Kodiak Copper Corp TSXV:KDK has reported a new high grade gold-silver discovery on the surface of the Beyer Zone at its 100% owned MPD property in British Columbia. This sits within a 2.2 km gold-in-soil trend.
Trenching at the Beyer Zone was part of Kodiak’s broader, regional exploration program to evaluate untested copper-gold targets across the MPD property. Kodiak said the work has been conducted in parallel with its fully funded 25,000 metre drill program on several copper-gold porphyry targets, from which further results will continue to be reported.
“The Beyer gold-silver discovery is an exciting new development as it sits within a multi-kilometre, completely untested new gold-in-soil trend,” said Claudia Tornquist, CEO of Kodiak. “It is remarkable because this is the first time sizeable intervals of high-grade gold-silver mineralisation have been trenched at the MPD project.”
Tornquist said that mineralisation and alteration are open along strike, making extension of these trenches an obvious follow-up for 2023. “The Beyer discovery is a testament to the outstanding prospectivity of the MPD Project and adds new upside and value creation potential for our shareholders,” she commented.
Highlights of the find
A 2022 surface sample taken prior to trenching the Beyer Zone assayed 14.15 grams per tonne gold and 9.40 g/t silver. Trench sampling expanded this new surface gold-silver discovery to 3.02 g/t gold and 24.18 g/t silver over 12 metres, including 5.29 g/t gold and 27.70 g/t silver over 2 metres in north-south Trench 22-015.
Trench sampling east-west also assayed 9.11 g/t gold and 24.00 g/t silver over 2 metres, with a parallel zone 8 metres west assaying 2.60 g/t gold and 10.10 g/t silver over 2 metres in Trench 22-016.
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Approximately 14 metres of hydrothermally altered and mineralised rock has been exposed in the two trenches excavated to date, which remains open to extension.
Kodiak said that the Beyer Zone discovery was made within a 2.2 kilometre long, 750 metre wide gold-in-soil corridor discovered during Kodiak’s 2019 and 2021 soil sampling. Trenching at the Beyer Zone followed up gold-in-soil anomalies and a chip sample previously reported by Kodiak that assayed 11.75 g/t and 42.5 g/t silver over 2.3 metres. The miner said this week that the Beyer Zone is slated for additional trenching and drilling as part of the 2023 program.
Why the Beyer Zone?
The gold discovery may surprise some investors who saw Kodiak Copper as a strictly copper-focused play. However results from Kodiak’s 2019 and 2021 soil sampling programs identified a new gold-silver target 400 metres south of the historic Man Zone, now called the Beyer Zone. This target lies within a broad 750 metre wide corridor of gold geochemical anomalies in an area not yet tested by any drilling. Follow-up prospecting in 2021 returned values of 11.75 g/t Au, and 42.5 g/t Ag from a 2.3 metre chip sample.
The Beyer Zone is a hydrothermal alteration zone associated with a southerly trending contact or related shearing that separates quartz diorite porphyry on the west side, from a more strongly altered hornblende pyric diorite unit to the east.
The discovery will be very interesting for Kodiak shareholders, as it considerably expands the prospects for the MPD Project outside of its copper prospecting focus.
