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

While explorers in eastern Yukon Territory were taking time to understand their properties this season, the few companies working projects in the White Gold and Klondike districts to the west seemed to be pursuing their targets with the same urgency as companies exhibited in prior years.

This year, however, the juniors chasing gold prospects in the area were trying to get as much done as possible while spending the least amount of money.

Hampered by a prolonged capital drought in the industry, most of these companies eagerly augmented modest exploration budgets with mining incentives provided by the Government of Yukon. In fact, the Yukon Mining Incentives Program has awarded a record C$1.1 million in 2013 to some 80 prospecting and exploration ventures throughout the territory.

The biggest surprise of the season, however, came not from a government program but rather from a local entrepreneur who has developed two new devices aimed at helping explorers achieve their goals more effectively and at less cost.

Comstock Metals Ltd., Pacific Ridge Exploration Ltd. and Taku Gold Corp. are among the select few who returned to Yukon in 2013 to chase targets across their properties. With the help of celebrated Yukon prospector Shawn Ryan, whom many credit with igniting the modern-day Yukon gold rush in 2009, their tasks may get a little easier.

Ryan and his company, GroundTruth Exploration, has in recent months developed two new exploration tools, seemingly tailor-made for grassroots explorers working in the White Gold district.

New sampling technique

Mining News caught up with one of the tools, the GeoProbe, at the King Solomon Gold Property in the Klondike district after visiting the QV Project where Comstock Vice President of Exploration Duncan McBean sang the device's praises.

The QV project is located across the Yukon River and upstream from Kinross Gold Corp.'s 1.2-million-ounce White Gold Project, which hosts the Golden Saddle Deposit discovered in 2009.

McBean said the remote-controlled GeoProbe enabled the company to quickly and economically explore several targets on the steep slopes of the property without having to spend a boatload of money. Moreover, the diminutive drilling unit is mounted on tracks, enabling it to maneuver easily through the dense alders and brush that blanket the steep-sided peaks of the region.

Specifically, the GeoProbe technique involves taking a sample from 2.5 meters (10-12 feet) below surface; retrieving 10-16 centimeters of soil and pebbles in the top layer of bedrock; sieving it for rocks, both large and small; and putting one of the rocks taken through Delta XRF analysis using three types of radiation. The balance of the sample, except for one rock sent to the client, is packed and sent to a laboratory for additional analysis.

In a typical hole, the GeoProbe delivers results as accurate as those obtained from trenching at a fraction of the cost and without the need for costly reclamation, its proponents say. In fact, the 2.5-inch diameter drill leaves a footprint so tiny that it is often difficult to find traces of the completed hole once the drill has moved on to another location.

A remarkably maneuverable device, the GeoProbe requires a three- person crew - one technician to operate the drill rig, another to perform the XRF analysis, and a third tech to prepare the rock chip samples for the lab. All three workers help with moving the tiny tent and other equipment that comprises their mobile camp as the GeoProbe traverses a property.

At the QV property, the GeoProbe completed seven lines of samples earlier this summer that will help Comstock develop new targets for a phase 2 in late August, McBean said. In addition to targets near the VG Zone where the initial gold discovery was made in 2012, the junior has outlined an area to the west called the Shadow Zone, to follow up with additional exploration.

Early in the season, Comstock completed 2,080 meters of drilling in phase 1, following up on hole 12-04 which returned 85 meters with good intercepts including 25-30 meters of 1.41 g/t gold.

McBean said that hole was drilled down dip, meaning the uncommon length of mineralization was likely misleading. Comstock geologists believe QV mineralization generally ranges between 25 and 30 meters in thickness.

"We hit anomalous gold numbers on the south end of the first line, and we followed up and got good gold numbers in the GeoProbe lines east of the VG Zone," he said.

Comstock also dug a traditional trench for more than 80 meters and hit rock grading less than 1 g/t gold but didn't hit the end of the mineralization. "So we want to extend it out. It is lower grade mineralization, but it's very extensive," McBean explained.

