The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
First hole by new explorer spurs fresh excitement for Skukum North of 60 Mining News – December 11, 2020
Whitehorse Gold completes drilling to validate historical intercepts, and test potentially thicker and higher-grade portions of the Skukum Creek gold-silver deposit in the Yukon.
This 50-man camp, 300-ton-per-day mill and large core storage and logging facility is among the significant infrastructure already established at the road accessible Skukum gold project about 55 kilometers (34 miles) south of Whitehorse, Yukon.
Though Whitehorse Gold Corp. was not officially formed until Nov. 18 and only began trading on the TSX Venture exchange on Nov. 25, the newly emerged exploration company is already reporting impressive gold-silver intercepts from drilling at Skukum, an advanced exploration project in southern Yukon previously known as Tagish Lake.
New Pacific Metals Corp., which gained full ownership of Skukum through the 2011 acquisition of Tagish Lake Gold Corp., created Whitehorse Gold as a subsidiary to advance this 170-square-kilometer (65 square miles) gold property about 55 kilometers (34 miles) south of Yukon's capital.
Upon its formation, Whitehorse raised C$6.79 million through a private placement financing that involved the issuance of 22.66 million shares at C30 cents each. A week later, the new gold exploration company began trading on the TSX Venture Exchange at C70 cents per share, a price that had risen to as high as C$4 per share by Dec. 10.
One of the reasons for the increase in Whitehorse's valuation is that Skukum is a road-accessible Yukon project that already has a significant gold-silver resource, another is drill results released from the first 2020 hole drilled at Skukum confirmed the high-grade nature of the mineralization at the project.
Host to the historical Mount Skukum mine, which produced roughly 79,750 ounces of gold from 233,400 tons of ore from 1986 to 1988, the Skukum property is already an advanced project with significant infrastructure. These facilities include a year-round access road, 50-person camp, roughly 4,800 meters of underground workings, 300-ton-per-day mill, tailings management facility, and service buildings.
There has also been roughly 140,000 meters of drilling previously completed on the property.
According to a calculation completed earlier this year, the Skukum Creek deposit hosts 1 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 5.85 grams per metric ton (188,344 oz) gold and 166.4 g/t (5.36 million oz) silver; plus 537,000 metric tons of inferred resource averaging 4.99 g/t (86,124 oz) gold and 108.3 g/t (1.87 million oz) silver.
Two other deposits – Goddell and Mount Skukum – also host smaller resources.
Four holes drilled this year were designed to better define the deeper portion of the Rainbow zone at Skukum Creek, validate historical drill hole intercepts, and test potentially thicker and higher-grade portions of the deposit.
The first hole of this program, SC20-001, cut 8.9 meters (roughly 8.07 meters true-width) averaging 6.54 g/t gold and 186.9 g/t silver, including 1.22 meters averaging 21.4 g/t gold and 563 g/t silver.
Whitehorse noted that while the gold and silver grades are similar to those encountered in historical drill holes, the true width of the interval of SC20-001 is more than 2.5 times greater than previously modeled.
"This first hole from the 2020 exploration drilling confirmed the high-grade nature of the Rainbow zone and more importantly that thicker zones of mineralization occur at depth," said Whitehorse Gold CEO Kevin Weston. "The presence of multiple generation gold-bearing veins is highly encouraging indicating the presence of a long-lived large precious metal system."
Assay results from the other three holes drilled this year are pending.
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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