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

Gladiator Metals Corp. July 24 announced the final results from its maiden drill program at the high-grade Cowley Park target on the company's Whitehorse Copper project in Yukon, Canada.

The Whitehorse Copper project is a 5,380-hectare (13,294 acres) copper-molybdenum-silver-gold skarn exploration project that covers a significant portion of what has historically been known as the Whitehorse Copper Belt.

Located practically in the backyard of Yukon's capital city, from which it gets its name, the Whitehorse Copper project is a 35-kilometer (22 miles) by 5-kilometer (3 miles) contiguous high-grade copper belt with 30 known prospective targets that saw production of approximately 267.5 million pounds copper, 225,000 ounces gold, and 2.84 million oz of silver from 11.1 million tons of mineralized skarn ore milled between the years 1967 and 1982.

Given its proximity to Whitehorse, the project benefits from all-year access, excellent infrastructure, and a strong relationship with local partners for drilling services and developing positive community relations.

The project is road accessible with numerous access roads located within 2,000 meters of the South Klondike Highway and the Alaska Highway. An extensive network of historical gravel exploration and haul roads exists throughout the project area and provides excellent access to most of the claim package. Access to existing electric power facilities is available through the main Yukon power grid.

Entering into a six-year option agreement with H. Coyne and Sons Ltd. to earn 100% interest in the project in late 2022, Gladiator Metals says the property has basically sat dormant with intermittent exploration and development in the years after production.

The last mining activity in the region ceased in 1982 with the closure of the Little Chief mine. With the acquisition of the claims by H. Coyne & Sons Ltd. in 1998 from Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting Co. Ltd., a fragmented land package was amalgamated, and a new phase of exploration began, which focused primarily on drilling, trenching, geophysics, geology and surface geochemistry work.

Gladiator's most recent work on the project has focused on defining and extending mineralization at the Cowley Park Copper deposit through diamond drilling, and the recent drilling campaign has returned drill core assay intervals consistent in grade with historical results.

Cowley Park sits at the southern end of the project and had reached feasibility before operations were shuttered in the early 1980s.

The company's recently completed inaugural drill program at Cowley Park included 2,632 meters of diamond drilling in 14 holes. Highlights include:

• 71 meters averaging 0.72% copper from a depth of 32 meters in hole CPG-001, including 20 meters averaging 1.43% copper.

• 113 meters averaging 0.79% copper from 19 meters in CPG-002, including 13 meters averaging 1.44% copper and 0.15% molybdenum.

• 13.2 meters averaging 2.26% copper from 22.8 meters in CPG-003.

• 28 meters averaging 0.91% copper from 87 meters in CPG-004, including 10 meters averaging 1.68% copper.

• 92 meters averaging 0.71% copper from 67 meters in CPG-006, including 16 meters averaging 2.46% copper.

• 26 meters averaging 1.14% copper from 86 meters in CPG-010.

"Results from Gladiator's maiden program continue to successfully define the continuity and scale of high-grade copper mineralisation at Cowley Park as well as providing further definition to the potentially significant coincident molybdenum mineralisation," said Gladiator Metals CEO Jason Bontempo.

The company says that the shallow results confirm the continuity of high-grade copper skarn mineralization at Cowley Park, with mineralization remaining open along strike and down dip in all directions.

With these results, Gladiator believes they reconcile positively with historic drilling in the area, highlighting the potential to improve the prospect both through systematic sampling of lower-grade sections of mineralization around the identified high-grade areas and by assaying for potential complementary co-products to copper mineralization, including molybdenum, gold, and silver.

Gladiator plans to resume diamond drilling at Cowley Park in the coming weeks.

This upcoming drilling will be aimed at testing strike and depth extensions to mineralization, as the company has over 4,000 meters of drilling remaining on its Class 1 permit.

Gladiator Metals Corp.

"Follow up diamond drilling will be targeting extensions to the defined high-grade mineralisation at Cowley Park," added Bontempo.

Fully funded to expand its exploration program with C$9.5 million (US$7.2 million) in its treasury, Gladiator is aiming to get ahead of its planned winter drill program with crew already down on the ground.

"Field crews are now active in the Whitehorse Copper belt with regional scale mapping, sampling and geophysical programs taking place in the summer months," said the mining CEO. "This work is designed to prioritise winter drill targets from amongst more than thirty known occurrences of high-grade copper mineralisation already identified over more than 35 kilometers of the Whitehorse Copper belt."