Snowline Gold up 14% on Yukon drilling news
Snowline Gold Corp. [SGD-CSE, SNWGF-OTCQB] rallied in active trading Wednesday after the company released preliminary assay results from drilling at the Valley Zone on its Rogue gold project in the Canadian Yukon.
In a press released that also contained a general exploration update, the company said holes V-22-005 and V-22-007 each intersected broad zones of mineralization averaging over 1.5 g/t gold over significant widths. V2-22-007 averaged 2.30 g/t gold over 282.9 metres from bedrock surface to a depth of 288 metres, with assays still pending past that point for the bottom 127.1 metres (31% of the total hole).
Snowline shares advanced on the news, rising 13.7% or $0.32 to $2.65 on volume of 193,470. The shares are currently trading in a 52-week range of $2.38 and 19.5 cents.
Snowline Gold is a Yukon Territory-focused gold exploration company with a seven-project portfolio covering 90,000 hectares. The company is exploring the 72,000-hectare Einarson and Rogue gold projects, which are located in the highly prospective, but underexplored Selwyn Basin.
Snowline’s project portfolio is within the Tintina Gold Province, which hosts multiple million-ounce-plus gold mines and deposits, including Kinross Gold Corp.’s (K-TSX, KGC-NYSE) Fort Knox mine, Newmont Corp.’s, [NGT-TSX, NEM-NYSE] Coffee deposit, and Victoria Gold Corp.’s [VGCX-TSXV] Eagle Mine.
The company says the geological setting and style of mineralization at Rogue’s Valley Zone indicate the presence of a bulk tonnage gold target, with similarities to Kinross’s Fort Knox Mine and Victoria Gold’s Eagle Mine.
The project is considered by the company to have district-scale prospectivity for reduced-intrusion related gold systems.
However, Valley is an early-stage exploration project without a resource estimate, and the presence or absence of an economically viable orebody cannot be determined until significant additional work is completed, the company said.
When Snowline launch a 600-metre phase 1 program at the Valley Zone, it said drill crews were targeting intrusion-related gold mineralization in sheeted veining and gold-bearing structures within and around a newly-discovered intrusion that is thought to belong to the prolific Tombstone plutonic suite.
Two drills are active at Valley, with 6,750 metres drilled on the target so far this season for 7,554 metres drilled to date. Drilling to the southeast of previous holes has extended the known strike length of the mineralization to over 1.0 kilometre, with lower vein densities to the extreme southeast.
“Our initial assay results demonstrate increasing scale and fertility in the Valley Zone,’’ said Snowline CEO Scott Berdahl. “In an aggressive step back 154 metres to test the width of the system with hole V-22-005 and an aggressive step out 340 metres along the length of the system with V-22-007 we’ve encountered grades and intervals greater than those of our discovery holes last season,’’ he said.
“The presence of consistent grades from near surface is also encouraging as it improves the potential economics of the prospect.’’
However, he said the Valley discovery is a “work in progress” and the company awaits the remainder of results from V-22-007 and many other holes.