RC GOLD PROJECT
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Target
The RC Gold Project, comprised of the RC Gold, Mahtin, Clear Creek and Barney Ridge properties, is a district scale land package of 1,891 claims covering approximately 376 square kilometres (37,600 hectares or 92,900 acres) within the geologically fertile and highly prospective Tombstone Gold Belt region (Figures 1 & 2). The target at the RC Gold Project is an intrusion-related gold deposit similar to other intrusion-related gold deposits that exist throughout the Tombstone Gold Belt such as Victoria Gold’s Eagle and Olive Deposits (with a combined 4.7 million ounces Au) (1), Golden Predators’ Brewery Creek Deposits (1.5 million ounces gold) (2) and Florin Resources Florin Gold Deposit (2.47 million ounces gold)(3). Numerous placer gold deposits also exist throughout this gold-rich belt. The Tombstone Gold Belt is located within the larger Tintina Gold Belt which also hosts Kinross Golds’ Fort Knox deposit in Alaska (3 million ounces of gold) (4) (see Figure 1).
Figure 1 - RC Gold Project Regional Location Map
(1)https://vgcx.com/development/eagle-gold-project/reserve-resource-statement/
(2)http://www.goldenpredator.com/projects/brewery-creek-mine/
(3)http://stjamesgold.com/st-james-gold-corp-is-pleased-to-announce-updated-resource-on-the-florin-gold-project-yukon-with-an-inferred-resource-of-2474000-oz-of-gold/
(4)[https://www.kinross.com/operations/#americas-fortknox](about:\blank#americas-fortknox)
Location
The RC Gold Project is situated about 100 km east of Dawson City, Yukon at the headwaters of Clear Creek and Big Creek, a major placer mining district that is serviced by a network of gravel roads and trails. A new, well maintained placer mine access road traverses through the south side of the claim block and provides great access across the Property (Figure 2). This road connects to the Clear Creek road which connects to the Klondike Highway, approximately mid-way between Stewart Crossing and Dawson (Figure 1). The contiguous RC Gold Project claim block is strategically located within the heart of the Tombstone Gold Belt and is surrounded by junior mining companies, including a common boundary with Victoria Gold to the west and Florin Resources' 2.47 million ounce gold deposit to the north (Figure 2).
Figure 2 - RC Gold Project Claim Blocks
Project History
Placer Mining first began on Clear Creek in the late 1800's and the first quartz claims were staked in the early 1900's. Placer mining has continued to the present, with a dredge operating on Clear Creek from 1943 to 1954 and again between 1981 and 1987. Several active placer mines continue to operate in the Clear Creek drainage and new placer mining activity has recently begun in Big Creek.
The first modern hard rock exploration in the area took place in the 1970's, targeting silver, tin and tungsten, metals commonly associated with Intrusion Related Gold deposits. High grade gold-silver and silver-lead-zinc veins have also been prospected.
In the 1990's, exploration shifted to bulk tonnage gold after the discovery of the Fort Knox gold deposit in Alaska, in a similar geological environment. Explorers in and around the vicinity of the RC Gold Project included Noranda, Ivanhoe Goldfields, Kennecott and Newmont. These companies carried out geological mapping, geochemical and geophysical surveys and several campaigns of drilling. More recently, in the 2000s, Thor Exploration, StrataGold, Golden Predator, Pacific Ridge and Kestral Gold have explored on the west side of the RC Project, while Ryan Gold (now StrikePoint) explored to the east. AM Gold’s Red Mountain Property, an intrusion-related gold target that is adjacent to the the Project's northern border, has also seen exploration throughout the 2000’s and has a resource of 1.95 million of gold ounces defined.
RC Gold Property (RC, BEE & BOP Claims)
In 2017, the RC Gold Property was optioned to Pacific Ridge Exploration Ltd. who completed a program of geological mapping and property-wide soil sampling that same year. Pacific Ridge conducted additional soil sampling, mapping and a small geophysical survey in 2018. These work programs produced encouraging results with several previously unknown gold-in-soil anomalies shown to be present on the Property. In 2019, after acquiring the Property, Sitka Gold followed up on these results with a soil sampling and geophysical survey program designed to expand and fill in the previous geophysical and geochemical anomalous zones that had been identified. Together, this work has defined several high-priority gold targets where the gold values, plus the associated pathfinder metals, are typical of mineralization associated with Intrusion Related Gold deposits. Two of these mineralized zones appear to be contiguous representing an Intrusion Related Gold target that is 2 km long by 0.5 km wide (see Figure 3). In 2020 Sitka completed 2 helicopter supported drill holes in the Big Creek and Far Grid targets and also flew a LiDAR survey across the western half of the Property.
