As exploration across most of the North continues to trend downward, the Yukon Territory is celebrating the second straight year of increased spending.
Early estimates put exploration in Yukon at about C$99 million for 2015, up roughly 20 percent over the C$80 million spent last year.
With a wide swath of zinc-rich deposits in the Selwyn basin, a number of copper-rich porphyries in the Dawson Range, platinum group metal-nickel deposits in the southwest and gold deposits seemingly everywhere that you look, it is no wonder exploration spending is on the rise in Yukon.
In fact, the territory was ranked the richest mineral jurisdiction on the planet by the 485 mining executives that participated in Fraser Institute’s Survey of Mining Companies 2014.
While gold usually dominates exploration spending in Canada’s northwestern-most territory, nearly as much of the spending during 2014 was invested on zinc as was on gold, thanks to C$32 million that Selwyn Chihong Mining Ltd. spent on exploration of the Selwyn project in eastern Yukon.
This year, gold is regaining its dominant position as Selwyn Chihong dials back a little and significant money continues to pour into exploration properties such as Rockhaven Resources Ltd.’s Klaza Project, and the Coffee Gold Project, being advanced by Kaminak Gold Corp.
Echoes of White Gold
While the 21st Century Yukon Gold Rush may have run its course for now, a handful of the deposits found and advanced in the “White Gold District” during recent years continue to present enticing exploration targets today.
Most notable is Coffee, a 2010 gold discovery that is on pace to become one of Yukon’s next generation of mines.
A preliminary economic assessment completed for Coffee in 2014 envisions an open-pit mine and heap-leach facility producing an average of 167,000 ounces of gold annually over an 11-year mine-life.
This initial look at the economics of developing a mine at Coffee is based on 14 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 1.56 grams per metric ton (719,000 ounces) gold, and 79 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 1.36 g/t (3.43 million ounces) gold.
One of Kaminak’s primary goals since the completion of the PEA is to upgrade much of this inferred resource to the higher-confidence indicated category prior to completing a feasibility study.
With more than half of the needed infill drilling at Coffee wrapped up by the end of 2014, the company budgeted C$30 million to complete the job as well as other work needed for the feasibility study at the rapidly advancing gold project.
“Our infill drilling program, which consisted of 70,000 meters, was executed on schedule and on budget in less than one year,” Kaminak President and CEO Eira Thomas said in July. “Upgrading the confidence level of the Coffee gold resources is a big step towards de-risking Coffee as we move it through feasibility towards production.”
The feasibility study is expected to be finished early in 2016.
Immediately southwest of Coffee, Independence Gold Corp. completed roughly 4,100 meters of reverse circulation drilling at the Denali and Sunset zones on its Boulevard property.
Drilling at Denali targeted a 700-meter-long gold-in-soil anomaly where trenching returned 4.56 g/t gold across 10 meters.
The Sunset zone is a 2,200-meter-long gold-in-soil anomaly located seven kilometers (4.4 miles) southwest of Kaminak’s Coffee deposit. Previous drilling there has cut up to 2.42 g/t gold across 6.26 meters. One hole drilled at Sunset this year cut 12.2 meters averaging 7.23 g/t gold.
Stakeholder Gold Corp. nabbed the expertise of renowned Yukon Territory prospector and innovator Shawn Ryan to help guide exploration at its Ballarat gold property and other strategic initiatives in the White Gold District.
Ballarat lies between Coffee and Kinross Gold’s White Gold property, two of the many gold discoveries to Ryan’s credit.
GroundTruth Exploration Inc., an innovative exploration company founded by Ryan, is reviewing geological data for furthering exploration at Ballarat.
GroundTruth will be applying a number of new exploration technologies – such as the GT Probe, the GT RAB Drill and the exploration applications developed for the UAV Drone – to the work at Ballarat and at other exploration projects in the White Gold District.
