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

Redstar Gold Corp. Sept. 10 announced it is investing C$6 million in an 8,000-meter drilling and exploration program at its Unga gold project in Alaska.

This program got underway earlier this month and is expected to extend into late November, the drilling will target four areas of high-grade and bulk mineable gold mineralization.

"Commencing drilling at Unga is another significant milestone for Redstar Gold as we complete our transformation into a leading exploration company," said Redstar Gold CEO Charles Funk. "A field camp has been established and the company will use three drill rigs to complete an 8,000-meter program expanding the SH-1 resource area and test three other attractive gold targets, namely Apollo, Centennial and Aquila."

The Unga project covers roughly 93 square miles (240 square kilometers) of two islands south of the Alaska Peninsula, Unga and Popof islands, that has long been known for its high-grade gold. The Apollo and adjacent Sitka mines, established on Unga Island in 1886, produced roughly 150,000 ounces of gold from high-grade epithermal veins before they were shuttered in 1922.

Much of Redstar's exploration in recent years has focused on two high-grade gold trends – Apollo-Sitka and Shumagin – that each cut roughly six miles across Unga Island. Apollo-Sitka hosts the historic Apollo Mine and Shumagin is a parallel high-grade gold trend about 2,000 meters to the northwest.

One of the primary drill targets has been SH-1, a high-grade gold target along the Shumagin trend.

A resource calculated earlier this year outlined 866,015 metric tons of inferred resource at SH-1 averaging 13.8 grams per metric ton (384,318 oz) gold and 35.4 g/t (986,321 g/t) silver.

Redstar says the 100- to 300-metre drill spacing outside of the main mineralized zone is too sparse to define higher confidence mineral resource in an epithermal vein system. As such, the company will drill infill to improve estimation of future resources.

Also, the deepest holes at SH-1 encountered significant mineralization, and the company plans to test the depth and strike extent of this zone.

This historic Apollo mine took advantage of free milling gold found in the top 200 vertical meters before ore transitioned, with increasing depth, from gold-dominant to gold, silver, and base metal-rich. Early 20th century processing technology was not able to profitably recover the gold from this mixed mineralization.

Redstar plans to test extensions of the historic orebody, where shafts and tunnels defined polymetallic ore over significant widths and strike.

Centennial on neighboring Popof Island has traditionally been considered a large-scale bulk tonnage target. Drilling conducted in the 1980s by Battle Mountain Gold outlined a historical resource of 6 million metric tons averaging 1.5 g/t gold at Centennial.

Redstar says drilling and geophysics suggest higher grade feeder zones exist within this mineralization and these feeders will be the focus of drilling in 2020.

Redstar Gold Corp.

Battle Mountain Gold also discovered mineralization at Aquila on the southwest side of Unga Island, where mapping and trenching defined gold mineralization in outcropping veins. Limited drilling in the 1980s was unsuccessful and abandoned in large part due to poor drill recoveries.

Redstar will drill use modern drilling techniques with the aim of obtaining high core recovery to better test Aquila.

With an exploration camp established, one drill rig on site and two more arriving next week, Redstar has commenced its 2020 exploration program at Unga.

The company said this program has been designed to meet all COVID-19 guidelines and protocols in order to safeguard the health and safety of its employees and contractors, as well as the communities in the area.

Author Bio

Shane Lasley, Publisher

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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