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

American Pacific Mining Corp. Oct. 4 announced that it is wrapping up the 2023 field program at Palmer with roughly 500 meters of drilling to test a new target on this advanced-staged zinc-copper-silver-gold exploration project near the town of Haines in Southeast Alaska.

A preliminary economic assessment that was updated prior to American Pacific's acquisition of a roughly 45% joint venture interest in Palmer late last year outlines an underground mine and a 3,500-metric-ton-per-day mill at the project that would produce 1.07 billion pounds of zinc, 196 million lb of copper, 18 million ounces of silver, and 91,000 oz of gold over an initial 11-year mine life.

The Southwall and RW zones that make up the main Palmer deposit host 4.68 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 5.23% (539 million lb) zinc, 1.49% (154 million lb) copper, 30.8 grams per metric ton (4.6 million oz) silver, and 0.3 g/t (451,000 oz) gold; plus 5.34 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 5.2% (612 million lb) zinc, 0.96% (113 million lb) copper, 29.2 g/t (5 million oz) silver, and 0.28 g/t (48,100 oz) gold.

This year, American Pacific is carrying out a US$25.3 million program funded by JV partner Dowa Metals & Mining Co. that primarily involved resource definition drilling of this deposit, as well as geotechnical drilling and environmental baseline work to support feasibility-level studies at Palmer.

With the core work completed and demobilization underway, American Pacific has left one drill rig behind to test Christmas-Red Creek, a road-accessible VMS target about 3,000 meters east of the Palmer deposit.

One of 12 known VMS showings at Palmer, Christmas-Red Creek hosts geochemical and alteration characteristics similar to the AG deposit, which hosts 4.3 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 4.64% zinc, 0.12% copper, 119.5 g/t silver, and 0.53 g/t gold.

American Pacific says drilling one or two holes this year at Christmas-Red Creek will provide valuable data in this area that has only seen limited exploration.

American Pacific Mining Corp.

"The regional exploration upside and potential for additional discoveries is considered excellent at Palmer, and we are pleased to incorporate this initial [approximately] 500 meters before the end of this year's drill campaign," said American Pacific Mining CEO Warwick Smith. "We are pleased to be drilling new targets during the 2023 program that are outside of the known mineralized zones. During the season our technical team also completed mapping and sampling of numerous exploration targets and we look forward to more discovery-focused drilling as we aim to both de-risk and expand mineral resources at Palmer going forward."

American Pacific expects to report initial assay results from the 2023 infill drilling, along with a full summary of this year's program, in the coming weeks.

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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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