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

After raising C$3.5 million in May, Tectonic Metals Inc. is gearing up for the start of its 2021 exploration in Alaska, which will be anchored by oriented core drill programs at its Tibbs and Seventymile gold projects.

"It's time! The old saying, 'If you're not drilling, you're not finding gold' could not be more fitting right now for Tectonic," said Tectonic Metals President and CEO Tony Reda. "Our recent capital raise brought in additional sophisticated shareholders to support us in our cause of discovering more gold this summer through the execution of diamond drill campaigns on two unique projects, Tibbs and Seventymile."

Tectonic has had success discovering gold at these overlooked Interior Alaska projects since its formation in 2018.

This included reconnaissance level exploration across its Alaska gold projects during 2019 and more advanced exploration and rotary air blast drilling at Tibbs and Seventymile last year. These programs helped refine targets for this year's planned 4,800 meters of oriented drilling, which will provide critical information on structural and geological orientation at both projects.

This work is slated to start with drilling at Tibbs next week and then at Seventymile later in the summer.

Pogo-like gold at Tibbs

Tectonic's Alaska gold exploration success includes the discovery of high-grade mineralized structures at Tibbs, a 13,480-acre exploration project about 22 miles (35 kilometers) southeast of Northern Star Resources Ltd.'s high-grade Pogo gold mine in Alaska's Goodpaster Mining District.

During its 2019 exploration program at Tibbs, Tectonic cut 29 meters averaging 6.03 grams per metric ton gold at Michigan, a previously identified but underexplored zone on the property.

Highlights from 11 rotary air blast holes drilled at Michigan during the 2020 Tibbs exploration program include 9.1 meters averaging 6.71 g/t gold, 12.9 meters averaging 2.61 g/t gold, and 7.6 meters averaging 3.73 g/t gold.

The remaining 16 RAB holes of the 2020 Tibbs drill program focused on Lower Trench and Wolverine, adjacent zones along a 3,000-meter prospective corridor that also encompasses Michigan.

Tectonic reports that drilling at Lower Trench encountered gold mineralization identical to Michigan but 1,500 meters to the northwest, indicating a significant hydrothermal system across the larger structural corridor.

The best intercept at Lower Trench is 7.6 meters averaging 4.5 g/t gold, including 3.05 meters averaging 10.78 g/t gold in hole TBRB20-032.

Tectonic's 2021 exploration campaign at Tibbs will consist of two phases of oriented diamond drilling separated by a TITAN-24 geophysical survey.

The initial phase of 2021 drilling is designed to validate and expand upon known high-grade gold exploration targets such as Michigan and test newly identified structural and soil geochemical targets delineated by Tectonic in 2020.

The second phase of drilling will test targets generated by the TITAN survey, which will be focused on identifying low-angle structures similar to those that carry most of the high-grade gold ore at Pogo within the unexplored gneissic rocks in the western portion of Tibbs.

Mapping carried out in this area last year identified low-angle faults within moderately dipping gneissic rocks, which are key characteristics of the Pogo geological model.

Soil sampling at five grids over gneissic rocks west of the Wolverine zone in the north and the Gray Lead zone in the south identified multiple gold-in-soil anomalies with the exact same geochemistry as mineralization observed at Pogo, including a 2,500-meter-long gold-arsenic anomaly about 500 meters northwest of Gray Lead, where past drilling has tapped high-grade gold in steeply dipping veins.

Highlights from historical drilling at Gray Lead include: 5.7 meters of 19.14 g/t gold; 5.3 meters of 15.76 g/t gold; and 4.3 meters of 6.13 g/t gold.

The targets of the 2021 Tibbs exploration program are expected to include:

Michigan – Drilling will focus on both identifying controls on high-grade gold mineralization through oriented core drilling and stepping out to the southwest along the interpreted trend of the northeast-trending Michigan structure that has so far been traced for about 275 meters along strike.

West Trench – A high-tenor gold-in-soil anomaly with coincident arsenic, bismuth, and tungsten was discovered last year in gneissic rocks cut by a mapped diorite dike about 1,200 meters west of the Lower Trench zone. This year's work at West Trench will be the first time the gneissic rocks hosting this robust gold-in-soil anomaly have been drilled.

Wolverine – Despite being the site of the largest gold-in-soil anomaly at Tibbs, previous drilling at Wolverine was unable to explain the source of the high-tenor gold in soils identified at this roughly 800- by 1,000-meter prospect. Tectonic now aims to drill a newly identified and untested east-west trending structure at Wolverine.

