The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
North of 60 Mining News - July 19, 2024
A geologist collects samples from a malachite-stained fracture at the Spud Bay North discovery.
Samples of pyrite-chalcopyrite cemented breccia collected from the Cleaver IOCG discovery.
White Cliff Minerals Ltd. July 17 reported that its field crews have discovered additional mineralization that expands upon the extensive targets that have already been discovered and confirmed this year at the Great Bear Lake iron ore-copper-gold-uranium (IOCG-U) project in Northwest Territories.
"The IOCG potential of this project continues to grow," said White Cliff Minerals Managing Director Troy Whittaker.
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.
Over a 50-year period beginning in 1932, roughly 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 was produced from the Eldorado, Echo Bay, Contact Lake, Bonanza, and other mines on the property.
Since acquiring the Great Bear Lake property in February, White Cliff has reviewed and digitized the wealth of data from historical exploration that continued sporadically until 2009. The company says this data, combined with modern exploration methods and a better understanding of the deposit styles within the Great Bear Magmatic Zone, primes the project for new discoveries.
Last week, the Australia-based mineral exploration company reported that its field team at Great Bear had made four such discoveries and confirmed several other targets identified during previous programs across the historic property.
"This project is clearly under-explored with new potential discoveries having been made continuously and immediately," Whittaker said upon reporting White Cliff's initial Great Bear discoveries.
In the latest update, White Cliff says its field team has made a new discovery named Cleaver, which is a broad zone of chalcopyrite-bearing alteration at surface indicative of a large and fertile IOCG system-lying about three kilometers (1.9 miles) east of the Glacier IOCG target reported by the company last week.
Samples of pyrite-chalcopyrite cemented breccia collected from the Cleaver IOCG discovery.
The 785- by 460-meter Cleaver target lies immediately south of a major east-west trending fault. Field personnel report an expansive area of gossan (rust-colored rock formed from weathering of sulfide minerals) after oxidation of pyrite within phyllic alteration (rock changes due to hot, mineral-rich fluids) at this discovery.
Further groundwork at Spud Bay North has identified widespread copper mineralization along a structural corridor that can be traced for 450 meters before disappearing under cover.
This newly identified structure adds to the 700-meter trend and native silver occurrence the field team previously discovered at Spud Bay, just 530 meters along strike from the historic Bonanza and El Bonanza silver mines.
"As we have seen from this latest round of exploration, we continue to discover targets that represent newly identified, spatially separate mineralized systems, indicating the opportunity for multiple discoveries," said Whittaker.
Assays are pending from the samples collected this year at Great Bear. White Cliff is also awaiting the results from a 1,237 line-kilometer MobileMT (magnetotellurics) airborne geophysical flown over all the high-priority and secondary targets at the project.
"The data returned from this detailed survey is expected to work well given the outcropping mineralisation fresh rock and lack of overburden," Whittaker added. "We will, integrate this information into our planning and in conjunction with the field observations and having a clear understanding of the topography and local onsite conditions we will have a complete and detailed understanding in readiness for our upcoming drilling campaign and various site visits that are planned."
With the initial round of exploration completed at Great Bear, the geological and geophysical teams have mobilized to Nunavut Copper, which lies less than 100 miles (160 kilometers) northeast of Great Bear.
White Cliff says the district-scale Nunavut Copper project is underpinned by the presence of both high-grade volcanic-hosted copper-silver lodes and the prospect of large tonnage sedimentary-hosted copper deposits.
"Next is planning and preparations for drilling at Great Bear and the completion of the first pass field activities and surveys at Nunavut," said Whittaker. "All-in-all things could not have gone better, and we look forward to drilling later this season."
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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