White Cliff Minerals is poised for an exploration blitz when it kicks off a maiden fieldwork campaign at its Nunavut copper-gold-silver project in the northern Canadian province of the same name.
The company has already identified a slew of high-priority targets at the operation and its imminent field campaign has been designed to include detailed geological mapping and sampling ahead of a maiden drill program. A major focus will be the project’s Don target to the south of the Nunavut tenements where samples have returned the highest historical copper and silver assays within the project area.
Samples from a historic exploration trench returned multiple samples grading more than 40 per cent copper and exceeding 100 grams per tonne silver. Highlights from previous fieldwork in 2015 returned individual sample values as high as 30.7 per cent copper and 194g/t silver.
In 2014, sampling completed by Tundra Copper returned single assays of 34.7 per cent copper and 76g/t silver, in addition to 26.8 per cent copper and 26g/t silver. Going back to before 1972, the site also delivered high-grade copper results of 25.84 per cent across 0.8m and 21 per cent in a 1m intersection.
Sitting to the south-east of the Nunavut tenements is White Cliff’s CU-TAR prospect where at least four copper-silver lodes have been identified. Surface grab samples collected by Tundra back in 2013 returned individual assays of 21.18 per cent copper and 9g/t silver, in addition to 35.54 per cent copper and 17g/t silver.
Management says the lodes have been described as between 0.6m and 4.5m in thickness and can be traced up to 457m on the surface.
The company has also identified the Pickle Crow 140 target – about 5.5km north-west of CU-TAR – as a high priority following historic trenching results that delivered 1.13m grading 16.75 per cent copper and to 1.22m at 4.69 per cent copper. Previous drilling confirmed a continuous mineralised zone with a strike length of 457.2m.
The HALO target also sits to the south of the company’s tenements where a previous continuous sampling campaign returned a weighted average grade of 5m at 4.34 per cent copper and 5.4g/t silver. Individual rock chips returned assays as high as 6.74 per cent copper and 13g/t silver.
Management plans to re-sample and log the historical results before undertaking extensive data analysis to determine potential drill targets.
White Cliff Minerals managing director Troy Whittaker said: “Previous operators proved the presence of high-grade copper veins, however, there was no sufficient follow-up drill testing, providing us with the opportunity for considerable exploration upside. Despite there being inference and description of substantial strike extents across the project, only single samples were taken from limited occurrences. These single occurrences provide us with a substantial foundation to undertake activities looking at district-scale potential.”
In November last year, the company secured a swathe of ground in the Canadian province of Nunavut after an agreement with a private party for 61 mineral claims covering 80,500 hectares at Coppermine River. Management says the Coppermine area hosts a raft of high-grade copper lodes that sit along the same structural trend, primarily consisting of native copper, chalcocite, bornite and chalcopyrite.
The company will initially base its logistical hub in Kugluktuk, a town of about 1500 people that is located to the north-east of the project area, which is accessible by both plane and ship.
Once White Cliff has finalised its exploration campaigns for Nunavut, the programs are expected to run in close collaboration with planned work at its recently-acquired Great Bear Lake project in Canada’s Northwest Territories. The project adds a massive 3300 square kilometres to its Canadian holdings in an area that takes in several historical mining operations.
With its maiden field campaign at Nunavut set to kick off imminently and copper and silver enjoying a pricing resurgence, the market is likely to be keeping a close eye on what White Cliff can uncover when its next suite of results come to light.
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By Michael Philipps
