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

Snowline Gold Corp. March 7 reported yet more results from the 2022 drill program that elevated the Valley zone on the company's Rogue project from an intriguing exploration target to what is shaping up to be a globally significant gold deposit in Canada's Yukon.

"Today's results continue to highlight and build on the prospectivity of our Rogue project," said Snowline Gold CEO Scott Berdahl. "A single season has transformed our Valley zone from an interesting exploration target to a pre-resource gold project noteworthy on a global scale, redefining the deposit model far beyond what are traditionally low grade, heap-leach systems."

The results have transformed the way Snowline is considering its targets at Rogue.

Hole V-22-030, which was drilled on the southeastern margin of Valley's central mineralized zone, cut 282.5 meters averaging 0.73 grams per metric ton gold before ending in strong mineralization.

This hole included a 161-meter interval averaging 1.06 g/t gold, with a smaller subsection cutting 66 meters averaging 1.46 g/t gold.

Snowline says these results add scale and tonnage to the southeastern side of this near-surface, well-mineralized zone.

"The consistency of strong grades and the size of Valley make it easy to understand, translating to lower exploration costs required for delineation, and in the future, lower costs for any potential economic operation," added Berdahl.

Snowline also reported results from five holes drilled at Gracie, a separate reduced-intrusion-related gold system roughly 5,000 meters east of Valley.

While the first round of drilling at Gracie did not hit the wide gold zones encountered at Valley, the results do confirm the existence of a second reduced-intrusion-related gold system, with a high correlation between gold, bismuth, and tellurium values in sheeted quartz veins.

G-22-004, for example, returned 19.45 g/t gold over 0.9 meters downhole width, with strong bismuth and tellurium values (378 parts per million and 43.1 ppm respectively) and very low arsenic (3.92 ppm), suggesting proximity to a heat source.

Unlike Valley, where the mineralized intrusion is exposed on surface, the causative intrusion at Gracie does not daylight (is not exposed). This presents an attractive exploration target, as the highest gold grades in reduced-intrusion-related gold systems are commonly found near the top of a given intrusion. This indicates that the strongest part of the gold system at Gracie is likely to be intact.

With some definition in its books, phase 2 drilling is planned at Gracie for 2023, with the objective of intersecting arrays of high-density sheeted quartz vein mineralization within the Gracie intrusion.

"Our results from Gracie demonstrate that Valley is not a one-off – Snowline's Rogue project is prospective for multiple gold systems of this scale and intensity," said the Snowline CEO. "We are excited to resume exploration in 2023 with the dual goals of further advancing Valley and locating additional gold systems just like it."