The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
North of 60 Mining News – June 05, 2024
Massive sulfide mineralization found on surface at a CRD target in the Silver Lime area of Core Assets' Blue property in B.C.
Red dashed circles show areas that will be the focus of a mapping and sampling program to be carried out at Silver Lime.
Core Assets Corp. June 5 announced the start of a 5,000-meter drill program that will begin by testing for a buried porphyry body underlying the zinc, lead, copper, and silver mineralization found on the surface at the Silver Lime project on the company's Blue property in Northern British Columbia.
Lying alongside the Alaska border in B.C.'s Atlin Mining District, Blue is a 275,890-acre (111,650 hectares) land package covering high-grade skarn, carbonate replacement deposit (CRD), and porphyry targets that are enriched with silver, zinc, lead, copper, and gold.
The two most advanced project areas on the Blue property are Laverdiere, a high-grade skarn target in the southeastern area of the land package, and Silver Lime, a CRD and porphyry prospect area about 15 kilometers (nine miles) to the west.
Drilling carried out by Core Assets over the previous two seasons has identified high-grade CRD- and skarn-style mineralization at the Sulfide City, Grizzly, Pete's, and Gally targets along a 2,400-meter-long core area of a larger mineralized trend identified so far at Silver Lime.
Highlights from drilling these targets include:
• 5.64 meters averaging 254 grams per metric ton silver, 4.8% zinc, 5.1% lead, 0.11% copper, and 0.12 g/t gold in hole SLM22-011 (Grizzly).
• 3.33 meters averaging 138 g/t silver, 7.3% zinc, 7.2% lead, and 0.54% copper in hole SLM23-016 (Pete's).
• 6.4 meters averaging 159 g/t silver, 7.7% zinc, 8.7% lead, and 023% copper in hole SLM23-028 (Pete's).
• Eight meters averaging 139 g/t silver, 2.3% zinc, 1.2% lead, and 0.18% copper in hole SLM23-048 (Gally).
The 2022 and 2023 drilling and geophysics revealed compelling evidence that the widespread skarn and chimney-style CRD feeders found on surface at Silver Lime are interconnected at depth and potentially lead to a porphyry source.
This evidence includes a 2022 hole (SLM22-006) that cut significant porphyry-style alteration, veining, and increased molybdenum copper grades at a depth of around 315 meters. Grades as high as 2.5% copper-equivalent were encountered near the bottom of this hole that was drilled to a depth of 471 meters.
To gain a clearer picture of a potential porphyry target indicated by this hole and other evidence, Core Assets hired Fathom Geophysics to create a 3D magnetic inversion model utilizing versatile time domain electromagnetic (VTEM) geophysical data collected over the Silver Lime CRD-porphyry project in 2021.
The modelling of the VTEM data identified targets that correlate well with highly chargeable zones identified below the Sulphide City, Pete's and Gally targets by an induced polarization (IP) geophysical survey conducted last year.
"Overlaps observed between our favorable magnetics, highly chargeable and conductive zones, Cu and Mo (copper and molybdenum) grade downhole, and the current drilled extent of the Sulphide City Mo-Cu Porphyry all point towards the continuation of the mineralized Sulphide City Porphyry to depths exceeding one kilometer," said Core Assets President and CEO Nick Rodway. "These overlapping datasets indicate the presence of a large, long-lived, and multi-stage, mineralized porphyry system feeding the high-grade Silver Lime skarn and CRM targets."
Drilling, which is slated to get underway by the end of the week, will begin by testing the buried Sulphide City copper-molybdenum porphyry target outlined by geophysical, geochemical, and structural data.
"Everything is on schedule, and we are excited to begin drilling this week," said Rodway. "We'll start by testing the prospective overlap zones for porphyry Cu potential."
While the first hole of the 2024 season tests for the porphyry copper potential indicated by a high-chargeability anomaly at Sulphide City, geologists will investigate an area south of the Galley CRD target where an even stronger chargeability anomaly has been identified at depth. If the boots-on-the-ground data is supportive of the current interpretation, this new target will also be drilled this year.
In addition to testing for the underlying porphyry, the company plans to continue to drill shallow CRD and skarn massive sulfide targets, as well as carry out surface mapping and sampling at prospective areas surrounding the zones identified so far along a more than 4,000-meter-long corridor at Silver Lime.
Red dashed circles show areas that will be the focus of a mapping and sampling program to be carried out at Silver Lime.
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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