North of 60 Mining News - The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North

PolarX Ltd. debuted this year as a new Australia-based exploration company focused on advancing Caribou Dome and Stellar, high-grade copper and copper-gold projects in Southcentral Alaska. This company is the product of a merger between Coventry Resources, a Perth-based junior that had been exploring Caribou Dome for the past two years, and Vista Minerals Pty Ltd., a privately owned "Down Under" explorer that holds the rights to the adjacent Stellar copper-gold project.

The property merger also involved Millrock Resources, which was the underlying owner of Stellar. To bring these neighboring properties into one well-funded exploration company, Millrock exchanged Stellar for 25.14 million Vista shares, or 27.7 percent of the Australia-based explorer.

Upon raising AU$5.5 million, and consolidating its shares, the newly formed PolarX set out to explore the high-grade copper and gold deposits and prospects that span the 22-mile length of the merged Stellar and Caribou Dome properties.

The 2017 Stellar-Caribou Dome program included a 3,000-meter drill program aimed at upgrading and expanding Zackly, a copper-gold skarn deposit on the Stellar claim block.

A historical resource for Zackly outlines 1.54 million metric tons grading 4.5 grams per metric ton (218,944 ounces) gold and 2.9 percent (66.9 million pounds) copper. Millrock, an exploration company very familiar with Stellar and doing business in Alaska managed the 2017 drill program.

With two rigs turning at Stellar by the end of August, Coventry and Millrock set out to drill 25 holes aimed at upgrading the historical Zackly resource to Australian Joint Ore Reserves Committee (JORC) mineral reporting standards, which is similar to National Instrument 43-101 standards in Canada. To accomplish this, one rig drilled roughly 12 holes through the known deposit.

A second drill-tested potential expansions of the deposit where induced polarization surveys indicate extensions of the skarn mineralization. Millrock and PolarX also plan to drill Mars, a large copper-gold prospect at the western edge of the property and right next to Senator, a promising copper prospect on the Caribou Dome side of the merged land package.

In April, Coventry published the first modern resource for the sediment-hosted copper deposit at Caribou Dome, which is immediately southwest of Stellar. The total JORC-compliant resource (measured, indicated and inferred) includes 1.6 million metric tons of near-surface material averaging 3 percent (107.8 million lbs.) copper; and 1.2 million metric tons of underground mineable resource averaging 3.2 percent (82.3 million lbs.) copper. This high-grade deposit covers 800 meters near the center of the roughly 14-mile-long property.

This year, PolarX completed geological mapping and structural interpretation of outcrop and drill core at the Caribou Dome deposit.

Over the past two years, Coventry has identified a number of high-grade copper targets all along an 11-mile stretch of the Caribou Dome property, including extensions of the Caribou Dome deposit.

Senator, a 5,000-meter-long prospect at the northeastern end of the property and adjacent to the Mars prospect on the Stellar claims, is a priority Caribou Dome exploration target. Baseline environmental studies were being carried out at Zackly and Caribou Dome in anticipation of moving the merged project toward a pre-feasibility study in 2018.

-SHANE LASLEY