White Cliff Minerals is primed to get boots on the ground at its Great Bear Lake project in Canada’s Northwest Territories, with a comprehensive data review identifying a slew of priority multi-mineral targets.
Management has highlighted its Thompson, Hunter Bay, Sparkplug Lake and Spud Bay prospects as high priorities, in addition to finding evidence of potential iron oxide-copper-gold (IOCG) mineralisation at its southern Luv Lake, OMNI and HD44 areas.
After combining information from the Northwest Territories Geological Survey online database and digitised geographic information system software, in addition to historic sampling results, the company believes Great Bear Lake holds vast potential for polymetallic discoveries using modern exploration techniques.
Thompson is a high-grade polymetallic area where previous rock chips delivered impressive results including 14.15 per cent uranium oxide, 6.22 grams per tonne gold and 122g/t silver. The site sits south of the historic Echo Bay and Eldorado mines in a region that prior to 1982 produced 13.7 million pounds of uranium oxide, 34.2 million ounces of refined silver and more than 11.3 million pounds of copper with associated gold credits.
Eldorado is considered to be the first mine in the Northwest Territories to have radium and silver as the original metals of interest. Uranium became the target resource in 1942, followed by silver and copper from 1975.
The historic Echo Bay mine is adjacent to Eldorado and produced more than 23.5 million ounces of silver and 4505 tonnes of copper between 1964 and 1974.
Management says the Thompson area was previously drilled with three shallow holes that returned a 5.5m hit grading 1.73 per cent copper and 23.9g/t silver. Additional rock chip assays include 7.5 per cent copper, 1.63 per cent uranium oxide, 729g/t silver and 1.56g/t gold.
Hunter Bay sits along strike from the Sloan deposit that was identified in 1956 and held a non-JORC resource estimate of 100,000 tonnes going a whopping 8.4 per cent copper.
Previous drilling delivered a 27.28m section reading 7.92 per cent copper. A limited sampling campaign back in 2006 revealed assays up to 1.69 per cent copper and 321 parts per million uranium oxide.
Sparkplug Lake recorded solid previous grab samples up to 8.28g/t gold, 44g/t silver and 3.97 per cent copper. Historic sampling shows gold-copper mineralisation within quartz veins, interpreted as the epithermal expression of an underlying IOCG system.
Spud Bay sits along strike from the former Bonanza silver mine where samples returned assays of 11.7 per cent copper, 8.3 per cent zinc and 1330g/t silver from a campaign conducted by Alberta Star back in 2008.
White Cliff Minerals managing director Troy Whittaker said: “Given the target-rich environment and different advancing stages of exploration across the Project, the Company is now in an envious position where it can progress and develop a pipeline of targets.”
The latest data review has also identified Luv Lake that sits just 8km north-east of the historic Terra silver mine. Management says the prospect is a 3-square-kilometre IOCG target that previously returned rock chip results up to 10.4 per cent copper and 23g/t silver.
Two additional IOCG areas of interest have been identified at OMNI to the south-west of Luv Lake and HD44, just 5km south-west of the Terra mine. Notable prior rock chip results at OMNI went as high as 5.4 per cent copper and 4g/t gold, while an earlier campaign at HD44 produced assays of 2.18 per cent copper, 1.95 per cent cobalt and 22.26 per cent bismuth.
White Cliff says its datasets take in historic, but high-quality records, which it has digitised and integrated with its geographic information system (GIS). GIS enables every data point to be located on a map so a wide range of parameters can be analysed to identify geographic, geochemical and geological trends and their interconnections.
With its 2024 field campaign set to kick off imminently and with gold and uranium prices holding their value, in addition to the start of a copper resurgence, all eyes will be on what White Cliff can unveil during its multi-mineral mission in the Northwest Territories.
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By Michael Philipps
