The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
North of 60 Mining News - July 5, 2024
The acquisition of the Clear Creek property now completes Sitka Gold's 100% ownership of the Clear Creek Intrusive Complex and adds several underexplored areas that have strong potential for new gold discoveries in addition to four high-quality drill targets.
The Clear Creek Intrusive Complex covers an area roughly eight by 15 kilometers and includes several known surface intrusions.
Prospecting in 2015 was conducted in the G2 zone and the Contact Zone and produced many high-grade results. Additional grid soil sampling will be conducted in these areas and south where previous sampling was carried out at wide spacings.
Sitka Gold Corp. July 3 announced the expansion of its ongoing 2024 exploration program on its RC Gold property in the Yukon to include a full battery of work at the Clear Creek property acquired from Victoria Gold Corp. on June 24.
Before the Clear Creek purchase, Sitka's RC project was already a district-scale property covering 386 square kilometers (149 square miles) of the Tombstone Gold Belt about midway between Victoria's Eagle Gold mine to the northeast and Brewery Creek gold mine project to the northwest.
The property covers 45 square kilometers (17.4 square miles) of intrusion-related gold mineralization immediately south of Sitka's advance-staged Blackjack and Eiger deposits.
According to an inaugural resource calculation completed early in 2023, the Blackjack and Eiger deposits at RC host 61.1 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.68 grams per metric ton (1.34 million ounces) gold.
The Clear Creek Intrusive Complex covers an area roughly eight by 15 kilometers and includes several known surface intrusions.
With the addition of Clear Creek, the company's land package has grown to 431 square kilometers (166 square miles), and more importantly, has filled in the final piece to complete the property as a single contiguous exploration region.
The acquisition came with a large database of geological, geochemical, and geophysical information that, when combined with Sitka's own increased understanding of the controls on mineralization at RC, suggests there is significant potential for the discovery of additional intrusion-related gold deposits.
"The accumulation of data from several years of systematic exploration by previous operators on the newly acquired Clear Creek property has generated several high-quality exploration targets," said Sitka Gold CEO Cor Coe. "The newly acquired claims cover at least three intrusion-related gold targets that are geologically similar to our developing Blackjack gold deposit and the team is very excited to begin assessing the property by testing the Rhosgobel intrusion, where historical work strongly indicates the potential for the presence of a multi-million-ounce gold deposit."
Kicking off a 15,000-meter diamond drilling program at RC in early March, Sitka has opted to expand its current schedule to include diamond drilling, soil sampling, geological mapping, prospecting, data integration, and analysis at the new property.
The consolidated project includes four high-priority areas that have had previous reverse circulation and diamond drilling that require follow-up.
These areas are the Rhosgobel intrusion, where historical drilling intersected 67.1 meters averaging 1.03 grams per metric ton gold; the Contact zone, with drill results returning 10.7 meters averaging 20.3 g/t gold; the Bear Paw Breccia, which intersected 26.7 meters averaging two g/t gold; and the Pukelman intrusion, with results showing 10 meters averaging 1.02 g/t gold.
Prospecting in 2015 was conducted in the G2 zone and the Contact Zone and produced many high-grade results. Additional grid soil sampling will be conducted in these areas and south where previous sampling was carried out at wide spacings.
The first area planned for testing is Rhosgobel, where shallow drilling in the mid-1990s by Kennecott outlined a large area of intrusion-related gold mineralization. The first drill hole will be a step out to get underneath the mineralized zone – this will be the first diamond drill hole targeting Rhosgobel.
"Sitka's initial discovery of the Blackjack and Eiger gold deposits came about through a similar process of review and compilation of a large historical database and we see the ability to accelerate the discovery of additional gold deposits by utilizing our growing knowledge of the intrusion-related gold systems in this area in conjunction with the comprehensive Clear Creek data-set as we continue our exploration activities across this emerging mining district," said Coe.
Sitka has contracted GroundTruth Exploration to conduct grid-based soil sampling in an area south of Blackjack. This work will involve systematic soil geochemistry surveys to identify anomalous gold concentrations.
The G2 zone, which has previously shown promising gold values in surface samples, will be a primary focus. GroundTruth will also carry out geological mapping and prospecting along the Blackjack Fault mineralized corridor and the Pukelman West intrusion to refine and identify new drill targets based on the integrated geological and geochemical data.
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