Sitka’s success has made the adjacent Barney Ridge even more valuable.
More than a year before the expiry of a five-year option, Sitka Gold (TSXV:SIG, FSE:1RF, OTCQB: SITKF) has secured the strategically located Barney Ridge property adjacent to its Clear Creak property as part of its RC Gold Project in Yukon’s Tombstone Gold Belt. Barney Ridge (see Figure 1) is located approximately seven kilometers west of the Blackjack gold deposit and is adjacent to Victoria Gold’s Clear Creek project.
The earn-in for the property has been ongoing since 2020 and has now been completed ahead of schedule through an amendment agreement. Sitka has completed all exploration requirements and made all cash and share payments under the option agreement. The amendment provides for the vendor to waive the balance of future exploration expenditures and instead receive a final payment of $60,000 in cash and 550,000 shares.
Barney Ridge is 17.8 square kilometers in size and is accessible by road. The property has never been drill tested. The contiguous claim group contains what is known as the Barney Stock, a mid-Cretaceous intrusion measuring approximately 2 km by 1 km (see Figures 1 and 2). The gold deposits associated with the intrusion at Barney Ridge have gold mineralization equivalent to the gold mineralization at the nearby Blackjack and Eiger gold deposits.
Cor Coe, CEO and Director of Sitka Gold, commented: “We are very pleased to have reached an agreement that gives Sitka 100% ownership of the Barney Ridge property. The Barney intrusive has a very large surface area and has many of the same mineral characteristics as the nearby intrusions in our growing Blackjack and Eiger gold deposits. The Barney Ridge property has always been a key component of the RC Gold Project’s consolidated land package.”
Exploration work completed to date on the Barney property has included limited soil sampling, prospecting and trenching, and an airborne magnetic survey (MAG) (see Figures 3 and 4). This work identified three areas of significant gold mineralization within or adjacent to the 2 km by 1 km Barney Stock: the Clover Zone, the Lucky Charm Zone and the Leprechaun Zone (Figure 2).
In the Clover Zone, rock sampling returned grab samples of quartz veins with gold values up to 2.87 g/t Au in an 800 m by 500 m area on the northern margin of the Barney Stock. In the 600m by 125m Lucky Charm zone, prospecting returned samples with assays up to 7.61 g/t Au; trenching returned up to 7.0m of 0.65 g/t gold and 0.8m of 7.72 g/t gold. This zone remains open in all directions. The Leprechaun Zone occurs in metasedimentary rocks east of the Barney Stock and is defined by a 1.5 km by 0.5 km soil anomaly with >30 ppb Au. Trenching within the anomaly returned rock samples ranging from discovery to 2.07 g/t Au.
Summary: When Sitka Gold negotiated earn-in terms for the neighboring Barney Ridge property in 2020, exploration on its own project was still in its infancy. The eponymous discovery drilling of “Blackjack” did not follow until the end of 2021 – in drill hole 21. Ever since, the project has been growing with a series of highly efficient drill holes that have added an average of 100,000 ounces of gold per 100 meters of drilling to date. The Maiden resource was presented in early 2023. Sitka’s success has certainly made the adjacent Barney Ridge even more valuable. In this respect, Sitka had the foresight to secure the asset early – on pre-discovery terms. Sitka will certainly seek to apply its knowledge from the Blackjack exploration, which has recently led to the discovery of potentially higher grade structures with visible gold, to Barney Ridge. It is no coincidence that CEO Cor Coe has described Barney Ridge as a “key component”. Barney adds another prospective target for Sitka with the potential to host intrusion-related gold deposits of significant size and grade. Of note in this context is the Saddle Zone target between Blackjack and Eiger that contains the largest and strongest gold-in-soil anomaly on the Clear Creek property which, like Barney Ridge, has not yet been drill tested.
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