Mining News: News Nuggets: Kiska, First Quantum to drill porphyry target at Copper Joe

Kiska Metals Corp. July 18 reported that an exploration team and equipment has been mobilized to begin drilling at Copper Joe, a copper-gold-molybdenum porphyry project located in the Alaska Range about 110 miles northwest of Anchorage. First Quantum Minerals has an option to earn up to an 80 percent interest in Copper Joe, and Kiska is currently operating the project. “We are very excited that FM (First Quantum Minerals) has decided to drill the Evening Star porphyry target at Copper Joe. It is a testament to the potential scale of this system,” said Kiska Vice President of Exploration Mike Roberts. Mapping and geophysical work carried out by Kiska and First Quantum in 2015 defined two compelling porphyry targets – Evening Star and Morning Star. The Evening Star prospect encompasses a 2,500-meter-diameter area of intense phyllic alteration with an outer margin of significant D-style quartz-pyrite veining and a 1,000-meter-wide inner zone of significant banded quartz-molybdenite veining. A magnetotelluric geophysical survey shows that this inner zone is coincident with a discrete, 1,400-meter-wide low conductivity anomaly. Kiska and First Quantum drilled two holes in 2014 into what are now recognized as high-level breccia bodies and IP chargeability anomalies located marginal to the present target, and which contain no significant mineralization. Neither hole drilled in 2014 tested the above-mentioned conductivity low anomaly. The newly-appreciated Morning Star prospect occurs 2,200 meters to the southwest of Evening Star in a relatively low-lying area mostly covered by glacial till. The Morning Star is defined by narrow outcrop exposures in creek banks that contain chalcopyrite mineralization over a 400-meter-wide area. Previous grab samples collected from this area returned significant copper and gold values. Yet to be tested by geophysical surveys or drilling, Morning Star will be further investigated by geologists this year.

-Shane Lasley

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