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

PolarX Ltd. Sept. 14 reported that this summer's drilling has encountered strong near-surface copper-gold mineralization at Zackly East, extending this emerging new resource area on the company's Alaska Range property by 320 meters along strike at the Zackly East.

"Zackly East is fast becoming a substantial discovery with great scope for further growth," said PolarX Managing Director Frazer Tabeart.

Alaska Range consists of two adjacent copper and precious metal projects – Stellar and Caribou Dome – PolarX merged into a roughly 100-square-mile (261 square kilometers) land package in 2017.

Visible gold has now been identified in three drill holes from this year's drilling program over a 900-meter strike and remains open in all directions.

Zackly is an area of skarn mineralization found in the middle of a 7.5-mile- (12 kilometers) long mineralized corridor that runs across Stellar.

The main Zackly skarn hosts 3.4 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 1.2% (90.4 million pounds) copper, 2 grams per metric ton (213,000 oz) gold and 14 g/t (1.5 million oz) silver, according to an Australian Joint Ore Reserves Committee- (JORC) resource calculated in 2017.

During its 2018 program, PolarX discovered Zackly East, an adjacent zone of near-surface gold-copper mineralization.

ZX‐18020, a 2018 hole drilled about 850 meters east of the Zackly Main resource boundary, cut 54.6 meters averaging 2.8 g/t gold, 0.6% copper, and 9.4 g/t silver from surface, including a 0.3-meter (one foot) section averaging 27.3% copper, 2.5 g/t gold and 82.5 g/t silver.

ZX‐18024, drilled about 40 meters north of hole 20, cut 46.7 meters of 3.1 g/t gold, 0.6% copper, and 3.3 g/t silver from a depth of 37 meters. This thick intercept included a 21.7-meter higher grade zone that averaged 5.2 g/t gold, 0.8% copper, and 4.1 g/t silver.

After testing the Mars and Saturn porphyry targets on opposite ends of the mineralized corridor that hosts Zackly during the 2019 season, PolarX has resumed testing the higher grade Zackly East skarn mineralization.

To help refine drill targets across this area with minimal outcrop, PolarX also carried out an ultra-high-resolution drone magnetic survey over a 3,500- by 1,500-meter area that covers the entire Zackly system.

Drills, however, were encountering gold- and copper-rich skarn mineralization before the drone survey was completed.

Hole ZX20035, drilled 60 meters east of ZX18020, cut 11.6 meters averaging 1.86 g/t gold and 0.38% copper.

PolarX Ltd.

In total, 14 holes have been drilled along four sections to the east of the discovery holes. While PolarX has only received assay results from ZX20035, the Australian explorer said additional skarn alteration zones containing variable amounts of visible copper mineralization and occasional visible gold grains have since been intersected 260 meters further east, extending the Zackly East skarn mineralization to 320 meter along strike.

"Our drilling results correlate well with our recently acquired ultra-high-resolution magnetic survey, which shows the key mineralized structures extend well beyond the known mineralization," said Tabeart. "When the rapidly growing size of Zackly East is combined with the significant open-ended resource nearby at Zackly Main, it is clear that we have a strong project with immense potential on our hands."

Further interpretation and 3D inversion modelling of the magnetic survey data is underway and may lead to the development of additional skarn and porphyry targets for drill testing.

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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