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

Seabridge Gold Inc. Jan. 9 announced that its 2022 drill program discovered a large, well-mineralized breccia pipe beneath the historic Bronson Slope skarn deposit at its Iskut project in British Columbia's Golden Triangle.

Located about 30 kilometers (19 miles) west of Seabridge's world-class KSM mine project, Iskut is home to the 1980s-era Johnny Mountain gold-silver-copper mine. Over the past four years, Seabridge has focused its exploration on discovering a large porphyry intrusive responsible for the high-grade skarn that was mined at Johnny Mountain.

Prior to Seabridge's acquisition, 187 million metric tons of measured and indicated resource averaging 0.36 grams per metric ton gold and 0.12% copper have been outlined by a previous explorer at the Bronson Slope target at Johnny Mountain, and Seabridge's drilling has identified the potential for deeper and larger gold-copper porphyry deposits.

This potential was further affirmed with the 10,162-meter drill program carried out during 2022.

The fifth hole of the program SGS-22-05 encountered a quartz-magnetite breccia pipe below the Bronson Slope resource. This hole cut 288.5 meters averaging 0.7 g/t gold, 0.28% copper, and 4.1 g/t silver from a depth of 10.5 meters, including 174.4 meters averaging 0.86 g/t gold, 0.34% copper, and 3 g/t silver from 23.6 meters.

Other highlights from drilling targeting the breccia pipe include:

• 350.3 meters averaging 0.31 g/t gold, 0.11% copper, and 1.1 g/t silver from a depth of 468.7 meters in hole SBS-22-06.

• 286.3 meters averaging 0.52 g/t gold, 0.24% copper, and 0.8 g/t silver from a depth of 7.2 meters in hole SBS-22-08.

• 341.6 meters averaging 0.43 g/t gold, 0.21% copper, and 0.3 g/t silver from a depth of 20.6 meters in hole SBS-22-10.

In addition to targeting the breccia pipe, Seabridge drilled four holes on the margins of the Bronson Slope resource in various directions to evaluate the dip projection of the deposit. Highlights from these holes include:

• 446.2 meters averaging 0.28 g/t gold, 0.14% copper, and 3.2 g/t silver from a depth of 6.8 meters in hole SBS-22-01.

• 318 meters averaging 0.52 g/t gold, 0.08% copper, and 2.4 g/t silver from a depth of 240 meters in hole SBS-22-02.

"Our team proposed a porphyry gold-copper source for the historical Bronson Slope resource and our program was designed to test this concept. The results from the pipe confirm our concept was correct. The next step is to locate the source of the pipe," said Seabridge Gold Chairman and CEO Rudi Fronk.

Toward this objective, the company is planning for a 2023 drill program to expand the Bronson gold-copper resource and find the intrusive source of the breccia pipe.

"All the evidence we have gathered as well as the historical precedents tell us the source is a gold-copper porphyry intrusive similar in age to those we discovered at our nearby KSM project. We have also identified other related opportunities at Iskut within a regional trend that, similar to our KSM district, could host multiple porphyry deposits," added Fronk. "Our plan for 2023 is to prioritize locating the source of the breccia pipe and carrying what we learn across the rest of our large Iskut property."

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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