Mining News: Northern Neighbors: Strategic high-grade gold discovery at Hartless Joe

Strategic Metals Ltd. Sept. 30 announced the discovery of high-grade gold mineralization at its Hartless Joe property, located 28 kilometers (18 miles) east-northeast of Whitehorse, Yukon Territory. A continuous chip sample taken across the discovery outcrop graded 60 grams per metric ton gold, 554 g/t silver, 5.01 percent lead, and 0.35 percent copper over 1.2 meters. The chip sample was taken from a quartz-rich band that is either an exhalite horizon or a flat-lying vein. The band is exposed at the base of a small cliff. Although the main rock types in the area are mafic to intermediate volcanic flows and volcanoclastic rocks, the immediate hanging wall of the mineralized band is pyritic siltstone. The bottom contact of the band is covered by talus. Boulders and small outcrops of pale green volcanic or volcaniclastic rock containing semi-massive pyrite and minor chalcopyrite were found about 15 meters uphill from the gold-rich outcrop. A sample with semi-massive pyrite returned 0.33 percent copper but low values for gold and silver. No follow-up prospecting or soil sampling has been done in the vicinity of the new discovery. Hartless Joe is one of eight gold properties Strategic owns in the Yukon portion within Stikina, an accreted island arc terrane that hosts important epithermal vein and exhalite deposits such as the Primer Mine, Brucejack Deposit, and Eskay Creek Mine.

- Shane Lasley