Snowline Gold Corp. June 9 announced the staking of an additional 40,000 hectares (98,842 acres) of nearly all the remaining open ground over the Rogue Plutonic Complex, the broad geological feature responsible for gold mineralization at the company's flagship Rogue project's Valley discovery, expanding the property by roughly 80%.

"We know from our 2022 drill results at Valley that the Rogue Plutonic Complex has the necessary geological ingredients to produce a significant gold system," said Snowline Gold CEO Scott Berdahl. "The Valley discovery highlights the geological potential of the rest of this regional-scale geological feature, where limited historical work and our own efforts have produced an abundance of intriguing results, anomalies and discoveries."

With an already expansive portfolio that spread the breadth of roughly 280,000 hectares (602,000 acres) of gold exploration properties within the Selwyn Basin near Yukon's eastern border with Northwest Territories and nearly 6,500 hectares (16,062 acres) of gold projects closer to Yukon's western border with Alaska, this latest staking suggests the confidence Snowline holds in its property.

In addition to the expansion of the Rogue project, further strategic and targeted staking on the company's surrounding Cynthia, Einarson, and Ursa projects brings Snowline's total Yukon Territory mineral tenure holdings to a whopping 333,900 hectares (825,085 acres).

"We have actively built, progressively and systematically, not just a first-mover position but effectively an 'only-mover' position in a fertile area that we believe has the potential to become a new gold district," said Berdahl. "We can now comprehensively and responsibly explore this area, focusing not only on advancing our existing targets but on making additional discoveries as well."

On top of the increase in landholdings, the Snowline technical team has been compiling and digitizing the historical work from various campaigns in the Rogue project area carried out in the late 1960s, early 1980s, and mid-1990s, including it to the company's database from the work done in and around the project area in the early 2010s and recently by Snowline itself.

Roughly 21% of the 2,530 newly staked claims fall within or partly within the fixed 2,000 meters of the area of interest as defined in Snowline's December 2020 agreement with Yukon-based 18526 Yukon Inc., through which the company acquired its extensive Yukon datasets and its initial Yukon mineral properties.

Per the initial deal, claims staked within the areas of interest are subject to a 2% net smelter return and are incorporated into existing buy-down provisions, which allow Snowline to reduce NSR to 1% on a project-by-project basis.

18526 Yukon Inc. is a privately held project generation company that is owned 40% by Berdahl. The remaining 79% of newly staked claims have no underlying royalties.

Valley drilling

Aside from its property expansion, exploration is ongoing at the company's Valley target.

Aiming for up to 18,000 meters of drilling for the 2023 season, 15,000 of those are targeted for Rogue, with 10,000 meters of that for Valley alone, while the remaining 5,000 will be used for phase two at Gracie and additional phase one targets.

With drilling already underway, Snowline reports that drill hole V-23-034 encountered moderate to high quartz vein densities in granodiorite throughout the length of the 425-meter hole, with 106 observations of trace visible gold distributed within quartz veins in the top 337 meters.

This hole was collared roughly 100 meters north of V-22-027, which cut 410 meters averaging 1.89 grams per metric ton gold from surface and included 146 meters averaging 3.24 g/t gold; about 80 meters southeast of V-22-029, which cut 558.7 meters averaging 1.26 g/t gold from surface including 202 meters averaging 2.04 g/t gold; and 200 meters to the northeast of V-22-010 which cut 318.8 meters averaging 2.55 g/t gold including 108 meters averaging 4.14 g/t gold from surface.

So far, three distinct vein orientations have been recognized, with gold mineralization present in all three.

The company says that the quartz vein densities and frequency of observation of visible gold within the top 337 meters of V-23-034 are comparable to those seen in the earlier highlighted holes, while the final 40 meters of the hole, from roughly 385 meters to 425 meters downhole, had high quartz vein densities but no visible gold as well as a lower abundance of bismuth and tellurium indicator materials.

Because it is the early days of drilling, official assays for this hole are pending.

With hole 23-034 completed, the first drill rig has been moved and has begun drilling on V-23-036.

With that in place, a second rig had already commenced drilling on the Rogue project's Valley target. As the company states, 168 meters of core from V-23-035 have been received by the core shack, and logging has begun.

Thus far, the hole has seen continuous vein densities of five to seven veins per meter in granodiorite, with 16 instances of visible gold observed throughout its length.

Click image to see larger map of newly staked land.

Initial results will continue to be released as Snowline moves through its targeted drill goals.