Projects
Crag East Project
- Major land position in Canada’s only Carlin-type gold district
- Evidence of large scale hydrothermal alteration
The wholly-owned Crag East project, located within the traditional territory of the First Nation of Na-Cho Nyak Dun, covers prospective stratigraphy for Carlin-style gold mineralization within the Rackla Gold Belt, where ATAC Resources Ltd. made several significant gold discoveries within an emerging Carlin-style gold district. The Crag East project adjoins the south side of Rackla Gold Property which is now owned by Hecla Mining.
Crag East Property
The Crag East property is situated in overburden covered terrain 7 km to the south of the Anubis discovery and 12 km to the southwest of its Osiris area, where five significant Carlin-style discoveries have been made, including the Conrad, Osiris, Isis East, Isis, and Sunrise Zones.
The Crag East property has a strong pathfinder geochemical signature of a similar intensity and magnitude to the geochemical response that marks the Anubis and Osiris areas. The largest soil anomalies occur in areas with low topographic relief and little bedrock exposure. The anomaly at the Merlot Zone measures about 4,000 m in length and 2,200 m in width and contains highly elevated pathfinder elements including arsenic values from 100 to 6,950 ppm. The anomaly at the Malbec Zone is 4,000 m long by 100 to 650 m wide. It contains gold values from 10 to 2,410 ppb with very strong pathfinder elements including arsenic (200 to 2,900 ppm), mercury (10 to 28 ppm), antimony (10 to 447 ppm) and thallium (10 to 56.7 ppm).
Drilling to date at the Crag East property is broadly spaced and has intersected many features characteristic of Carlin-style gold deposits, including:
- Abundant realgar and orpiment;
- Favourable geological features – silty limestone, debris flows, styolites and breccias;
- Strong clay alteration and decarbonatization; and
- Intense pathfinder signatures over thick intervals, including 1.03% arsenic, 86.1 ppm mercury and 50.6 ppm thallium across 60.8 m.
While initial drilling has not returned economic grade gold mineralization, the results are consistent with classic Carlin-style zoning, where pathfinder geochemical signatures are typically found above and adjacent to gold zones. See the below cross section from the Deep Star Deposit in Nevada.
Many geochemical anomalies at the Crag East property have not yet been followed up, including low-level gold anomalies, which have proven to be important elsewhere in Rackla Gold District.
