The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
North of 60 Mining News - July 12, 2024
A sample of massive chalcopyrite-bornite copper mineralization collected from the Glacier target.
A sample collected about 530 meters northwest of the historic Bonanza silver mine.
Samples collected from outcrop at the Thompson uranium-copper-cobalt target.
White Cliff Minerals Ltd. July 9 reported that it has confirmed previously identified copper, cobalt, and uranium mineralization and made new discoveries during the first week of its inaugural exploration program at the Great Bear Lake iron ore-copper-gold-uranium (IOCG-U) project in Northwest Territories.
"Finally, we are on the ground!" said White Cliff Minerals Managing Director Troy Whittaker. "We could not be any more impressed with what we have seen in such a short period of time."
White Cliff's 2,900-square-kilometer (1,120 square miles) Great Bear Lake property covers the historic Eldorado radium-uranium-silver-copper mine within Northwest Territories' highly prospective Great Bear Magmatic Zone.
The mill at Eldorado produced 13.7 million pounds of uranium oxide (U3O8), 34.2 million ounces of silver, 11.4 million lb of copper with gold credits, 104,000 kilograms of lead, 127,000 kilograms of nickel, and 227,000 kilograms of cobalt over a 50-year span beginning in 1932.
White Cliff has begun its exploration of Great Bear Lake with mapping and sampling to refine targets for drilling. The company says this work has confirmed the presence of widespread, high-grade IOCG and epithermal mineralization, some with potentially significant strike lengths.
The Australia-based exploration company's early fieldwork at Great Bear has discovered a large outcrop of IOCG mineralization at the Glacier target about 1,000 meters northeast of the historic Echo Bay mine, which provided ore for the Eldorado mill during the 1960s and 1970s.
White Cliff geologists have traced copper mineralization for 1,100 meters at Glacier. At the eastern end of the outcropping mineralization, the team discovered a roughly 10-meter-thick body of brecciated and altered mineralization with semi-massive chalcopyrite.
Given the semi-massive to massive copper mineralization observed on surface, White Cliff expects a magnetotelluric (MT) geophysical survey currently being conducted to provide a robust drill target at Glacier.
A sample collected about 530 meters northwest of the historic Bonanza silver mine.
Other newly defined Great Bear targets include:
• Mile Lake, a silver-copper-zinc-lead-molybdenum skarn about 8.5 kilometers (5.3 miles) south of the historical Eldorado mine site, where intense primary copper mineralization has been identified along 55 meters of outcropping rock before disappearing undercover.
• Rust, a prospect about 3.5 kilometers (2.2 miles) east of the old Eldorado mine, where three parallel structures were "off scale" (greater than 65,000 counts per second), scintillometer readings indicate a potential extension of high-grade uranium.
• A crystalline herringbone-wire native silver occurrence was discovered along strike from the historical Bonanza silver mine about 13 kilometers (eight miles) south of Eldorado.
"This project is clearly under-explored with new potential discoveries having been made continuously and immediately," said Whittaker.
In addition to the exciting new discoveries, White Cliff geologists have confirmed some of the targets identified during a review of data from previous exploration.
Samples collected from outcrop at the Thompson uranium-copper-cobalt target.
The Australia-based company says field crews have observed visible uranium, copper, and cobalt mineralization in outcrop at Thompson, a target south of the historic Echo Bay and Eldorado mines where previous rock chip sampling returned grades as high as 14.15% U3O8, 6.22 g/t gold, and 122 g/t silver.
The White Cliff team identified a fracture zone with massive copper sulfide intervals and secondary uranium and cobalt minerals. Four rock chip samples were collected along a 15-meter section of this outcrop.
The field team also validated mineralization at Spud Bay, a target along strike of the Bonanza silver mine where previous sampling returned grades as high as 11.7% copper, 8.3% zinc, 22.7% copper, and 1,330 g/t silver.
White Cliff says the team observed 30- to 50-centimeter-thick zones of visible copper-zinc sulfides associated with strong magnetite alteration that includes two zones of mineralization at one of the locations. Samples were collected across 450 meters of strike.
Crews also confirmed copper mineralization at Sparkplug Lake, a target reminiscent of Fortune Minerals Ltd. NICO project about 280 kilometers (175 miles) to the south. Previous samples collected along 1,800 meters at Sparkplug Lake returned grades as high as 8.28 g/t gold, 44 g/t silver, and 3.97% copper.
Fieldwork completed by White Cliff geologists also discovered a 430- by 160-meter zone of epithermal mineralization on the shoulder of a kilometer-scale collapse structure at Sparkplug Lake. The epithermal veins and breccias identified are comprised of quartz-carbonate with chalcopyrite and lesser bornite copper mineralization.
So far, White Cliff has submitted 95 samples collected at Great Bear for assaying.
"The first batch of samples have already been dispatched to the labs and we are looking forward to those results in the next month or so; those results we hope will validate our expectations and also provide us with further potential upside for precious metal contents not visible in the field," said Whittaker. "We look forward to update further with relation to Great Bear Lake exploration activities along with our highly anticipated program at Nunavut."
White Cliff has received a C$168,000 (US$123,000) grant from the Canadian government to support the company's exploration at Great Bear Lake and Nunavut Copper project.
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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