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

Blackwolf Copper and Gold Ltd. June 10 reported that it has staked mining claims over numerous historic, high-grade gold-silver prospects and mines in Southeast Alaska.

Situated near the mining towns of Hyder, Alaska and Stewart, British Columbia, these properties – Texas Creek and Cantoo – are immediately west of the Premier gold project and south of past-producing Scottie gold and Granduc copper mines in BC's famed Golden Triangle.

According to Blackwolf, very limited modern exploration has been performed in the area, with virtually none in the past 25 years and the majority of historical exploration and production occurring in the 1920s to 1950s.

Of the multiple known mineral showings on the properties, Blackwolf has determined its priority targets as:

Solo Mine on the Texas Creek property, where miners tunneled under glacial ice to explore for the source of electrum stringers identified in glacial transported boulders. Since then, significant glacial melt has occurred in the area.

Cantoo Mountain, which is underlain by a synvolcanic intrusive that is potentially the metallogenic feeder to the Premier and Big Missouri epithermal gold-silver deposits just across the border in BC. Numerous high-grade gold and silver values were returned by US government geologists collected during the early and mid-1990s.

Blackwolf Copper and Gold Ltd.

"The Hyder area properties cover some of the last unexplored areas of the Golden Triangle, with minimal modern exploration since an access road and bridges to the Texas Creek area were wiped out by the cataclysmic draining of a glacially dammed lake (jökulhlaup) in 1961," said Blackwolf Copper and Gold President and CEO Rob McLeod. "Veins of native electrum, a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver, that were identified at the margin of an icefield in the 1920s are of the same nature as the Brucejack and Premier mines and there has been obvious extensive glacial retreat since that time."

A total of 389 federal claims were staked, covering 9,116 acres (3,689 hectares). Initial reconnaissance exploration work, including mapping, prospecting and rock and soil sampling is expected to start in the coming weeks.

"Adding these properties to our exploration pipeline is accretive to the value of our company, particularly with our team's experience in the Golden Triangle and are complementary to our advanced-stage Niblack copper-gold-silver-zinc project in Southeast Alaska. Assays from recent underground drilling at Niblack are pending and are expected to be received shortly," added McLeod.