Figure 3 - Gold in Soil Anomalies at the RC Gold Property
Geological Setting
The area of the RC Gold property is underlain by phyllite, quartzite, calc-phyllite, calc-silicate, grit and marble of the Proterozoic to Early Cambrian Hyland Group. These metasedimentary rocks are imbricated by thrust faults of Jurassic and Early Cretaceous age. The Clear Creek area is in the hanging wall of the Robert Service Thrust.
At the headwaters of Clear Creek, six Tombstone-style intrusions with ages of approximately 92 my, include the Saddle, Eiger, Pukelman, Rhosgobel, Josephine and Big Creek stocks. They have surface exposures ranging from 0.2 to 3.5 km2. The Saddle, Pukelman and Rhosgobel stocks are composed of medium- to coarse-grained quartz monzonite The Josephine and Big Creek stocks are composed of fine- to medium-grained, equigranular granodiorite. The Eiger stock is composed of fine to medium-grained, equigranular diorite with rare mafic phenocrysts.
Contact metamorphism of the Hyland Group country rocks extends for as much as 0.5 km around the stocks and typically occurs as resistant, rusty weathering biotite hornfels.
Mineralization
The RC Gold property lies within the heart of the Tintina Gold Belt. Hart (2005) has estimated a total metal endowment on the order of 70 million ounces of gold. Key deposits include Brewery Creek and the Eagle deposit (Dublin Gulch) in Yukon and Fort Knox, True North, Pogo and Donlin Creek in Alaska. Most of these deposits are characterized by flanking placer gold creeks.
The immediate area of the RC Gold property is characterized by several styles of mineralization associated with the Tombstone-aged intrusions, but the most important of these is sheeted veins, stockworks and breccias that occur within the intrusions and adjacent hornfels. These veins typically contain minor amounts of sulphide, including arsenopyrite, pyrite and rarely pyrrhotite. Other minerals include scheelite (tungsten), molybdenite, galena, chalcopyrite and bismuthinite. Arsenic, bismuth, tellurium, antimony, tungsten and molybdenum are typical pathfinder elements when prospecting for gold in these types of systems.
2020 DRILLING AT THE RC GOLD PROPERTY
The first ever hole drilled at the Big Creek target resulted in a new discovery with 1.2m of 2.47 g/t gold and 23.2 g/t silver. Follow up work is planned for the 2021 season.
CLEAR CREEK PROPERTY
Property Highlights
- Road accessible claim block located in Yukon’s fertile Tombstone Gold Belt.
- Similar geology and regional proximity to several intrusion-related gold deposits including Victoria Gold’s Eagle Gold Mine, Golden Predator’s Brewery Creek Gold Mine and AM Gold’s Red Mountain Gold Deposit (located adjacent to Sitka’s RC Gold Project, see Figure 1)*.
- Claims are contiguous to Sitka’s RC Gold Project and Victoria Gold’s Clear Creek Project. Located at the headwaters of Clear Creek, an active and prolific placer gold mining district with several producing placer gold mines operating in and around the area.
- Previous rock samples from trace up to 319.5 g/t gold and previous soil samples from trace up to 4,384 ppb gold(Huber, 2018).
- Significant previous drilling intercepts include 88 m of 0.65 g/t gold and 22 m of 1.24 g/t gold(Huber, 2018).
- Active Class 3 Land Use Permit allows for a variety exploration activities including drilling, trenching and road building.
Property History
The Clear Creek Property has had intermittent exploration conducted since 1981. Previous work on the Property has outlined several highly anomalous and extensive gold in soil trends on the margins of four intrusions. These anomalies all show strong correlations with bismuth, arsenic, tungsten and silver; similar to geochemical signatures seen at Victoria Gold’s Eagle Gold Project (Dublin Gulch) and Kinross’s Fort Knox. Historical rock samples from the Property have returned values from less that 5 ppb up to 319.5 g/t gold (Huber, 2018). Many of the high grade samples collected on the property are from sheeted quartz veins and quartz arsenopyrite veins often found within or on the margins of the intrusions. Additionally, significant gold grades of up to 25.1 g/t gold have been returned from metasediments with disseminations and weak stockworks of pyrite and arsenopyrite. Several significant intervals have also been recorded from the limited drilling and trenching work completed on the Property returning less than 5 ppb up to 2.11 g/t gold over 25 metres from a trench and 0.65 g/t gold over 88 meters (bottoming in 3.0 metres grading 1.296 g/t gold) from RC drilling (Huber, 2018).
Clear Creek Intrusion Stocks and Mineralization