Snowline Gold drills 1.1 g/t gold over 161 metres at Rogue project, Yukon
Snowline Gold Corp. [SGD-CSE; SNWGF-OTCQB] reported additional preliminary assay results from the 2022 drilling programs at its 100%-owned Rogue project in Canada’s Yukon. Hole V-22-030, drilled on the southeastern margin of Valley’s central mineralized zone, returned 1.06 g/t gold over 161 metres, before ending in strong mineralization.
The result adds scale and tonnage to the southeastern side of this near-surface, well-mineralized zone. In addition, results from phase 1 drilling at Gracie confirm the existence of a second reduced intrusion-related gold system (RIRGS), with a high correlation between gold, bismuth and tellurium values in sheeted quartz veins. Phase 1 results will be used to guide a targeted phase 2 drill program at Gracie in 2023.
Drillhole V-22-030 returned 282.5 metres of 0.73 g/t gold, including 161.0 metres of 1.06 g/t gold with 66.0 metres of 1.46 g/t gold.
“Today’s results continue to highlight and build on the prospectivity of our Rogue project,” said Scott Berdahl, chief executive officer and director of Snowline. “A single season of drilling has transformed our Valley zone from an interesting exploration target to a preresource gold project noteworthy on a global scale, redefining the deposit model far beyond what are traditionally low-grade, heap-leach systems. The consistency of strong grades and the size of Valley make it easy to understand, translating to lower exploration costs required for delineation and, in the future, lower costs for any potential economic operation. Our results from Gracie demonstrate that Valley is not a one-off — Snowline’s Rogue project is prospective for multiple gold systems of this scale and intensity. We are excited to resume exploration in 2023, with the dual goals of further advancing Valley and locating additional gold systems just like it.”
Hole V-22-030 was collared within the Valley intrusion, to the east of the known near-surface, well-mineralized corridor. It was a 301 m step-back hole along section to the northeast from the collar site for V-22-026 (289.7 m at 0.9 g/t gold, including 189.2 metres at 1.25 g/t gold from surface.
The hole encountered increasingly abundant sheeted quartz veins and trace visible gold as it progressed, returning 1.06 g/t gold over its final 161 metres from 246 metres down hole within a broader interval averaging 0.73 g/t gold over 282.5 metres from 124.5 metres down hole. The hole was terminated for technical reasons and ended in mineralization. The final 66 mEtres averaged 1.46 g/t gold, while the final 21 metres averaged 1.93 g/t gold.
As with previous holes at Valley, gold grades are carried across broad intervals, and they are not heavily affected by local high-grade (greater than 10 g/t Au) intersections.
Gracie is a separate reduced intrusion-related gold system located roughly 4-5 km east of the Valley discovery. Unlike Valley, where the mineralized intrusion is exposed on surface, the causative intrusion at Gracie does not daylight. This presents an attractive exploration target, as the highest gold grades in RIRGS systems are commonly found near the top of a given intrusion. Thus, at Gracie, the strongest part of the gold system is likely to be intact.
Phase 1 drilling at Gracie successfully confirms the presence of a RIRGS. Of the five holes drilled in 2022 (2,152 m total), four intersected zones of high-temperature alteration known as hornfels, indicative of a nearby intrusion. Each of these four holes also encountered trace instances of visible gold associated with bismuth and tellurium minerals in sheeted quartz veins oriented parallel to those at Valley, albeit at low overall vein densities. Geochemical correlations at Gracie in phase 1 drilling are further diagnostic confirmation of RIRGS mineralization. G-22-004, for example, returned 19.45 g/t gold over 0.9 metres down-hole width, with strong bismuth and tellurium values (378 parts per million and 43.1 ppm, respectively) and very low arsenic (3.92 ppm), suggesting proximity to a heat source.
Phase 2 drilling is planned at Gracie for 2023, with the objective of intersecting arrays of high-density, sheeted quartz vein mineralization within the Gracie intrusion. Snowline Gold is a Yukon-focused gold exploration company with a 17-project portfolio covering greater than 280,000 hectares. The company is exploring its flagship, greater than 137,000-hectare Rogue and Einarson gold projects in the highly prospective (yet underexplored) Selwyn basin.