“We are happy to be involved with the Ballarat project, which we believe hosts meaningful potential for discovery of another economic gold deposit in the Yukon,” said Ryan.
Beyond White Gold
While the White Gold district grabbed much of the headlines, it is not the only region to turn up some sizable and promising gold projects in recent years.
Roughly 130 kilometers (80 miles) southeast of Coffee, Rockhaven Resources is quickly growing zones rich in gold and silver at its Klaza project.
In January, the company published a maiden inferred resource estimate of 7.04 million metric tons averaging 4.19 grams per metric ton (948,348 ounces) gold and 96.23 g/t (21.78 million ounces) silver for two of the zones.
This 1.31 ounce gold-equivalent resource does not take into account the 144.3 million pounds of zinc, 121.1 million lbs. lead and 14 million lbs. copper also contained in two of the nine main zones identified at Klaza.
This year the company completed a 15,000-meter drill program that is expected to significantly expand the resource at Klaza.
With the resource expanding, Rockhaven is beginning to looking at the other facets needed to advance this road assessable project to the next stage.
“Substantial progress is being made on geological and engineering fronts, which will be essential as the property moves toward development,” reported Rockhaven CEO Matt Turner.
Rockhaven is one of five companies that belong to the Strategic Exploration Group, a Yukon-focused cooperative.
Atac Resources Ltd., another member of the Strategic group, continues to expand upon its Carlin-type gold discoveries at its massive Rackla property, which spans some 185 kilometers (114 miles) east-west across central Yukon.
On this 1,700-square-kilometer land package, Atac has identified two distinct trends: the 50-kilometer- (30 miles) long Nadaleen Trend which hosts Carlin-type gold deposits at the Conrad, Osiris, Isis East, Sunrise and Anubis zones: and the 20-kilometer- (12.5 miles) long Rau Trend which hosts the Tiger gold deposit and the Ocelot silver-lead-zinc-tin discovery.
Atac has defined six zones of Carlin-type gold mineralization – Conrad, Osiris, Sunrise, Isis, Isis East and Anubis – and more than 40 geochemical anomalies at Nadaleen.
For 2015, Atac invested about C$3 million on an exploration program primarily focused on Conrad and Anubis.
“The Conrad Zone is the most advanced Carlin-type gold discovery within the Nadaleen Trend and continues to deliver significant gold mineralization from three distinct areas and remains open along strike and at depth,” explained Atac CEO Graham Downs.
Roughly 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of the Nadaleen Trend, Goldstrike Resources Ltd. continued to find visible gold in 2015 across large swaths of its Plateau property.
In addition to visible gold in grab samples collected from the surface, native gold was observed in five of the 11 holes drilled at Plateau this year.
Most exciting, was the visible gold identified in all three holes drilled in the Goldstack zone.
Goldstrike says the visible gold now found at all three zones at Plateau – Gold Dome, Goldbank, and Goldstack – suggest that they are part of a single, large gold system that stretches along the surface for about 25 kilometers and to a depth of more than 1,000 meters.
The presence of coarse high-grade gold in all three zones and in multiple stacked layers that remain open shows that the entire property is part of a new district-scale gold system that is underexplored,” said Goldstrike Chief Geologist Trevor Bremner.
“The geological team believes we have barely scratched the surface, and the best is yet to come,” he added.
In the southeastern corner of the territory, Banyan Gold Corp. continued to advance exploration at its Hyland gold-silver project, which hosts a 12.5 million metric ton inferred resource averaging 0.9 g/t (361,692 oz) gold and 5.59 g/t (2.25 million oz) silver in the Main zone.
Banyan’s 2015 program, which included 800 meters of drilling at the Camp zone, investigated Hyland’s larger potential.
“The company will maintain its current focus to qualify the large scale, regional potential of gold and silver mineralization beyond the Main Zone resource,” explained Banyan Chairman Mark Ayranto.
Gorilla Minerals Corp., a new public exploration company, is investigating Wels a new and poorly understood gold project in southwestern Yukon.
