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Mining News: Junior finds bonanza vein at Clear Creek Golden Predator said 2010 drilling catapults gold project to forefront of its exploration; spurs plans for intensive 2011 campaign Rose Ragsdale For Mining News
With final 2010 exploration in hand, Golden Predator Corp. said its Clear Creek Project vaulted to the front of the pack of the eight gold projects that it is aggressively exploring in Yukon Territory.
Clear Creek is located 65 kilometers, or about 40 miles, northwest of Mayo in central Yukon. Golden Predator can earn a 100 percent interest in the property, subject to a 3 percent net smelter return royalty, of which 1 percent on 77 quartz claims can be bought back for C$1 million and 2 percent on 55 quartz claims can be bought back for C$1.5 million.
The latest drilling results at Clear Creek include assays from three diamond drill holes and 20 reverse circulation holes from the Contact, Saddle, Josephine and Bear Paw zones.
Of particular significance is Contact Zone RC Hole CC10-22, which encountered 1.52 meters averaging 137.50 grams per metric ton gold and 52.70 g/t silver from a depth of 3.05 meters over and RC Hole CC10-20 with an intercept of 30.48 meters averaging 0.719 g/t gold from a depth of 38.1 meters. RC Hole CC10-20 is collared and ended in mineralization with an average grade of 0.44 g/t over its entire 136-meter length.
Deeper drilling also returned significant silver values at the Bear Paw Zone, where diamond drill hole CC10-02 encountered 1.73 meters grading 635.60 g/t silver and 0.36 g/t gold between 224.37 meters and 226.10 meters.
Previously released results from Golden Predator’s 2010 work program at Clear Creek included 2.59 g/t gold over 25.91 meters starting at 10.67 meters depth in RC Hole CC10-27 in the Bear Paw zone and 22.86 meters of 1.24 g/t gold from a depth of 10.67 meters from RC Hole CC10-25 in the Saddle zone.
The Clear Creek property, which encompasses about 60 square kilometers, or 23.2 square miles, and contains five identified target areas, including the Rhosbegobel Zone where no work was planned or completed this year. The Saddle zone is about 2.6 kilometers north of the Contact zone which is, in turn, 5.0 kilometer northeast from the Bear Paw zone. The Josephine zone lies between the Saddle and Contact zones, and the Rhosbegobel zone lies between the Contact and Bear Paw zones.
The full 2010 program consisted of 4 HQ (6.4 centimeter/2.5-inch) diameter-oriented core diamond drill holes totaling 1,054 meters and 38 RC drill holes totaling 2,589 meters.
Golden Predator had originally planned to drill 1,000 meters of oriented HQ-diameter diamond drilling on the Bear Paw breccia zone in 2010 in hopes of determining the orientation of previously identified mineralization and to drill five north-south directed holes to test a geological model that suggests the mineralization may be following an east-west trend.
Once the diamond drilling was completed, the explored planned to follow up with 3,500 meters of RC drilling on a grid across the established mineralization trend of the Bear Paw hydrothermal breccia. Pending results of the RC drilling, the company also had wanted to test other under-explored low-grade bulk tonnage targets on the property.
RC Hole CC10-22 encountered a 10-centimeter-thick mineralized quartz vein sub-parallel to the dip of the drill hole at a depth of 3.05 meters. After receiving the initial results, the explorer dug a trench 2 meters from the collar in order to expose the vein.
A 10-centimeter-wide channel sample collected from the trench across the width of the exposed vein assayed 265 g/t gold and 111 g/t silver. This vein strikes in an east-west direction with a steep dip and is a single vein within the more important sheeted vein zone spatially associated with a mineralized and clay-altered silicic quartz porphyry dike in the heart of the Contact zone. RC drill chips over this interval show abundant vein material, consistent with rocks exposed in the trench.
Golden Predator said the latest results reflect difficult RC drilling conditions as none of the holes were able to reach their targeted depths. Sheeted vein zones visible at the surface were targeted throughout the Josephine zone; unfortunately all holes were terminated above their projected target depths. An 18-centimeter channel sample of one of the veins near RC Hole CC10-41 returned a value of 5.44 g/t gold. Depths ranged from 22.86 meters in hole CC10-42 to a maximum of 132.62 meters in hole CC10-20 with an average depth of only 69.19 meters. The targeted zone was not intercepted in many of the holes due to the restricted depth.
During the 2011 season, the company said it will employ much larger drill rigs in order to more fully evaluate the project.
“We are extremely pleased and very excited by the discovery of a high-grade bonanza vein in the middle of the Contact zone, complementing our previous released extensive lower grade intercepts,” Golden Predator Chairman and CEO William M. Sheriff, said in a statement Oct. 14. “Our 2010 drill program has established significant mineralization in all of the identified zones on this large project, and positions Clear Creek as a leading project for Golden Predator in 2011.”
