The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Metallurgical holes cut expected lenses of high-grade copper North of 60 Mining News – September 3, 2021
Looking northwest toward the high-grade Caribou Dome copper project on PolarX' Alaska Range property.
Massive sulfides cut in CD21-001, the first hole of PolarX' 2021 metallurgical and exploration drilling at Caribou Dome.
PolarX Ltd. Aug. 31 reported that the first three holes of its 2021 drill program at the Caribou Dome project in Alaska have cut multiple zones of copper-bearing massive sulfides.
"These samples look spectacular," said PolarX Managing Director Frazer Tabeart, who is at Caribou Dome for the duration of the drill program. "They are close to holes from 2015 and 2016 which yielded up to 51.1 meters at 5.3% copper."
Part of PolarX' larger Alaska Range property, Caribou Dome hosts 2.8 million metric tons of combined measured, indicated, and inferred resources averaging 3.1% (189.6 million pounds) copper in nine lenses of volcanic sediment-hosted mineralization.
The Australia-based exploration company started off this year's drilling with four holes into the known high-grade massive sulfide lenses to provide fresh samples for metallurgical testing to support a scoping study to assess the potential of processing ore from Caribou Dome in combination with ore mined from the high-grade Zackly copper-gold project about 15 miles (nine kilometers) to the northeast.
Based on drilling by PolarX and previous explorers, Zackly Main hosts 3.4 million metric tons of Australian Joint Ore Reserves Committee- (JORC) compliant inferred resource averaging 1.2% (90.4 million lb) copper, 2 grams per metric ton (213,000 oz) gold, and 14 g/t (1.5 million oz) silver.
The first 2021 hole at Caribou Dome, CD21-001, cut three distinct but closely stacked zones, each eight to nine meters thick, over a 39-meter interval starting at a depth of 25.3 meters.
Drilled about 75 meters west of CD21-001, the second hole cut 1.6 meters of semi-massive sulfides from 45.6 meters and 3.8 meters of semi-massive sulfides from 56.9 meters.
Drilled between CD21-001 and CD21-002, but from the opposite direction, CD21-003 cut 7.5 meters of massive sulfides from a depth of 26 meters.
The fourth metallurgical hole was terminated after 50 meters of drilling into heavily faulted andesitic volcanic rocks.
Assays are pending for these holes.
"These new samples will be assayed and used for metallurgical test work as part of our current scoping study on the Alaska Range project," said Tabeart. "We've now moved onto the three exciting new exploration targets, with the first drill hole already underway."
Based on a thorough review of geochemical and geotechnical data, PolarX says it has prioritized three new undrilled targets to test with the exploration drilling at Caribou Dome.
All these targets are less than 500 meters from known mineralization and have the potential to host one or more lenses of massive sulfide copper mineralization.
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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