Goldcliff Adds Targets, Mineralization and Uranium
By Anne Fletcher
The first results from this year’s exploration are telling Goldcliff Resource Corporation (TSX.V: GCN) that the historical Hedley gold district still has plenty of life left in it.
And while ongoing exploration has helped the company expand the potential resource in Hedley, news from the company elsewhere promises further shareholder growth. At it’s Ainsworth silver and molybdenum property BC’s Kootenay region, several new exploration targets have been identified.
And in early December, the announcement that the company had diversified with a uranium project in southeastern BC.
The uranium announcement comes on the heels of a report from Salman Partners’ predicting that uranium prices may reach $200/lb within the next three to five years due to lack of new supply coming on stream.
Salman Partners' Senior Mining Analyst Ray Goldie and Research Associate Patrick Donnelly have predicted that uranium prices could reach $200/lb in the next three to five years due to a lack of new mine supply.
Salman Partners' Senior Mining Analyst Ray Goldie and Research Associate Patrick Donnelly stated that the spot price of uranium will average $102/lb this year, $162.50 in 2008, $186.85 in 2009, and $191.87 in 2010. Goldie predicted that the world's top uranium producer, Canada's Cameco, will realize average prices of $38.69/lb this year, $71.92 in 2008, $88.94 in 2009, and $106.25 in 2010.
The new uranium properties consist of four separate claim blocks – Duhamel Creek, Wilson Creek, Mount McGregor and Willow Point – and have uranium values as high as 430 parts per million – 0.043%. These anomalous uranium values are from 6 to 27 times higher than the average uranium value of 16 ppm uranium in the region.
These uranium values are also higher than those found to date at Goldcliff’s other uranium project in the area, the Big Sheep Creek property, where an airborne geophysical survey was recently completed.
High uranium values were first discovered here by the British Columbia Geological Survey during a regional stream sediment sampling program in the 1970s, which returned a number of anomalous uranium values, including two samples exceeding 300 parts per million or 0.03 % uranium.
Adding value at Panorama Ridge
The surface gold trenching results of the 2007 trenching program at Goldcliff's 100%-owned Panorama Ridge property near Hedley, BC, to date, indicate the two most significantly developed zones – the York-Viking and the Nordic – remain open for expansion.
The trenching program consisted of 29 trenches totaling 1,008 meters of surface sampling, eight of which have so far been reported. Highlights included 19 meters grading 2.15 g/t gold (Au). The gold results expand the mineralization in the northeast towards the Nordic zone.
Of the three zones, the Nordic trenches returned the highest gold values and extended the gold mineralization by 17 meters in a northerly direction, exposing new gold mineralization beyond the known surface showings.
After five seasons of exploration, Goldcliff is expecting this year’s data to define a significant gold resource.
The 10,528-hectare Panorama Ridge property is six kilometers northeast of Hedley and four kilometers east of the past gold-producing Nickel Plate-Mascot mine. The area produced gold continuously from 1904 to 1996, with more than 97% of the 2.5 million ounces coming from the Nickel Plate deposit.
The Panorama Ridge property contains a large surface area of gold mineralization related to silica-iron alteration (skarn) in sedimentary rocks from the Hedley Formation of the Triassic Nicola Group. The gold mineralization occurs over an area of approximately two square kilometers, only 0.72 square kilometers of which (or 36 per cent) consist of the York-Viking gold zone. Thus, the new higher grade results from the Nordic zone represents a significant added value to the company’s investors.
Prior to the 2007 exploration program, the trenching and drilling in the York-Viking zone outlined an area of gold mineralization measuring 375 meters in a northeast-southwest direction and 193 meters.
New Targets at Ainsworth
The Ainsworth property covers 56,997 hectares in the Selkirk and Purcell Mountains of the Kootenay region. The property is located on both sides of Kootenay Lake and includes the historic Ainsworth silver district with 44 million ounces of historical silver production.
This season’s airborne survey covered 910 line kilometers over 16,000 hectares while the stream sediment sampling and prospecting program was a detailed follow-up to the British Columbia Geological Survey’s regional stream sediment sampling program. That program returned a number of anomalous precious and base metal values.
The majority of the targets so far identified from the airborne data occur in covered regions and were not discovered by previous exploration – the company is clearly looking to discover deposits and mineralization associated with areas of past production. The new targets occur both at depth below overburden and in surface outcrops containing favourable geology for silver deposits.
Goldcliff’s silver-deposit exploration model focuses on the younger intrusions as the source of the silver mineralization and the older intrusions/sediments as the receiver of the silver mineralization. The traditional silver mined in the district was high grade and came from shears and veins in intrusive and sedimentary rocks.
The silver deposits that were mined had grades of 1,000 to 2,000 grams per tonne silver. As such, Goldcliff’s silver model targets the lower-grade silver mineralization of 100 to 500 grams per tonne and has bulk-tonnage potential within these rocks.
Goldcliff’s silver-deposit exploration model (silver-dissemination model) consists of targeting the host rocks that are associated with breccias, structural breaks, stock-works and intrusive sedimentary contacts.
This silver-dissemination model is seen on the west side of Kootenay Lake, in the Ainsworth district, where high grade silver deposits occur along and within the geological rocks that exhibit these features.
On the east side of Kootenay Lake, Goldcliff is targeting molybdenum mineralization and is particularly interested in the Loki molybdenum occurrence that is located on its claims.
In 1980, Duval International Corp. discovered the Loki molybdenum showing after identifying a kilometre-long molybdenum soil geochemical anomaly in a porphyry geological setting. The Loki showing contains values as high as 1,180 parts per million, or 0.12 per cent molybdenum from outcrop.
This article is intended for information purposes only, and is not a recommendation to buy or sell the equities of any company mentioned herein. It is based on sources believed to be reliable, but no warranty as to accuracy is expressed or implied. The opinions expressed in the article are those of the author except where statements are attributed to individuals other than the author, in which case the opinions are those of the individual to whom they are attributed.
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