The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Late-season program reveals expanded potential at Aquila North of 60 Mining News – April 10, 2020
The Shumagin trend along the coast of Unga Island immediately southwest of Aquila, a new high-priority gold target on Redstar's Unga project in Southwest Alaska.
Redstar Gold Corp. April 3 said results from geophysical and geochemical surveys carried out late last year has confirmed the prospectivity of Aquila, a high-grade zone at the west end of the Shumagin trend on the company's Unga Gold project on the Alaska Peninsula.
The Shumagin trend hosts the high-grade, SH-1 (formerly Shumagin) zone, a high-grade gold deposit about four miles (6.5 kilometers) northeast of Aquila.
According to a calculation completed earlier this year, SH-1 hosts 866,015 metric tons of inferred resource averaging 13.8 grams per metric ton (384,318 oz) gold and 35.4 g/t (986,321 g/t) silver. This is among the highest-grade gold deposits in North America.
The objective of the late-2019 field program at Aquila was to extend the footprint of a 500-meter-long gold anomaly that was tested with five holes in the 1980s. The strike direction is essentially the same as the SH-1 zone at the east end of the Shumagin Trend and the results of 1980s drill program returned numerous gold-bearing intercepts. Unfortunately, the lack of modern drill muds resulted in poor core recoveries although assays of sludges from where these holes were projected to cut, the target zone contained multiple grams of gold. Notwithstanding, Redstar said one hole where the full core was recovered and assayed cut 0.43 meters grading 93 g/t gold.
The company said the late-2019 soil sampling and geophysical surveys at Aquila confirmed the high-grade exploration potential at Aquila. Highlights from this work include:
• Confirmation of a 1980s anomaly with anomalous gold-in-soils along 425 meters of strike.
• Another gold-in soil-anomaly 350 meters southeast of the 1980s discovery and on the south side of the Shumagin trend fault, indicating that this major structure may itself be mineralized.
• A 500-meter extension of the gold-in-soil anomaly identified in the 1980s along an interpreted west-northwest fault dubbed F1.
• A 400-meter-long gold-in-soil anomaly 250 meters south of F1, extending along a parallel fault named F2.
• An isolated gold anomaly in the northwest of the gridded area indicating a new gold zone to be prospected.
Redstar said these geochemistry results are highly significant as they show that the Aquila zone has similar strike potential to that of SH-1 and the four new target areas show that this prospect has the structural complexity necessary to increase significantly in size.
The company is particularly excited about the anomalous gold occurrences lying to the south of the Shumagin fault, which indicate that this major structure may be a conduit for a much wider gold zone along the trace of the fault itself.
In addition, Redstar said the results of the magnetometry geophysical survey carried out at Aquila reveal a roughly 800-meter-long magnetic low parallel to and south of the Shumagin Fault which covers the geochemical anomaly there.
"These results confirm the very high prospectivity of the Aquila zone as having a strike length to equal the SH-1 zone," said Redstar Gold President John Gray. "Given prior drill results that indicate the presence of high-grade gold mineralization, Aquila represents an important target of similar size potential to the SH-1 zone. It has the potential to significantly add to the number of ounces reportable under NI 43-101 rules for the project and the company considers this zone a high-priority, high-probability target to be drilled as soon as exploration is able to recommence."
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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