At the 6,000-hectare (14,826 acres) King Solomon Dome Property, Pacific Ridge Exploration was busy Aug. 6 with the GeoProbe and its crew punching some 25-30 drill holes per day across a grid with five-meter spacing. In January, Pacific Ridge snagged the property, which covers the highest point in the Klondike District, when its former owner dropped its option with Shawn Ryan.

"We had been looking for drill targets using geophysical surveys, and now we are using Shawn's technique to survey the property," said Pacific Ridge Vice President of Exploration Gerald Carlson.

He observed that no exploration permit is needed to use the GeoProbe, which can be leased for about C$3,000/day.

No panacea

In fact, using the GeoProbe has only one drawback, according to the explorers, is the inability of its operators to eyeball the mineralization in place.

"It's really slick, and one thing I like about it is that it's real-time information." said Taku Gold Director Mark Fekete. "Used in concert with XRF, it's really reliable for pathfinder elements."

"But you get a lot more information with trenching - you get to see the structures," he said. Moreover, if reclamation is done in concert with traditional trenching, Fekete said overall trenching costs can be roughly comparable to those incurred using the GeoProbe."

With eight properties covering 67,448 hectares (166,766 acres), Taku is currently one of the largest stakeholders in the White Gold District, and many of the junior's holding neighbor properties that have demonstrate major resources. The junior said the terrain on its White Gold properties features prospective rock types and structures similar to those found at Golden Saddle, QV and Kaminak Gold Corp.'s Coffee Property.

Extensive geophysical and soil sampling surveys, along with trenching and some conventional drilling on the properties resulted in the discovery in 2012 of seven significant gold anomalies, including the very large Hudbay and Norwest Gold zones located on the Rosebute property.

Taku President Zack Dingsdale told Mining News that the company has narrowed its focus for future exploration to two of the anomalies, including one measuring 2,000 meters by 500 meters on the Rosebute property.

"It's bigger than the anomalies that led to the Coffee and Comstock discoveries," he said, after observing that the anomaly started out as two soil samples averaging 98 parts-per-billion gold and 110 ppb gold. "They weren't huge but they were together.

Using trenching and drilling, Taku has identified two gold zones at Rosebute ranging over five kilometers with up to 3.4 grams per metric ton (3.400 ppb) gold in soils.

"One thing we've learned is that you have to really develop these targets," Dingsdale said. "This season are focusing on increasing the size of the anomalies. We decided to save drilling for next season."

The Taku executives said they are further encouraged by recent results reported by Metals Creek Resources., a junior exploring on trend to the north of Rosebute. Metals Creek Aug. 6 reported the discovery by trenching of a new gold occurrence on the Squid East project in the Matson Creek area. Chip sampling at the newly discovered "Exploits Zone" from recently completed trench E4-3 returned 1.96 g/t gold over the entire 22-meter trench length, including a four-meter interval of 6.39 g/t gold and two-meter-long chip samples ranging up to 8.55 g/t gold.

He said the junior also has met all of the obligations of its option agreements on the White Gold properties, spending a total of C$8 million, and still has C$1.2 million in the bank.

Stealth technology for Yukon

Ryan, meanwhile, has been busy developing another exploration tool, called simply "The Drone."

Using stealth technology developed by the Swiss, he has crafted a custom-designed computer controlled, airborne photography system that enables a user to create a digital image of the topography of a parcel of land, complete with indications of elevation, infrastructure and other details, with accuracy to within 5 meters.

The US$40,000 hardware package includes a digital camera mounted in the belly of a black Styrofoam body that resembles a toy airplane complete with movable wing flaps and aileron. Operated with a laptop by a technician on the ground, the device resembles a large raven once it is airborne. In fact, its appearance is so realistic, several ravens flew over to investigate the intruder as it soared on thermals for 10 minutes before being recalled to land in precisely the spot from which it was launched.

Ryan and co-developer, Tao Henderson, demonstrated the use of the device to a crowd of geologists, mining executives and reporters at Dawson Rocks Aug. 7.