White Cliff Minerals has dished up more promising rock-chip samples from a maiden field program at its Great Bear Lake project (GBLP) in Canada’s northern Saskatchewan, including various samples running up to 42.2 per cent copper, 17.4 grams per tonne gold and 716g/t silver.
The company says its latest suite of assays reveal significant copper, gold and silver mineralisation across four new locations.
The biggest, known as Coyote, sits within the Phoenix district that also houses the highly-anomalous Glacier and Cleaver iron oxide-copper-gold (IOCG) targets revealed by management just six days ago. Measuring 2km by 3km, Coyote has thrown up consistent copper-gold-silver results from a 440m-by-195m outcropping zone of intense alteration and veining, including 16.95g/t gold, 10.55 per cent copper and 45.3g/t silver and it is now also considered an IOCG system.
Between 8km and 12km to the south of Coyote, three further areas – Viper, Cougar and Payback – have been sampled, with all three targets delivering strong initial numbers. However, possibly of most interest is the Payback area, which sits at the contact of a gabbroic dyke and surrounding granites and is made up of massive copper sulphide of chalcopyrite and bornite.
The dyke appears to run for 4km east-to-west, with four rock chip grabs returning numbers as high as 42.2 per cent copper and 716g/t silver in one sample.
White Cliff Minerals managing director Troy Whittaker said: “These results are further examples of the type of exceptional results we are now seeing from the Great Bear Project. As the exploration program expanded outwards from the central airstrip ‘camp zone’, the scale of the opportunity we have before us can now be seen. Consistent and numerous high-grade Copper, Gold and Silver occurrences continue to demonstrate immense potential within the broader Great Bear region.”
The company says its next phase of work will be centred on correlating results from its aerial magnetotelluric (MT) survey with known outcropping structures and sample sites. Management believes its discovery of consistent high-grade copper, gold and silver occurrences across a relatively small portion of the project – less than 15km north-south and 5km east-west – underscores the district's significance.
The latest results also marry up with historical claims by the Canadian Mines Department, which identified the region as being one of the most promising in the nation for the potential to host multiple, big IOCG-style deposits.
With dozens of what White Cliff describes as additional highly-prospective targets that remain unexplored within its massive 2900-square-kilometre license area, the company seems to be poised to deliver further outstanding results – and not only from the GBLP, but also in upcoming assays from its Rae copper-silver-gold project that sits further to the north in Canada’s Nunavut territory.
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By James Pearson
