Source: Streetwise Reports 10/09/2018
With gold prices moving sideways, the Golden Triangle of British Columbia—and several companies exploring there—continue to provide a bright spot for gold exploration.
Three different gold rushes and some of Canada’s greatest mines have been found on the Golden Triangle, located just inland from the Alaska Panhandle.
The mines include Premier, Snip and Eskay Creek. Other significant and well known deposits located within the Triangle include Brucejack, Galore Creek, Copper Canyon, Schaft Creek, KSM, Granduc and Red Chris.
Rick Mills of Ahead of the Herd noted, “After decades of productive mining and some big discoveries, the Golden Triangle went dormant. Isolated from major infrastructure, the area was expensive to conduct sampling, surveys and drill programs in, and due to its harsh winter climate, was only accessible for half a year. Not much news came out of the Golden Triangle during the 1990s and 2000s. When gold prices weakened to about $400 an ounce, several mines shut down, unable to make a decent margin against fixed costs.”
Over 130 million ounces of gold, 800 million ounces of silver and 40 billion pounds of copper have been found in the area, but experts believe this is only the tip of the iceberg.
“The BC Geological Survey database has identified over 900 mineral occurrences, 67 of which have documented mineral resources,” said Mills. “Lately there has been a resurgence of interest in the Golden Triangle, with something of a staking rush going on there as juniors position themselves for the next discovery hole. So what changed? The excitement is being driven by five factors.”
These factors, according to Mills, are:
New Deposits: Pretium Resources Inc. (PVG:TSX; PVG:NYSE), Seabridge Gold Inc. (SEA:TSX; SA:NYSE.MKT) and Imperial Metals Corp. (III:TSX) all made multimillion pound strikes.
New Infrastructure: “New road and power infrastructure built by the British Columbia (BC) government includes the paving of the Stewart-Cassiar Highway north from Smithers; port facilities for export of concentrate opened at the town of Stewart; and most importantly, a $700 million high voltage transmission line to bring power to mining properties previously inaccessible to the grid and reliant on diesel-powered portable generators,” according to Mills.
Declining Snow Cover: The retreat of glaciers reveal rocks never before seen.
New Geological Theory: A new twist is that most of the Golden Triangle’s deposits are found within a few kilometers of a contact zone (Triassic-Jurassic unconformity).
Higher Gold Prices: Low gold prices shut down several operating mines in the Golden Triangle during the 1990s and early 2000s, and also squelched exploration. “Since then a tripling of gold prices has injected gold fever back into the area, and combined with a new geological theory and the above factors, breathed new life into the possibility of discoverers hitting the next Valley of the Kings or KSM,” Mills asserted.
Against this backdrop, gold explorers including Golden Ridge Resources Ltd. (GLDN:TSX.V), Aben Resources Ltd. (ABN:TSX.V; ABNAF:OTCQB) and GT Gold Corp. (GTT:TSX.V) continue to report impressive results.
Mike Blady, CEO of Golden Ridge Resources, said its recent discoveries in the heart of the Golden Triangle set the company apart from the crowd.
“We are one of the few companies to make a new discovery this year, so that sets us apart from the rest of the companies in the area,” Blady told Streetwise Reports. “We discovered a new gold-copper porphyry called the Williams Zone that was discovered by our team using geophysics and geochemistry, and we confirmed it with drilling.”
The company acquired the Williams Zone property in 2014 from Barrick Gold Corp. (ABX:TSX; ABX:NYSE) and performed an aerial survey of the area in 2015.
“So it all started back in 2014, there was an airborne survey flown on the project in 2015, which found a single point anomaly on the north side of the project,” Blady noted. “Single point anomalies generally turn out to be nothing,” but subsequent exploration confirmed the company had struck pay dirt.
“In 2016, we did some reconnaissance geochemistry on that part of the property and were pleasantly surprised with a strong copper-gold anomaly. The following we year we came back and used ground-based geophysics to further delineate the Williams zone. The anomaly was covered with overburden and dense forest, so our next move was to strip back the overburden by hand and sample the bedrock, which turned out to be the first rock samples ever taken from the Williams zone,” Blady said.
“The first Williams Zone hole was the culmination of the last three years of slow, methodical exploration work that led to the success we had: HNK-18-001, 327 meters grading 0.31% copper, 0.35 g/t gold, 1.94 g/t silver, which we released on August 14. An initial discovery hole of this magnitude is very exciting for our geologic team and company. Deposits in the Golden Triangle need to be large and high grade to be of economic value; this discovery is a huge step in the right direction.”
In September, Golden Ridge announced its drilling continues to intersect broad intervals of copper-gold mineralization at Williams, with holes HNK-18-005 and HNK-18-002 intersecting similar geology to HNK-18-001: 326 meters grading 0.36 g/t gold, 0.29% copper and 1.92 g/t silver for HNK-18-005 and 276.15 meters grading 0.31% copper, 0.24 g/t gold and 2.33 g/t silver on HNK-18-002.
Chris Paul, vice president of exploration for Golden Ridge, noted, “The continuity of grade and thickness at the Williams Zone is very encouraging, as are the increasing grades toward the east. The abrupt change in grade across the fault to the east suggests a portion of the high grade has been displaced, possibly downwards, and the true thickness and grade of the Williams is yet to be seen.”
Golden Ridge is also conducting Induced Polarization (IP) surveys, and in late August reported successful results.
“The IP survey successfully delineated a strong chargeability anomaly which is coincident with the porphyry …read more
From:: The Gold Report