Intrusion-related mineralization Mineralization at Clear Creek may be related to the intrusion of Tombstone-age granitoid stocks and as such, Clear Creek has the potential to host one or more intrusion-related gold system-type deposits. Intrusion-related deposits are important producers of gold within Canada, Alaska and elsewhere around the world. Examples of IRGS deposits include Fort Knox in Alaska, Victoria Gold’s Dublin Gulch in the Yukon, and Golden Predator’s Brewery Creek deposit where previous gold production exceeded 300,000 ounces.
Highly deformed metasedimentary rocks and stocks and dykes of the Yusezyu Formation underlie the Clear Creek property. The metasedimentary strata are part of the Neoprotoerozoic to early Cambrian Hyland Group and comprise predominantly highly deformed and folded pelites, psammites, coarse clastic grits and quartzites, with lesser limestone and marble, calcareous clastic sediments and chemical sediments mixed with a clastic component.
The Hyland Group rocks have been intruded by Tombstone suite diorite, granodiorite, quartz monzonite and granitoid stocks, including, from south to north, the Rhosbegobel, Big Creek, Pukelman, Josephine and Eiger stocks. The Tombstone strain zone, a broad zone of complex deformation exhibited as multi-episodic folding and prominent foliation and lineation development within the sedimentary sequence. It extends roughly east-west to the north of the Josephine stock.
Gold mineralization styles identified at Clear Creek include: possible Fort Knox-style sheeted quartz veins and stockworks in the Rhosbegobel stock; replacement-style sulfide mineralization in calc-silicate horizons within the Yusezyu Formation; and significant intervals of >1 g/t gold associated with quartz veins and quartz-flooded breccia zones at the Bear Paw prospect.
Intriguing exploration history The Clear Creek project lies in the headwaters of the still active Clear Creek placer mining area. Placer mining has produced about 129,000 ounces of gold since 1941, and historical placer operations date back to the early 1900s.
The area has a rich prospecting history dating back to the early 1900s, with modern exploration starting in the late 1970s. Bema Industries, working on contract from Canada Tungsten Corp., was the first company to recognize potentially significant gold mineralization in 1978. Since this initial effort, various companies have conducted limited campaigns, including Gold Rite Mining Corp., Noranda Exploration Ltd., Ivanhoe Goldfields Ltd./First Dynasty Mines Ltd., Kennecott Canada Inc., Newmont Exploration Limited, Redstar Resources Corporation, and most recently StrataGold Corp., now Victoria Gold Corp.
Previous explorers have identified a number of extensive gold and arsenic in soil anomalies, including the Saddle, Harper and Contact zones and the Eiger, Rhosbegobel and Pukelman stocks. Limited shallow diamond and RC drilling programs on five of these targets (Saddle, Contact, Eiger, Rhosbegobel and Pukelman) returned intervals with >1 g/t gold.
On the Rhosbegobel Zone, Kennecott identified a shallow, near-surface gold mineralized area of about 40 million metric tons grading 300 parts per billion gold, with a higher grade core of 1.5-2.0 Mt grading between 0.75 and 1.25 g/t gold from an east-west trending zone 1.2 kilometers, or 0.8 mile, long, 200 meters wide and 65 meters deep as outlined from 27 RC holes averaging only 73 meters in depth (Coombes, 1995).
In 1998, Newmont suggested that the Eiger, Saddle, Josephine and Pukelman stocks may be part of a single larger intrusive body, and the Rhosbegobel and Far stocks are themselves a separate body.
Historic drilling by Redstar on the Bear Paw Breccia zone included two diamond drill holes totaling 219 meters in 1999; and nine HQ-diameter diamond drill holes totaling 1,211 meters in 2000. The best result in the Bear Paw Breccia zone was 2.3 g/t gold over 31.8 meters in Hole BP00-10.
In 2006, Stratagold Corporation conducted a detailed trenching and soil sampling program on the Bear Paw Breccia, Contact and Barney zones. In addition, infill sampling was conducted to follow-up on geophysical and historical gold anomalies identified by previous explorers.
Golden Predator said it will review the extensive data generated this year and integrate it into a comprehensive model to form a framework for an intensified 2011 work program at Clear Creek.
The junior is also exploring the Brewery Creek, Grew Creek, Antimony, Gold (Scheelite) Dome, Eureka, Cynthia and Rogue projects in Yukon Territory. It reported signing a private placement deal in late October to raise C$15 million in gross proceeds to, in part, fund exploration of the Yukon gold projects.
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