Gorilla picked up the Wels property in 2011 and since has been carrying out early-stage exploration, including mapping, soil and rock sampling, geophysics and trenching. This work has identified a number of promising zones – North Ridge, Southwest Spur and Saddle.
This year, the company completed five holes at the Saddle zone, the first holes drilled at Wels. The best intercept of this drilling cut 25.5 meters averaging 2.41 g/t gold in the first hole of the program.
Zinc-rich Selwyn
While gold may have regained the driver’s seat, interest in zinc-rich deposits in Yukon’s Selwyn Basin remains strong.
With the goal of shipping the first zinc and lead concentrates from the Selwyn project in 2020, Selwyn Chihong Mining Ltd. is investing another C$40 million into the eastern Yukon project this year.
This work includes a 10,000-meter drill program that will provide the geological and geotechnical data for a pre-feasibility study due out this year. This study is expected to detail a 35,000-metric-ton-per-day operation producing 2,500 metric tons of zinc concentrate and 600 metric tons of lead concentrate per day.
In January, Yukon Zinc Corp. announced that it was putting the Wolverine zinc mine, located about 130 kilometers south of the Selwyn project, on care and maintenance. A couple months later, the company said it was filing for bankruptcy.
Yukon Zinc Corp. has invested more than C$500 million in development of Wolverine since it acquired the project in 2008. The mine was commissioned in 2010, but ran into a number of difficulties during its operation.
Australia-based MinQuest Ltd. is examining the potential of utilizing the existing processing and tailings management facilities at Wolverine to fast-track the development of the Kona deposit at its own Fyre Lake copper project, which is located about 28 kilometers (17 miles) to the south.
Jeremy Read, managing director of MinQuest, said: “Using the existing infrastructure at Wolverine could decrease the pre-production capital expenditure for putting Fyre Lake into production by as much as C$150 million to C$200 million, which would substantially improve the economics of the Fyre Lake copper project.”
The Kona deposit has a JORC-compliant indicated and inferred resource of 12.6 million metric tons averaging 1.56 percent copper, 0.09 percent cobalt, 0.30 zinc and 0.63 grams per metric ton gold.
MinQuest is planning an exploration program that it believes will add some 4 million metric tons to the resource at Kona with similar grades.
MinQuest is also working towards earning a 75 percent joint venture interest in the Marg copper-zinc-lead-silver project located some 40 kilometers east of Keno City, in central Yukon. The company is currently working on a scoping study for the VMS project ahead of drilling planned for 2016.
In January, London-based BMC (UK) Ltd. bought the Kudz Ze Kayah and Pelly base metals projects, KZK for short, from Teck Resources Ltd.
Located about 25 kilometers west of the idled Wolverine Mine, KZK hosts a historical inferred resource of 12.8 million metric tons averaging at 0.81 percent copper, 5.9 percent zinc, 1.7 percent lead, 1.38 g/t gold, along with silver credits.
Formed in 2014 as a partnership between management and Barclays Natural Resource Investments Inc., BMC is scouring the globe for base metals deposits, especially those dominated by zinc and have the potential for near-term development.
The company considers Yukon the best place to look for such an asset and KZK as its flagship property.
“We believe that KZK is a quality asset that suits our business model perfectly,” said BMC CEO Scott Donaldson.
This year, the company is carrying out a C$15 million program focused on expanding the historical resource at Kudz Ze Kayah and bringing it up to NI 43-101-compliant standards ahead of a pre-feasibility study planned for 2016.
Better known for its silver rather than its zinc, Alexco Resource Corp.’s Bellekeno Mine is located within historic the Keno Hill Silver District.
Bellekeno began commercial production at the beginning of 2011, but was temporarily suspended late in 2013 due to lower silver prices. Since suspending operation, Alexco has carried out steady drilling focused primarily on upgrading and expanding the Flame & Moth and Bermingham deposits at Keno Hill.
