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

Alianza Minerals Ltd. Sept. 13 announced the start of its 2022 exploration program at the Haldane Silver project in the historic Keno Hill District in Yukon, Canada.

Located about 25 kilometers (16 miles) west of Hecla Mining Company's Keno Hill silver mine, the 8,579-hectare (21,200 acres) Haldane property hosts a small historical mine that produced roughly 24.7 metric tons of hand-sorted ore averaging 3,102 grams per metric ton (99.7 ounces per metric ton) silver and 59% lead on the south side of Bighorn Creek.

Previous exploration by Alianza at Haldane has been to investigate the extensions of historical high-grade silver production on the property as well as recently defined targets, such as West Fault, where the company has outlined high-grade mineralization. One hole drilled at West Fault last year cut 3.14 meters averaging 1,351 grams per metric ton silver, 2.43% lead, and 2.91% zinc.

You can read about the impressive results at West Fault at Alianza expands high-grade silver vein in the August 20, 2021, edition of North of 60 Mining News.

The initial phase of Alianza's 2022 program will involve mapping, prospecting, and trenching to identify additional drill targets.

"Our recent success with the discoveries of new silver-bearing vein mineralization at new targets such as Bighorn and West Fault compels us to examine other high-priority targets to prepare them for drilling," said Alianza Minerals Vice President of Exploration Rob Duncan. "This same approach led to the discovery of silver-bearing vein mineralization at Bighorn in 2019 in our first drill hole testing a soil geochemistry anomaly, yielding four new mineralized zones."

This exploration will investigate four areas with potential for traditional "Keno-style" carbonate-silver-bearing sulfide vein mineralization in the basal quartzite member of the Keno Hill quartzite formation, like those seen at the Middlecoff and West Fault zones at Haldane and similar to that which comprises ore at the nearby Keno Hill mine and surrounding deposits recently purchased by Hecla.

Alianza also speculates that certain targets may be prospective for gold mineralization, as the quartzite formation sits stratigraphically above the aforementioned basal quartzite member. Other explorers in the district, such as Banyan Gold, have been successful in identifying gold deposits within this unit.

The four areas targeted for prospecting, mapping, and trenching include:

• Sundown – a large gold, arsenic soil geochemical anomaly with some silver and antimony within the Keno Hill quartzite member.

Alianza Minerals Ltd.

Click image to see larger map.

• Bighorn anomaly – exploration will focus on the upper margins of this 900-meter-long silver-lead anomaly over its entire width to optimize the location of a follow-up drill hole to expand on the 2.35 meters of 125.7 g/t silver, 4.39% lead, and 0.09% zinc intersection from 2019 drilling.

• Bighorn East – field crews will investigate a soil anomaly (and anomalous spotty soil anomalies) between Bighorn East and the Middlecoff area.

• Ross (west anomaly) – Ross West is 1,800 meters west of the original soil geochemical anomaly (originally tested in 2019 without intersecting an explanation for the soil anomaly), located on the Haldane access road. Crews have defined a more cohesive anomaly than Ross, measuring 400 meters by 300 meters and consisting of antimony-gold-arsenic-bismuth.

"We believe there are more Bighorns to be found," finished Duncan.