Quaterra stakes ground

A program being planned by Quaterra Resources (QTA-V) will test newly staked ground covering the Big Bar volcanogenic massive sulphide prospect, 110 miles northeast of Nome, on Alaska’s Seward Peninsula.

The prospect was explored by a major company in the early 1980s but was never drilled. Quaterra staked seven 160-acre claims based on their potential for massive sulphide deposits similar to those found in the Ambler district of the southern Brooks Range. Unlike the remote Ambler region, the Big Bar properties are close to tidewater and infrastructure.

The program, scheduled to begin next summer, will consist chiefly of drilling. The land package covers a large geochemical anomaly underlain by a sequence of rhyolitic and felsic tuffaceous schists intercalated with pelitic schists, calcareous mica schists and marble.

No outcropping mineralization has been identified in the prospect area, though the altered schists are highly oxidized and contain limonitic streaks and blebs along the foliation. Gossan fragments found in frost boils and soil samples are anomalous in base metals.