TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Glacial melting has opened up new areas for exploration in British Columbia, where TSX-V-listed Teuton Resources is prospecting its Big Gold property for precious metals, 12 km south-west of Pretium Resources’ prolific Brucejack property.

"This is yet another example of a prospective area being discovered through ablation (meltback) of snow and ice fields. At the time of the first visit in 2006, exposure was quite limited – now the entire side of the mountain has opened up for prospecting,” president Dino Cremonese stated on Wednesday.

Teuton’s Big Gold property was located in the 'Golden Triangle' region of north-western British Columbia, where regional geologist Jeff Kyba had identified a corridor lying 2 km on either side of a ‘red line’ as being highly prospective for the discovery of new deposits. All of the many deposits currently being explored in the region by Seabridge Gold and Pretium Resources were located within 2 km of the contact.

As a poignant example of the potential scale of the region, Pretium had recently received federal approval to build a mine at its Brucejack property and, on September 15, closed a $540-million financing deal to start construction. The Brucejack mine was expected to open in 2017. Seabridge received federal approval late in 2014 and was currently looking at financing options for its multibillion-dollar KSM gold/copper project, immediately west of Pretium's Brucejack property.

PROSPECTING OPTIMISM
Teuton reported that it had discovered a new alteration zone during a routine follow-up of anomalous samples taken during regional reconnaissance conducted in 2006. In the last nine years, the area had opened up completely and was now free from snow and ice for at least 1 km from north to south, and up to 800 m from east to west.

The area was marked by prolific sericite alteration and showed strong shearing. Abundant quartz sericite schist subzones had been discovered, of which two had been tested to date by limited sampling. Teuton was awaiting assays for other subzones.

One of the subzones, traced for at least 150 m and with an unknown length, was up to 10 m to 15 m wide and featured quartz-pyrite mineralisation.

Eight grab samples taken along a 150 m cross-section of the subzone averaged 0.81 g/t of gold equivalent – 0.66 g/t of gold and 10.7 g/t of silver at a 70:1 ratio; gold ranged from 0.04 g/t to 1.82 g/t and silver from 4 g/t to 23.5 g/t.

“It is … pleasing to see that one of the first subzones investigated is gold-bearing. Regionally, quartz sericite schists have proven to be an important host rock for gold deposits. The next stage of work is an extensive rock geochemical survey to define zones of interest followed by diamond drilling of select targets,” Kyba said.

Teuton also advised that representatives from two unnamed mining companies had been to visit and sample the Big Gold property, which was located at an elevation of 1 380 m.

The topography of most of the alteration zone was easily traversable, despite access at present being limited to helicopter. In the future, the property could be accessed by the existing road ending on Teuton's Four J's property and from there directly west up the Frank Mackie Glacier to the property, a distance of some 7 km.