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White Rock prepares

for Last Chance

by Dominic Piper

White Rock began drilling on its
Last Chance gold prospect in June

resh from a successful capital raising, White Rock Minerals “We want to be drilling by the end of July but to do that the
FLtd has kicked off its northern summer exploration campaign programme needs to be well planned and executed because
at the Last Chance project in Alaska. you want to maximise the time you have in the field.”
White Rock raised $7 million in May to fund exploration at It is an exciting time for Gill and exploration manager Rohan
Last Chance, a new prospect on the prolific Tintina gold belt in Worland after the two spent the first few months of 2020
central Alaska, home to Tier 1 deposits such as Donlan Creek punting the project around Australia and North America.
(45 moz), Fort Knox (13.5 moz) and Northern Star Resources “Rohan and I always believed in the project, but we did begin
Ltd’s Pogo (10 moz). to wonder about it when we were struggling to get traction,”
White Rock managing director Matt Gill told GMJ the funds Gill said. “Then in March, just before COVID-19 hit, we went to
would be used to rapidly define drill targets. PDAC in Canada and those who we talked to understood what
“The plan is for the geology crews to get on the ground we were trying to do.”
and immediately start mapping, sampling and undertaking Many of those showing interest participated in the May capital
geochemical work to identify drill targets,” Gill said. “The raising, including Palisades Goldcorp, a new Canadian
exploration season is short, June to September, so you have to resource merchant bank, and Denver-based Crescat Capital.
hit the ground hard.” Also among the new investors is Quinton Hennigh, well-known
The start of drilling comes less than a year after Last Chance in Australia for his leadership of Novo Resources Corp and its
was identified during a stream sediment sampling largely Pilbara conglomerates project.
designed to find VMS base metal prospects on its wider Red In June, Hennigh was appointed technical adviser to assist
Mountain project. White Rock with exploration at Last Chance.
The company already has a combined inferred resource of “The Last Chance gold anomaly displays the highest clay
9.1mt @ 12.9% zinc equivalent on the Dry Creek and WTF fraction stream gold analyses I have ever seen, and the footprint
deposits and was on the hunt, along with major shareholder to gold anomalism is huge,” Henningh said. “My suspicion
Sandfire Resources NL, for more when the stream sampling is that the reason for the very high gold clay fraction stream
unearthed Last Chance. values is that the style of mineralisation that might be present
A regional gold-arsenic-antimony anomaly covering 15sq km, is potentially epizonal in nature. Epizonal gold mineralisation
Last Chance returned strong gold numbers from 27 sample forms at a high level within an orogenic gold system and can
points. White Rock said the anomaly was spatially associated potentially be high grade.”
with a suite of exposed Cretaceous granites the same age as White Rock is one of around a dozen Australian miners and
those linked to the Tintina belt’s major gold deposits. explorers now active in Alaska and elsewhere inside the Arctic
“We knew we were in gold country so we assayed for gold as Circle. For Gill, the jurisdiction is one of the most attractive in
well,” Gill said. It is the same geology as Pogo which is less the world.
than 200km away so when we got the assays back late last “Alaska is a bit like the last frontier,” he said. “It is geologically
year, we immediately pegged the ground and announced the highly prospective and relatively underexplored. It is a first-
prospect. class jurisdiction and is mining friendly.”

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