Johnson Saddle – High-grade soil and rock anomalies, including a 5.9 g/t gold rock sample with associated bismuth and tungsten uncovered in Tectonic's 2018 trenching program, have been identified at this prospect. This year's drilling will further test Tectonic's hypothesis that the Johnson Saddle prospect is situated at a prominent intersection zone of northeast-trending structures found within and adjacent to prospective gneissic rocks on a mapped low angle thrust fault.

Gray Lead – Oriented diamond drilling will help determine structural controls and continuity at the high-grade, 275-meter-long Gray Lead in conjunction with step-out drilling to the northeast at the nearby Hilltop-Oscar target area. Gray Lead hosts Pogo-style quartz veins and is open along strike and at depth. Drilling by a previous operator only reached a depth of 120 meters. Tectonic will seek to determine whether the Gray Lead vein is offset to the east beyond the limits of historical drilling.

Exciting Seventymile targets

Tectonic will also be carrying out oriented diamond drilling at Seventymile, a roughly 150,000-acre land package between two prolific placer gold mining districts – Yukon's Klondike to the east and Alaska's Circle Mining District to the west.

Although exploration carried out two decades ago demonstrated the potential for multiple gold deposits across this district-scale land package, tough market conditions cut short past programs before this prospectivity could be fully realized.

While gold has been identified across the breadth of Seventymile, most of the work by Tectonic and previous explorers has focused on the 8,000-meter-long Flume trend.

Previous drilling at Flanders, a 1,500-meter-long target within Flume, has encountered grades as high as 187.9 g/t gold over 1.1 meters. About 5,000 meters northeast of Flanders, in the Bonanza zone, one historical hole cut 44.2 meters of 1.34 g/t gold.

With new geological ideas, Tectonic carried out early staged exploration at Seventymile during the 2018 and 2019 field seasons in preparation for an initial 26-hole RAB drill program targeting six highly prospective top-of-bedrock gold targets along the Flume trend – Flanders, East Flanders, Deep Creek, Bonanza Creek, and Flume-Bonanza Link.

Highlights from this drilling include: 19.81 meters averaging 1.37 g/t gold at Bonanza; 6.1 meters averaging 2.07 g/t gold in the previously undrilled Flume-Bonanza connector zone; and 4.57 meters averaging 1.2 g/t gold in a previously unrecognized structure south of Flanders.

Tectonic says its exploration at Seventymile has both validated and proven continuity of the mineralized structures across the Flume trend.

This year's drilling will focus on obtaining detailed structural and geological information while testing for expansion potential, grade, and scale at each target.

The planned targets for the 2021 program at Seventymile are:

Flanders – High-grade, north-dipping quartz tension veins hosted by a distinctive iron-rich basalt are open for expansion to the northwest, east, southeast, and at depth, and high-grade gold mineralization encountered by historic drilling is open at depth and along strike.

Flume – Drilling will test the down-dip extent of known shear-hosted gold mineralization previously encountered at this target, as well as step-out drilling to test the interpreted continuation of the structure in an area of high-tenor gold-in-soil anomalies east of Flume Creek.

Bonanza – Drilling will aim to obtain structural context for the gold mineralization previously identified there, as well as stepping out from a 2020 RAB hole that cut 1.37 g/t gold over 19.81 meters.

Tectonic Metals Inc.

Tectonic Metals VP of Exploration Eric Buitenhuis investigates Flanders, an intriguing gold exploration target at Seventymile.

Flume-Bonanza – Tectonic only drilled one RAB hole at the 800-meter-long Flume-Bonanza gold-in-soil anomaly, which cut the 6.1 meters of 2.07 g/t gold highlighted above. This year's drilling will test the structure along its extent and obtain the first-ever diamond core from the target area.

Alder – Found in the same iron-rich basalt as observed at the Flanders target, Alder hosts robust gold-in-soil anomalies with grades as high as 2.34 g/t. Drilling will focus on stepping west of historic drilling into the basalt.

"To say that we are excited about this year's programs would be an understatement!" said Reda. "From structural studies to reinterpreting geophysical surveys to relogging historical core to in-depth geochemistry, soil, rock, RAB chip and drill core analysis to 3D modeling, we have left no stone unturned to provide us with the best geological understanding of our drill targets."

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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