The Courageous Lake gold project is located in Canada's Northwest Territories. — Photo courtesy Seabridge Gold Seabridge Gold (TSX:SEA) (NYSE:SA) an
The Courageous Lake gold project is located in Canada's Northwest Territories. — Photo courtesy Seabridge Gold
Seabridge Gold (TSX:SEA) (NYSE:SA) announced today that winter drilling at its 100%-owned Courageous Lake Project has successfully identified two new gold zones, Olsen and Marsh Pond, with widths and grades suggesting they could make a contribution to project resources similar to the Walsh Lake Deposit discovered by Seabridge in 2012. This year’s drill program also found two other target zones that, with additional work, could potentially contribute to the resource base at the Courageous Lake Project. Three targets did not return positive results.
Walsh Lake has a near surface inferred resource of 482,000 ounces of gold (4.6 million tonnes grading 3.24 g/T). Metallurgical testing has demonstrated that the material is free-milling with cyanide recoveries as high as 95%.
The 2018 winter drill program at Courageous Lake was designed as an initial drill test of seven targets reporting historical gold occurrences to determine which ones had sufficient grade, strike and width within 200 meters of surface to potentially replicate the Walsh Lake Deposit (see map). All the targets accompany deformation zones within a well-defined stratigraphic package near the contact between metamorphosed volcanic rocks and clastic metasedimentary rocks and each produced a consistent geophysical response. Seabridge has now tested the favourable stratigraphy over a distance of 7.5 kilometers but it can be traced for more than 53kilometers through the entire Seabridge claim block.
Rudi Fronk, Chairman and CEO of Seabridge, commented: “We see the potential for a more economic Courageous Lake Project at current gold prices by mining higher-grade, free-milling satellite deposits like Walsh Lake as well as the refractory reserves in the much larger FAT deposit. We are therefore very pleased with the results from this year’s drilling because we now have two more attractive targets for follow-up work as well as some potentially significant new target ideas we need to evaluate. Our next step is to develop a conceptual design for a greater Courageous Lake operation that could exploit the satellite deposits early in the project life.”
This drill program orientated holes to intersect the targets perpendicular to the strike of the zones, to obtain a true width intersection of the target feature. It is believed that these intervals represent the true width of the target zones, but additional drilling is required to confirm the zone widths.
Both the Marsh Pond and Olsen targets returned results that meet the program’s goals of identifying gold-bearing zones with characteristics similar to the Walsh Lake discovery. These two target zones appear to duplicate the upper and lower stratigraphic intervals found at Walsh Lake. Drill testing is required to determine if these zones could be connected to form a single, larger occurrence.
The Marsh Pond target is recognized over a strike distance of about 400 meters with gold concentrated in a broad zone of silicic alteration, quartz veining and sulfide mineralization. Intercalated within the sedimentary rocks in the Marsh Pond target are narrow felsic volcanic units. These units show more intense silica alteration, sulfide mineralization and consistently higher gold grades.
Thus far, the target at Olsen shows roughly 400 meters of strike, represented by a broad zone of silica alteration in fine grained metasedimentary rocks. Deformation in this target is broader than expected and accompanied by intense sericite alteration with intervals of abundant quartz veining.
North Bulldog was originally thought to be two parallel geophysical anomalies which were targeted separately in this drill program. These anomalies have now been consolidated into a single target zone just over 1,000 meters in strike length. The North Bulldog area returned numerous intervals with grades below our requirements. A broad deformation zone at the contact of sedimentary rocks and mafic volcanic rocks contains localized quartz veining and silica-sericite alteration. In addition, intervals of silica alteration and quartz veining were discovered above the deformed contact in fine grained sedimentary rock. The size of this target and an abundance of gold in these holes warrant more effort to refine a target that could meet grade requirements.
Perrson is a gold-bearing vein in an isolated surface exposure within a historic prospect pit. Expectations were for this to be a discreet occurrence along the target stratigraphic contact. The wide vein and structural off-sets provide evidence that this target could be the southern terminus of the Walsh Lake deposit. Additional work is required to establish this connection but this target remains a priority as it could significantly expand the limits of the Walsh Lake deposit.
The Courageous Lake Project covers almost all of the 53 km long Mathews Lake Greenstone Belt (MLGB) which hosts Seabridge's Felsic-Ash-Tuff (FAT) deposit. A July 2012 Pre-feasibility Study estimated that the FAT Deposit contains 6.46 million ounces of proven and probable gold reserves over approximately 2.5 kilometers of strike length.
Exploration activities by Seabridge at the Courageous Lake Project were conducted under the supervision of William E. Threlkeld, Registered Professional Geologist, Senior Vice President of the Company and a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101. Mr. Threlkeld has reviewed and approved this news release. A rigorous quality control/quality assurance protocol was employed in this drill program, including blank and certified reference standard inserted by the Company at the rate of not less than one of each type of sample in every assay batch processed by the laboratory. Repeats and re-splits of the sample rejects were analyzed at a rate of not less than one sample in every 25. Samples were assayed at an ISO certified laboratory in Vancouver, B. C. using fire assay atomic adsorption methods for gold and total digestion ICP methods for other elements. Intervals that returned greater than 10g/T Au were re-assayed using gravimetric finishes. Intervals with very high gold grades and surrounding intervals were also analysed using metallic screen fire assay techniques; this method was completed on 2.5% of the analyses. Cross-check analyses were conducted at a second external laboratory on 10% of the samples.
Seabridge Gold holds a 100% interest in several North American gold resource projects. The Company's principal assets are the KSM and Iskut properties located near Stewart, British Columbia, Canada and the Courageous Lake gold project located in Canada's Northwest Territories. For a breakdown of Seabridge's mineral reserves and resources by project and category please visit the Company's website at http://www.seabridgegold.net/resources.php.
