Highlights
- Initial Phase 1 drill program underway: First phase of a planned 16,000-meter diamond drill program comprises approximately 8,000 meters (~26,250 feet) of drilling.
- Testing depth beyond RC reach: Oriented diamond drill core will test targets that the Company’s 2026 reverse circulation (“RC”) rig was unable to reach, including the deeper portions of the porphyry system.
- Follow-up of high-grade copper:
- SUN26-001R: 12.19 meters of 1.45% Cu from 251 meters, 13.72 meters of 1.05% from 274 meters and 3.05 meters of 2.75% at 314 meters.
- SUN26-002R: 60.96 meters of 0.93% Cu and 60.96 meters of 0.90% Cu including 13.72m of 1.47% Cu at 302m.
- SUN26-003R: 12.19 meters of 1.04% Cu from 15 meters
- Permitted drill sites: Phase one holes are located on drill sites approved under the Project’s existing Plan of Operations.
Beyond the Headline
Diamond drilling commenced November 2nd at the 67.5%-owned Sunnyside project in southern Arizona. The first phase comprises approximately 8,000m, part of a planned 16,000m program. Drilling is funded by Barksdale’s recently completed C$15.7 million financing.
The principal objective is to test deeper copper mineralization that previous reverse-circulation drilling could not reach. Oriented diamond core will provide improved geological, structural and metallurgical information.
An airborne ZTEM survey has been completed, with final results expected in early December.
Comments
The new diamond drilling program will provide a much better test of the large Sunnyside copper system. Previously drilled RC hole SUN26-002R intersected 393.19m @ 0.45%Cu from 0.05m including two 60.06m long sections grading 0.94% and 0.90% respectively. This hole ended in mineralization at 396.24m indicating that the mineralized system remains open at depth.
RC drilling is limited by depth and also lacks for good geological information from chip samples especially for structure which is critical to understanding porphyry-epithermal systems.
The Company believes that it has identified a large zone of copper lode vein mineralization that is continuous over approximately 1km of strike and continues to depths of up to 1km and remains open to the west and to the south for several kilometres. Their working hypothesis is that the copper lode veins follow a northwest-southeast structural trend that controls their distribution, and that they are proximally sourced from a much larger porphyry Cu-Mo deposit. The newly announced diamond drilling program will provide a good test of this system and provide much needed structural information to assess controls on copper mineralization.