Silver North Resources (TSX–V:SNAG) (OTCQB:TARSF) is working with partner Coeur Mining (NYSE:CDE) to develop the Tim property, located on the Yukon side of the Yukon-British Columbia border.

The company this week announced that Coeur has started drilling at Tim. Current plans are to drill approximately 2,000 meters, targeting silver-lead-zinc Carbonate

Replacement Deposit (CRD) mineralization similar to that found at Coeur’s Silvertip property 19 km south of Tim.

Option agreement

Silver North has an option agreement with Coeur, which can earn a 51% interest in the Tim property by spending a minimum $3.15 million on exploration and making cash payments totaling $275,000 by the end of 2026. Coeur must spend at least $700,000 in 2024. Coeur can boost its ownership to 80% by making two additional cash payments of $100,000 in 2027 and 2028, completing a feasibility study, and informing Silver North of its intention to develop a mine at Tim by Dec. 16, 2028.

“We are extremely pleased to be partnered with Coeur at Tim. They have been great partners and importantly, bring their expertise from Silvertip, exploring these same rocks for CRD silver-lead-zinc deposits. This is great leverage to potential discovery for Silver North shareholders,” said CEO Jason Weber, adding; “Now that the Tim program is underway we can set our sights on getting drilling started at Haldane later this summer.”

Haldane property

SNAG’s Haldane property is 25 kilometers west of the main Keno Hill deposits in the Yukon territory, and south of Victoria Gold’s Eagle mine, which poured its first gold in 2019. The 8,164-hectare land package hosts structurally controlled silver veins containing galena, sphalerite, and tetrahedrite-tennantite in quartz-siderite gangue.

The Keno Hill Silver District was Canada’s second largest primary silver producer and one of the richest silver-lead-zinc deposits ever mined.

Silver North focused on Keno Hill silver-mining district — Richard Mills

Silver North: the next pure silver play — Richard Mills

The company says the project is located adjacent to, and has the same rocks as Hecla Mining’s (NYSE:HL) high-grade Keno Hill silver mine.

In 2021 Silver North announced a new discovery at the West Fault Zone.

The goal was to find Keno-type mineralization and at least 300 grams-per-tonne rock over a comfortable mining width of 4 meters. They achieved that with the West Fault discovery of 311 g/t Ag over 8.7m. This was followed by 3.14m of 1,315 g/t silver.

According to Silver North, this new zone has been traced over a 100- by 90-meter area with room to expand along strike and at depth.

CRD deposits

Carbonate Replacement Deposits (CRD) are for many geologists their favorite type of deposit because they contain some of the most interesting assemblages of mineralization.

These deposits are also known as high temperature carbonate-hosted gold-lead-zinc deposits because their formation requires high temperatures over 250 degrees C. The orebody is formed by the replacement of sedimentary, usually carbonate rock, by minerals-laden solutions found near porphyry intrusion.

This replacement process results in the formation of deposits that are remarkably similar in terms of their mineralogy (how the minerals are spread throughout the deposit) as well as in the formation of crystals.

Examples of CRD discoveries based on this model include:

• Bingham Canyon in Utah, a long-running open-pit mine that extracts a huge porphyry copper deposit containing 17 million tonnes of copper, 23 million ounces of gold, 190Moz of silver and 850 million pounds of molybdenum.
• MAG Silver’s Cinco de Mayo property in Chihuahua state, Mexico.
• Arizona Mining’s Taylor deposit which South 32 bought for $1.8 billion.
• RC Consortium’s Resolution Copper deposit estimated to contain enough copper to produce 40 billion pounds over 40 years.
• Newmont Goldcorp’s Penasquito mine in Mexico, which is the fifth largest silver mine in the world @ 17.8 million ounces of gold and 1.08 billion ounces of silver.

Besides their common formation, all CRD deposits are polymetallic, meaning they have various metals in them including precious (gold, silver) and base metals (copper, lead, zinc). The mineralization may extend up to 7 or 8 kilometers from the intrusive stock, the porphyry, and the mineralogy changes as you move out from the core.

They are especially important for mining because of their large scale and high grades, containing between 10 and 150 million tons of economically mineable minerals. Moreover, they can be closely related and proximal to large porphyry systems.

Unlike deposit types found at surface, which are typically mined in open pits, CRDs’ environmental footprints are much smaller because it’s high-grade underground mining.

Drilling at Tim

At Tim, drilling will be from up to six pads, testing the potential for CRD mineralization along almost 2,000 meters of strike length. Drilling will target both structurally-hosted “chimney-style” mineralization and stratigraphically controlled “manto” mineralization.

A 2022 program conducted by Coeur to verify previous trench sampling returned 468.1 g/t silver, 21.1% lead, and 0.3% zinc over 4.0 meters from one re-opened trench. Another, located approximately 200 meters along strike, returned 265.0 g/t silver, 6.7% lead and 0.9% zinc over 8.8m.

Silver North views Tim as a high-priority exploration target as it exhibits similar geological characteristics to Coeur’s Silvertip project.

The 2024 program is conducted under the direction of Coeur’s exploration team based at Silvertip.

Silver North Resources

TSXV:SNAG, OTCQB:TARSF
Cdn$0.145 2024.07.05
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Market cap Cdn$6.81m
SNAG website

Richard does not own shares of Silver North Resources (TSX-V:SNAG). SNAG is a paid advertiser on his site aheadoftheherd.com

This article is issued on behalf of SNAG