This year, the company invested roughly C$1.6 million in a surface drill program to follow up on successful results at Bermingham, where one hole drilled in 2014 cut 6.39 meters (true width) averaging 5,667 g/t silver.
Copper and platinum
With operations at the Bellekeno and Wolverine mines suspended, Capstone Mining Corp.’s Minto copper mine, is the only hard-rock mining operation in Yukon currently in production.
While Capstone did not invest a lot in exploration at Minto this year, other companies advanced copper-dominant projects across the territory with the goal of contributing to the next generation of copper producers in Yukon.
About 45 kilometers southeast of the Minto Mine, Copper North Mining Corp. continued resource expansion drilling at its Carmacks copper project.
Carmacks project currently hosts 11.98 million metric tons of measured and indicated resource grading 1.07 percent copper, 0.46 grams per metric ton gold and 4.6 g/t silver. This oxide component of the deposit forms the basis for the potentially mineable mineralization by open pit methods as outlined in a preliminary economic assessment completed in 2014. A significant sulfide resource also has been outlined at the project.
In addition to expanding several zones within the resource, the 2015 drilling tested geophysical targets identified earlier in the year.
About 80 kilometers west of Minto, Western Copper and Gold Corp. continued to advance its Casino project through permitting.
According to a feasibility study completed in 2013, a heap leach and mill operation at Casino is expected to produce 3.7 billion lbs. copper, 6 million oz gold, 341.9 million lbs. molybdenum and 28.8 million oz silver over a 22-year mine-life.
While Western copper did not carry out much in the way of exploration at this enormous project, Strategic Metals Ltd. is exploring an intriguingly similar but early stage prospect at its Hopper property about 200 kilometers (120 miles) to the southeast.
Recent geochemical surveys have outlined strong copper, gold and molybdenum soil anomalies that span a 3,600- by 2,500-meter area of the Hopper property.
Historical drilling at this copper prospect has identified three skarn horizons – JG, AM and LV – that are about 50 meters apart stratigraphically and typically range from two to 20 meters in thickness.
Hole 15-01, the first hole of Strategic’s 2015 program, targets gold-rich skarn horizons below JG, the main copper horizon. This hole, drilled 342 meters north-northwest of the nearest historical hole, extended deeper discovered a new, deeper skarn horizon (JP) that averaged 12.15 g/t gold and 0.95 percent copper over 2.65 meters. Hole 15-02, drilled 435 meters north-northeast of hole 1, cut 6.44 meters averaging 1.0 percent copper and 1.01 g/t gold within a 15-meter thick zone of weak to moderate mineralization in the JG horizon.
The balance of Strategic’s program targeted other skarn and porphyry deposits in other areas of the large copper-gold anomaly at Hopper.
Wellgreen Platinum Ltd. continues to advance what it hopes will be one of the largest and lowest cost open-pit platinum group metal-nickel mines in the world.
In February, the company published an updated preliminary economic assessment that investigates the option of starting off mining with a 25,000-ton-per-day operation for the first five years and then scaling up to 50,000 tpd for another 20 years.
The mine is anticipated to average 208,880 oz of platinum-palladium-gold (3E), 73 million lb. of nickel and 55 million lb. of copper annually over the first 16 years of mining.
In May, the company announced plans to invest C$4.2 million on a phase-1 drill program designed to advance the Wellgreen project towards a pre-feasibility study.
This program is focused on infill drilling within the resource to be mined in the initial 25-year base case as well as step-out drilling targeting areas to expand the scope of the mine.
Bringing current resources into the mine plan has the potential to add up to 31 years to life of mine projections, according to the PEA. This would make Yukon a significant supplier of PGMs for more than 50 years.
Wellgreen Platinum President and CEO Greg Johnson said “the development of an open-pit amenable, road-accessible PGM and nickel project in the mining-friendly Yukon Territory represents a truly unique opportunity.”
