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

Pretium Resources Inc. Dec. 16 said the discovery of high-grade gold within broad intervals of bulk tonnage mineralization at the Hanging Glacier zone about four kilometers (2.5 miles) northwest of its Brucejack Mine, demonstrates the wider potential of this Northern British Columbia property.

Pretium completed 25,350 meters of grassroots exploration drilling at four zones – Hanging Glacier, A6, Koopa, and Haimila – across its 1,200-square kilometer (463 square miles) Brucejack property.

The most intriguing results from this program were encountered at Hanging Glacier, a zone defined by anomalous gold-in soil samples covering a more than 1,500- by 1,000-meter area.

At North Hanging Glacier, one of two areas that make up this zone, drilling intersected gold mineralization hosted in pyrite localized along a monzonitic porphyry intrusion. The 2020 discovery hole, BR-107, cut 101 meters averaging 1.3 grams per metric ton gold at North Hanging Glacier, one of two areas that make up the larger zone.

A 100-meter northwest step out hole, BR-132, cut 102 meters averaging 2.1 g/t gold, including 13 meters of 9.55 g/t gold.

Other highlights from North Hanging Glacier include:

• 129.9 meters averaging 0.95 g/t gold, including three meters of 11.09 g/t gold in hole BR-111.

• 117 meters averaging 0.82 g/t gold, including nine meters of 3.08 g/t gold in hole BR-137.

Pretium says broad intervals of low-grade gold and epithermal-style, quartz-carbonate veins intersected at South Hanging Glacier demonstrate the potential size of the overall zone.

Highlights from this year's drilling at South Hanging Glacier include:

• One meter averaging 8.97 g/t gold and 5,150 g/t silver in hole BR-112.

• 295.4 meters averaging 0.51 g/t gold, including six meters of 4.93 g/t gold in hole BR-120.

• 264.7 meters averaging 0.31 g/t gold in hole BR-122.

• 240.2 meters averaging 0.34 g/t gold in hole BR-142.

"This exciting discovery at Hanging Glacier, only four kilometers from the Brucejack Mine, shows the district-scale potential at Brucejack," said Pretium Resources President and CEO Jacques Perron.

Pretium also drilled 19 holes at the A6 Anomaly zone about 14 kilometers (8.7 miles) northeast of Brucejack Mine. The company said results from this drilling continue to define a large hydrothermal system within an altered rhyolite dome but further geophysics are needed to identify the mineralized portion of this system.

This year drilling also tested deeper portions of an epithermal system at Koopa, a zone roughly 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) southeast of Brucejack Mine. The company said this year's drilling continued to intersect strongly altered Iskut River Formation, and gold and silver mineralization is hosted in two generations of quartz veins. One such hole, BR-108 cut two mineralized intercepts – 1.5 meters averaging 0.94 g/t gold and 1.1 meters averaging 1,675 g/t silver, 7.2% zinc and 2.7% lead.

The company also drilled two holes at Haimila, a zone about 23 kilometers (14 miles) southeast of the Brucejack Mine where porphyry style alteration has been identified. Pretium says both of the holes cut narrow quartz and chalcopyrite (a copper mineral) veins.

Pretium says it has two exploration programs planned for 2021 – a definition and expansion program adjacent to the Brucejack Mine infrastructure, and a near-mine exploration program.

"We will significantly increase our resource expansion and exploration efforts in 2021 so we can surface value by extending mineral resources and pursuing the prospects for additional gold mineralization immediately surrounding the Brucejack Mine," said Perron.

The 2021 Brucejack reserve and resource definition and expansion program is anticipated to total roughly 195,000 meters of drilling.

Roughly 40% of this program will involve in-reserve definition drilling, 20% for in-resource and sustaining drilling, and 40% for resource expansion drilling.

The 2021 near-mine exploration program will focus on the new discovery at Hanging Glacier, which is easily accessible from the Brucejack Mine using existing exploration trails.

Pretium Resources Inc.

Another 10,000-meter surface drill program is planned to delineate the high-grade gold corridors and test for higher-grade, epithermal-style veins higher up in the stratigraphy. A high-resolution drone magnetic survey and an induced polarity (IP) survey are also being planned to further delineate the monzonitic porphyry intrusion and aid in targeting along the mineralized contacts.

Additional near-mine exploration targets along a 4,000-meter trend of highly altered rocks which outcrop from Hanging Glacier Zone northwest of Brucejack Mine to Bridge Zone southeast of the mine will also be explored next year. The company said prospecting, soil sampling, and geophysical surveys will be conducted to test the potential of these zones and develop new near-mine exploration targets. An additional 8,000 meters of surface drilling is planned to test these zones and expand upon the mineralization potential surrounding Brucejack Mine.

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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