The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Mining Explorers 2023 - January 18, 2024
Klondike says visible gold was noted in rock samples collected from the Dominion, Gold Run, Gay Gulch, and Violet prospects, as well as the eastern Stander Zone mineral resource area of its namesake project in the Yukon.
The best rock samples from the 2023 prospecting returned assays between 15.1 g/t gold and 60.7 g/t gold, 10 g/t silver and 684 g/t silver, and 2.5 g/t tellurium and 10.2 g/t tellurium.
Exploring the legendary region from which it takes its name, Klondike Gold Corp. has persevered much like the stampeders of yore to unlock the secrets of a historic district that produced more than 20 million ounces of gold. With another year of exploration under its belt and with the help of a little modern science, the company has made leaps and bounds in understanding the ingredients that led to one of history's greatest gold rushes.
Situated roughly 20 kilometers (12 miles) southeast of Dawson City, the Klondike District Gold Project covers a massive 727 square kilometers (280 square miles) of the famed Yukon gold district.
Toward the end of 2022, Klondike Gold announced its first resource estimate for two of its more advanced deposits in the hills above the renowned Eldorado and Bonanza placer gold streams.
According to this calculation, the Lone Star and Stander deposits host 21.59 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 0.68 grams per metric ton (468,901 ounces) gold and 6.46 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.54 g/t (111,959 oz) gold.
Moving into 2023, the company opted to begin by expanding its already impressive land holdings with the acquisition of the Quartz and Sulphur properties from C2C Gold Corp., ultimately increasing the property by roughly 27%.
Covering 143 square kilometers (55 square miles) of prospective Klondike goldfields, the new Quartz and Sulphur properties consolidate Klondike Gold's land holdings, filling out two gaps on the map.
"We welcome the opportunity to consolidate our land position covering the prospective southeast side of the Klondike District into one contiguous district-spanning claim group," said Klondike Gold CEO Peter Tallman. "The claim package will allow systematic exploration, evaluation and ranking of gold targets across the district with geological understanding of variations and potential zonation."
To help in its search for the lode source of the million ounces of placer gold recovered from the streams, Klondike Gold has enlisted the help of experts from several universities – including the University of Ottawa, University of Toronto, Dalhousie University, and Colorado School of Mines.
Initiated in 2022, these academic research programs have resulted in new theories and models that the company was eager to confer with its own data.
Highly favorable results from these academic research programs found data to support a younger age to the gold mineralizing event – coincident with the Mother Lode District in California; constrained the age of mineralizing structures; documented association of gold with tellurides and silver sulfosalts; detected mappable hydrothermal alteration associated with gold mineralization for the first time; and suggested short wave infrared imaging may be practical as an 'instant analysis' tool to detect gold-bearing alteration.
Applying the new findings, prospecting and mapping surveys quickly got underway to target fault structures interpreted from lidar with silver-tellurium-gold anomalous soils and rocks in areas of reported cross-cutting gold-bearing veins.
With this new data in hand, an initial 2,000-meter program was designed to test prospective mineralization at new targets, expansion of the Stander and Lone Star deposits, and testing of another high-priority target, Gay Gulch.
While extensive surface sampling and field work returned several instances of visible gold in returned samples collected from the Dominion, Gold Run, Gay Gulch, and Violet target areas, it was not until early November that drill results came back to inform the company of a possible new mineralized zone that exists outside the Klondike Schist that comprises the Stander, Lone Star and Gay Gulch prospects.
"From the limited amount of exploration we've completed over several years at the remote Gold Run target, we've learned that its geology, geochemistry and structural controls are quite different from that of the Lone Star/Stander/Gay Gulch areas, where we've begun to build our gold mineral resources," said Tallman. "At this early stage of target evaluation these differences are just beginning to be understood and quantified. Gold Run remains an important target area within our Klondike district project but is at an early exploration stage compared to the development work being done elsewhere."
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