Idaho
The Idaho Creek silver-gold project is currently optioned to Golden Predator Royalty & Development Corp. It is situated in western Yukon within the Dawson Range, a well mineralized sub-camp of the productive Tintina Gold Belt. The Tintina Gold Belt hosts several major deposits including Donlin Creek, Pogo, Fort Knox, Keno Hill and Casino.
The metallogeny in the Dawson Range is dominated by porphyry and mesothermal vein deposits. Idaho Creek lies 14 km east of the Casino porphyry gold-copper-molybdenum deposit, which has a measured and indicated mineral resource of 230,000 kilograms (7.4 million ounces) gold and 2.1 billion kilograms (4.7 billion pounds) copper. The Pogo replacement-vein gold deposit (112,000 kilograms or 3.6 million ounces) is located to the northwest of Idaho Creek while gold-silver veins that hosted the former Mt Nansen mine are situated to the southeast. Typical terrain in center of property |
Idaho Creek has seen little exploration since the mid 1980s. Work by previous operators included mechanical and hand trenching, mapping, and soil and rock geochemistry. The Yukon Government sponsored 1:50,000 scale geological mapping in the area during the 1980s and helicopter-borne geophysical surveys in the 1990s. Outcrop is rare within the main soil anomaly and frozen organic-rich rocky soil limited the success of the trenching programs.
The property sits within the Klotassin Batholith. It is bounded to the west by the northeast-trending Dip Creek Fault and to the north by a southeast-trending fault that is inferred to be the northerly extension of the Big Creek Fault. The Big Creek Fault typically exhibits two or more sub parallel structures that are the bounding faults of a two to eight kilometre wide graben. A belt of precious metal bearing veins and porphyry copper-gold prospects, associated with Cretaceous age, subvolcanic quartz-feldspar porphyry intrusions, extends southeasterly from the Casino deposit for 100 km along the Big Creek Fault.Five intrusive units are identified near the property. They consist of medium grained diorite (JKd), equigranular hornblende-biotite granodiorite (Kgd), hornblende-biotite quartz diorite (Kgdl) dykes, medium grained biotite granite (Kg), and quartz-feldspar porphyry (Kmnr) dykes.
A prominent, recessive linear cuts east-northeasterly across the property adjacent to the porphyry dykes. Several smaller north-northeast trending shear zones and linears occur in the southwest corner of the property.Previous grid soil geochemistry outlined anomalous gold, silver, lead, arsenic and zinc soil values in four main targets across the property, all apparently associated with one or both of the two main structural trends. The anomalous areas are up to 1200 by 600 m in size and produced soil geochemical values ranging up to 6550 ppb Au, 122 ppm Ag, 6180 ppm Pb, 2620 ppm As, 2300 ppm Zn and 1110 ppm Sb. The average silver to lead ratio for the samples is a particularity encouraging 366 grams /tonne silver per 1% lead.
The soil geochemical anomalies are largely unexplained. A total of nine bulldozer trenches with a combined length of 2398 m were dug within the main soil geochemical anomalies. The trenches mostly bottomed in frozen soil and exposed only small patches of bedrock. Three types of mineralization identified in trenches or in outcrops include: disseminated sulphides in quartz diorite; chalcedony-calcite veins in limonitic quartz-feldspar porphyry; and sulphide-bearing manganiferous quartz veins.Minor disseminated pyrite occurs sporadically in all units but is most abundant (up to 2%) in the quartz diorite dykes. This unit also hosts traces of fine grained disseminated chalcopyrite. None of this material was assayed.
Chalcedony and chalcedony-calcite veinlets ranging from 0.5 to 2 cm in width occur in float material from the quartz-feldspar porphyry dykes in the eastern part of the property. Trenching did not expose bedrock in this area but soil samples taken from the bottom of one trench returned up to 1640 ppb gold.
Sulphide bearing manganese quartz veins typically consist of limonite boxwork with minor pyrite, arsenopyrite, galena and sphalerite. These veins occur in altered shear
zones cutting the granitic rocks. Trenching was unable to locate this type of mineralization in bedrock; however, recessively weathered alteration zones with bulk tonnage potential were identified. For example, samples of altered granodiorite adjacent to a rusty gouge zone averaged 1081 ppb gold, 62 ppm silver and 2463 ppm lead across 3.5 m.Exploration in 2006 consisted of 17 line km of induced polarization (IP) surveys and 556 m of reverse circulation drilling. The IP survey covered an area roughly 1.5 by 2 km over the strongest gold-lead-silver soil geochemical anomaly in the western part of the property. It outlined coincident northeast trending zones of moderate to high chargeability and low resistivity that are approximately 1300 m long and up to 600 m wide. The anomalies are blind to surface and are open along strike.
Five percussion drill holes tested beneath float occurrences and soil geochemical anomalies in the western and central part of the property. Collar locations were based solely upon prospecting and geochemical data because IP results were not available prior to drilling.
Anomalous gold and silver values were encountered in most holes. The results from holes ID-06-03 and -05, which tested downdip from geochemical anomalies that overly the main IP target, are particularly interesting. ID-06-03 is near a narrow, moderate chargeability anomaly that appears to be an apophysis of the main anomaly. It encountered two mineralized intervals, with the first returning 0.608 g/t gold and 20.6 g/t silver across 6.10 m starting at 9.14 m and the second yielding 0.551 g/t gold, 32.6 g/t silver, 0.46 % lead and 1.53 % zinc across 3.05 m starting at 73.15 m. ID-06-05 produced two 3.05 m intervals grading 0.33 g/t gold with 70.1 g/t silver and 0.092 g/t gold with 52.3 g/t silver. These intervals were cut from 36.58 and 60.96 m, respectively. None of the holes were drilled deep enough to test the main IP anomalies.The metal signature of the soil geochemical anomalies and percussion drill results combined with geological setting and airborne radiometric data are indicative of a high level porphyry system. The mineralization exposed at surface and found in drill holes may be related to stockwork fracture zones that overlie a deeper porphyry copper-gold deposit.