American West: New Discovery and High Copper Grades
Copper explorer American West Metals (WKN A3DE4Y / ASX AW1) has identified up to 42.8% copper on its Canadian Storm project. The spectacular 0.3-meter-thick mineralized section was drilled at a depth of only 67 meters. Additionally, American West discovered an entirely new mineralized zone.
The extremely high-grade find, originating from the 4100N zone of the Storm project, was part of a 46-meter-thick section with 2.2% copper from 64 meters depth. This also included a section of 15.6 meters with 4.2% copper from 65 meters depth.
Furthermore, another drill hole from the 2750N zone revealed 27.4 meters with 1.5% copper from the surface, including 7.6 meters with 4% copper from 7.6 meters. A deeper section of the same drill hole yielded 27.4 meters with 1.3% copper from 30.5 meters depth, including 9.1 meters with 2.15% copper from 33.5 meters.
New Near-Surface Discovery Made
As American West also announced, a new, near-surface mineralization was discovered with another reverse circulation drill hole in a little-explored area between zones 2750N, 2200N, and the Thunder areas. The company has named this new copper discovery ‘Lightning Ridge’. It is located in an area where massive chalcocite and large-scale faults are exposed.
With this drill hole, American West had targeted a previously uninvestigated anomaly identified using a VTEM (Versatile Time-domain Electromagnetic) survey. In total, the company reports, further promising structures have been discovered over a distance of more than 10 kilometers.
The Nunavut Projects
Storm is part of the so-called Nunavut projects in Canada, which also include the Seal zinc project. The Nunavut projects are owned by Aston Bay Holdings, but American West is the operator and has the option to secure 80% of the areas. Historical drilling had also yielded high copper values.
According to their own statements, American West plans to establish an initial resource with this year’s drilling, which will relate to the 4100N, 2750N, and 2200N zones, where high-grade copper mineralization begins at the surface. Further results from the recent drilling phase are still pending, which should provide additional indications of what this initial resource might look like.
Simultaneously, the company continues ore sorting, processing, and process optimization for a variety of ore types from the 2750N and 4100N zones. Work on resource modeling and estimation is also ongoing. However, field activities for the drilling and exploration program have been temporarily suspended due to forest fires in Yellowknife. These led to the evacuation of the city and restrictions on access to the airport, which is now only open for emergency purposes.
Conclusion: In any case, as American West’s Managing Director Dave O’Neill explains, the continuity and consistency of mineralization in the 4100N zone have been confirmed once again with the latest drilling results, which of course include the extremely enriched zones with up to 43% copper. And the American West CEO explicitly points out that this is the area that should underpin the property’s first resource classification.
