Skybridge scoring good grades in Nunavut

VANCOUVER–The Downie brothers are at it again.

Last September the brothers, who founded and ultimately sold Wolfden Resources to Australian major Zinifex — now part of Oz Minerals (OZL-A) — for $361 million, along with their friend Abraham Drost, announced their new exploration vehicle: Skybridge Development (SBD-V). To qualify for listing on the Venture board, the new company took over Alyris Gold, a small Ontario-based junior with only one asset.

It is into that one asset — the Blue Caribou copper-molybdenum and gold prospect in southern Nunavut — that the three men are now pouring their combined efforts. And initial results suggest the property has potential.

The 200-sq.-km property is a mixture of quartz diorite and granodiorite with a snake of mafic volcanics running from north to south. At the north end of the snake is the Blue Caribou Copper zone; down at the south end the rocks are more prospective for gold.

As Skybridge president and CEO Drost describes it, the copper and gold targets in a granodiorite-dominated terrane evoke an iron oxide-copper- gold (IOCG) mineral deposit model near the intersection of the Bathurst Fault zone and the Thelon Front magmatic zone. Based on this theory, the team developed plans for a 3,000-metre drill program focused primarily on the Copper zone, which has seen limited drilling in the past, but also including some holes into the previously untested gold zone.

Drilling at the Copper zone has already delineated an 800-metre strike length for the shallowly dipping, quartz-breccia target, which remains open downdip. The first drill holes probed the Elbow zone, at the north end of the Copper zone. It was a good place to start because it returned some of the best results to date.

Hole 6 cut 5 metres grading 4.28% copper, 0.174% molybdenum, 41.79 grams silver per tonne and 0.172 gram gold from 30 metres depth. Hole 2 produced a 9.8- metre intercept grading 3.08% copper, 0.007% moly, 32.25 grams silver and 0.24 gram gold from 40 metres. The results from hole 3 were similar: 8.9 metres of 3.62% copper, 0.028% molybdenum, 34.54 grams silver and 0.164 gram gold. And hole 8 cut 10 metres averaging 3.19% copper, 0.059% moly, 35.4 grams silver and 0.152 gram gold.

Moving a few hundred metres southwest, the drill then tested the trench zone, where as the name implies, Skybridge conducted trenching last year. Results were strong: the average grades over a 12-metre trench were 2.58% copper, 0.12% molybdenum, 25.85 grams silver and 0.31 gram gold.

And drill results confirmed mineralization at depth. Hole 17 returned 10.47% copper, 0.045% molybdenum, 184.14 grams silver and 0.114 gram gold over half a metre at 33 metres depth. Hole 14 returned a longer interval: 4.5 metres grading 2.48% copper, 0.129% moly, 37.72 grams silver and 0.103 gram gold from 50 metres down-hole. And hole 15 cored 1 metre of 3.97% copper, 0.041% molybdenum, 50.16 grams silver and 0.176 gram gold.

Mineralization is primarily clean chalcopyrite with minor molybdenite and disseminated silver and gold.

Moving to the northwest, grab samples started returning less copper but more gold, leading Skybridge to dub the area the gold zone. Those grab samples returned grades as high as 7.3 grams gold at the north end of the target and 67.71 grams gold from the south end. The samples came from an area of highly altered host rocks containing swarms of quartz veins. And the host rocks appear to line up with an 8-km-long magnetic high as well as several electromagnetic conductors. Since the area had not yet seen any drilling, the company punched three holes into the zone. Results for those holes are still pending.

The project is in a good location, especially compared with many projects in Northern Canada. A proposed deepwater port at the south end of Bathurst Inlet would be roughly 150 km away from the project. A proposed road — also part of the Inuit-led BIPAR road and port system, currently in the permitting stage — would cover most of that distance.

Skybridge debuted on the Venture board in May at $1. Its share price peaked at $1.15 in mid-June and now sits around the 50-mark. The company has 15.8 million shares issued.