The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
North of 60 Mining News - November 5, 2024
Western Alaska Minerals completed 4,230 meters of drilling in 13 holes during the 2024 program at Illinois Creek.
Core from the silver- and lead-rich zone cut a depth of 212.6 meters in hole IC24-0005 at Warm Springs.
Illinois Creek is demonstrating classic CRD zonation, which typically trends from more copper- and gold-rich deposits near the mineralizing source to more silver- and zinc-rich mineralization in distal deposits.
Western Alaska Minerals Corp. Nov. 5 reported that the final six holes of its 2024 drilling at Illinois Creek has added to the evidence that Warm Springs is a critical link along a roughly five-mile (eight kilometers) long trend of carbonate replacement deposit (CRD) mineralization that extends from the gold-rich Illinois Creek deposit to the silver-rich Waterpump Creek deposit.
Located about 300 miles west of Fairbanks, Alaska, Illinois Creek is a district-scale property enriched with copper, gold, silver, and zinc.
Early this year, Western Alaska published an inaugural resource for the Waterpump Creek deposit at Illinois Creek.
Based on 15,550 meters of drilling completed by Western Alaska and 7,900 meters of historical drilling by Anaconda and Novagold Resources, Waterpump Creek hosts 2.39 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 279 grams per metric ton (21.4 million ounces) silver, 11.25% (592 million pounds) zinc, and 9.84% (518 million lb) lead.
Peter Megaw, a world-leading expert in CRD mineralizing systems and technical advisor to Western Alaska, sees Waterpump Creek as one segment of a much larger mineralization system that extends southwest through the Last Hurrah and Warm Springs target areas and onward to the past-producing Illinois Creek mine, which still hosts 357,000 oz of gold and 13.4 million oz of silver in the indicated and inferred resource categories.
Illinois Creek is demonstrating classic CRD zonation, which typically trends from more copper- and gold-rich deposits near the mineralizing source to more silver- and zinc-rich mineralization in distal deposits.
To discover the rest of this CRD system, Western Alaska focused its 2024 exploration on Warm Springs.
Earlier this year, the company reported that the drilling at Warm Springs had encountered an upper zone of gold-copper mineralization similar to Illinois Creek, which lies 1,400 meters to the west, and a deeper zone of strong silver-zinc-lead mineralization more akin to Waterpump Creek, which is about 6,000 meters to the north.
Drilling continued to cut complex multi-stage mineralization characterized by thick intervals of silica pyrite mineralization punctuated by thin zones of Illinois Creek and Waterpump Creek styles of mineralization.
Highlights from the 2024 drilling at Warm Springs include:
• 4.7 meters averaging 1.29 g/t gold, 11.6 g/t silver, and 0.04% copper from a depth of 84.17 meters in hole IC24-0004.
• Three meters averaging 2.13 g/t gold, 7 g/t silver, and 0.03% copper from a depth of 244.4 meters in hole IC24-0004.
• 1.1 meters averaging 687 g/t silver and 33.64% lead from a depth of 221.6 meters in hole IC24-0005.
• 3.2 meters averaging 88.5 g/t silver, 4% zinc, and 2.39% lead from a depth of 352.2 meters in hole IC24-0005.
• 10.5 meters averaging 1.02 g/t gold and 3.8 g/t silver form a depth of 119.5 meters in hole IC24-0008.
• 2.5 meters averaging 2.31 g/t gold and 733.3 g/t silver, and 0.16% copper from a depth of 100.2 meters in hole IC24-0010.
• 0.5 meters averaging 53 g/t silver, 12.4% zinc, and 3.1% lead from a depth of 249.9 meters in hole IC24-0010.
Core from the silver- and lead-rich zone cut a depth of 212.6 meters in hole IC24-0005 at Warm Springs.
"These results mark a significant milestone in demonstrating the scalability of our Illinois Creek CRD project," said Western Alaska Minerals CEO Kit Marrs. "The mineralization encountered at Warm Springs provides strong evidence for a connection between our high-grade Waterpump Creek silver deposit and the Illinois Creek gold deposit."
Adding to this evidence is a new SkyTEM geophysical survey that indicates that the mineralization encountered by drilling at Warm Springs trends westward toward the more gold- and copper-rich portion of the CRD system.
Trenching and drilling at Last Hurrah, a prospective target that lies between Warm Springs and Waterpump Creek, further confirms the potential along the five-mile-long CRD trend.
One hole drilled at Last Hurrah cut a narrow 0.25-meter section averaging 192 g/t silver, 3.8% zinc, and 1.19% lead. A rock sample grabbed from a nearby trench averaged 599 g/t silver and 46.8% zinc.
Western Alaska says the data suggests that the silver-zinc mineralization at Last Hurrah represents a distinct segment of the much larger CRD mineralized system being outlined at Illinois Creek.
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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