The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Mining Explorers 2021 - January 27, 2022
Drill pad testing on one of the many slopes of Macmillan Pass.
View of the Tom deposit area with the camp in the valley, and the airstrip in the foreground.
After tapping an intriguing discovery hole from its most recent Boundary West target, Fireweed Zinc Ltd. has further expanded efforts to explore the company's Macmillan Pass zinc-lead-silver project in southeastern Yukon.
Comprised of a road-accessible project along the Northwest Territories border, the 544-square-kilometer (210 square miles) Macmillan Pass project blankets a roughly 55-kilometer (34 mile) trend of zinc, lead, and silver mineralization.
Two deposits at Macmillan Pass – Tom and Jason – host 11.2 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 6.59% (1.63 billion pounds) zinc, 2.48% (620 million lb) lead, and 21.33 grams per metric ton (7.7 million ounces) silver; plus 39.5 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 5.84% (5.08 billion lb) zinc, 3.14% (2.73 billion lb) lead, and 38.15 g/t (48.4 million oz) silver.
Boundary, a zone about 15 road-kilometers (nine miles) west of Jason that shows the potential to expand these resources, was the main focus of Fireweed's 2020 drilling.
At the beginning of 2021, the company reported a long intercept of strong zinc and silver mineralization in the discovery hole at Boundary West, which immediately became the focus of last year's drill program.
The assay results from the discovery hole at Boundary West, NB20-004, cut 76.7 meters averaging 4.22% zinc, 0.34% lead, and 25.6 g/t silver. This anomaly extends roughly 800 meters west from the higher-grade core of Boundary into an area of no outcrop that had not been previously drilled.
Drilled from the same pad as NB20-004 but at a shallower angle to cut across the mineralization above the Boundary West discovery hole, NB21-001 cut 47 meters averaging 7.7% zinc, 0.7% lead, and 32.1 g/t silver.
Fireweed stated the upper contact of this new zone of mineralization in NB21-001 is marked by a fault, which is consistent with a thicker and more complete intersection of this zone cut with hole NB21-002.
Assay results from the second hole returned: 40.2 meters averaging 4.57% zinc, 7.9 g/t silver, and minor lead from a depth of 87.1 meters; 33 meters averaging 9.91% zinc, 1.64% lead, and 39.6 g/t silver from a depth of 175 meters; 60.7 meters averaging 8.22% zinc, 0.71% lead, and 66.7 g/t silver from a depth of 316.4 meters.
"This step-out hole at Boundary West has delivered not one, but three very impressive intersections over significant widths," said Fireweed Zinc CEO Brandon Macdonald. "Encouragingly, these three intersections represent three separate zones of mineralization, including the first full intersection through the newly discovered Tom-Jason style laminated stratiform mineralization."
In September, the company had completed 3,850 meters of drilling in 13 holes at Macmillan Pass, which wrapped up the drilling portion of the 2021 program.
"A very successful 2021 drill program is now wrapped up after hitting mineralization in each of the 10 holes drilled at Boundary Zone and we eagerly await the assay results from the remaining holes," said Macdonald.
Indeed successful as Fireweed Zinc announced the discovery of significant copper mineralization mid-November, in a step-out hole drilled at Boundary Zone, cutting two meters averaging 1.54% copper, 5.42% zinc, 0.04% lead, and 5.6 g/t silver.
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