, lead, and zinc values-in-soils associated with quartz veins cutting Paleozoic shales (ancient shale). Soil values in this area range from 0.1 to 8.67 ppm silver, 28 to 2,780 ppm lead, and 25 to 2,500 ppm zinc – although these values have not been explained.
Because the Veronica claim group partially lies within an area of interest surrounding the Tim property, which the company has under option with neighboring Coeur, the company states it felt obligated to offer Veronica for inclusion with the option agreement.
If Coeur agrees to include these new claims, it will reimburse one-half of Silver North's acquisition costs.
The MR and MFW claim groups lie about 10 kilometers (6 miles) and 17 kilometers (10.5 miles) north of Veronica, respectively.
Covering a discontinuous 1,500-meter-long silver-lead-zinc soil anomaly that also remains unexplained, MFW received confirmation sampling within the anomaly back in 2016, which returned 14 of 61 soil samples with greater than 2 ppm silver, a high of 17.95 ppm silver, 348 ppm lead, 1,060 ppm zinc, 143.5 ppm arsenic, and 10.65 ppm antimony.
Silver North believes these anomalous elements suggest a potential CRD-style mineralized source.
MR covers a number of historic trenches excavated to explore a series of carbonate-hosted, zinc-oxide prospects. From these, the best results include 20 meters averaging 5.05% zinc, 1.97% lead, and 3.4 ppm silver, and 1.5 meters averaging 8.8% lead and 51.4 ppm silver.
A vein structure discovered in 2016 and chip sampled in 2018 returned one meter averaging 477 ppm silver, 9.29% lead and 0.91% zinc.
Soil sampling to the southeast of this structure has defined an anomaly over 300 by 500 meters of greater than two ppm silver and up to 7.6 ppm silver with associated anomalous lead and zinc concentrations. Like the other prospects, this anomaly remains unexplored and unexplained.
Aside from the latest option undertaking, Silver North has opted to drop its lease on the Twin Canyon gold property in southwest Colorado and will transfer its claim holdings to the underlying vendors.
"Management was unsuccessful in finding a partner to move the project forward and felt that focusing on Silver North's core assets is the most effective use of its capital resources," the company wrote.
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