Alaska Explorer Looks To Expand Exceptional Silver-Lead-Zinc Discovery

^{WAM is focused on discovery of high-grade, district-scale ore systems in the historic Illinois Creek Mining District located in western Alaska.} 

If you are new to mining stocks, carbonate replacement deposit (CRD) may sound like a forbidding term.

But CRDs are a key target for modern explorers. They are typically large areas of mineralization that often contain high grades of silver, lead and zinc. CRDs account for a sizable portion of Mexico’s silver production.

According to Peter Megaw, a geologist with 40 years of industry experience and an expert in CRDs, the ore deposits that supported ancient Greece were CRDs. “Arguably then,” Megaw says, “CRDs are the foundation of Western Civilization.”

One of the CRDs Megaw is currently involved with is Western Alaska Minerals Corp. WAM’s Waterpump Creek target, part of the company’s district-scale Illinois Creek project in west-central Alaska. Megaw is technical advisor to WAM and part of a deep bench of talented geologists.

Illinois Creek’s Alaska location gives it a distinct advantage over projects in less stable jurisdictions. It is close to a “Marine Highway” in the Yukon River and benefits from rolling terrain that makes it amenable to development. Moreover, the district and access route to the Yukon River are on Alaska state land, with no underlying ownership, royalties or federal lands issues.

WAM has traded publicly since November 2021, and it has been actively exploring in the Illinois Creek District through its prior stint as a private company for a total of 13 years. 

Drills turning now to upgrade, expand CRD mineralization at Illinois Creek

Within Illinois Creek lies a collection of exploration opportunities, with the notable centerpiece being the CRD deposit at Waterpump Creek. This deposit is distinguished by its rapid expansion, high-grade mineralization, and abundance of silver. The entire 73,000-acre project is owned by WAM.

Waterpump Creek had its high-grade silver “re-discovery” in 2021, when a drill hole intersected 10.5 metres of 522 g/t silver, 22.5% zinc and 14.4% lead. WAM would follow up that hole with 6,000 metres of drilling in 2022. The program had a successful hit rate with the mineralization-intense holes averaging 217 g/t silver, 8.6% zinc and 7.7% lead. Those were some of the best holes in the industry in 2022, and they propelled the company forward.

WAM is currently undergoing its 2023 drill program for Waterpump Creek and surrounding targets. Kit Marrs, the President and CEO of the company says “the program’s two-pronged approach first emphasizes on infill drilling to obtain sufficient information to move toward a resource for Waterpump Creek. We then will follow the trend of the mineralization south to the Last Hurrah target.”

WAM has traced the mineralization at Waterpump Creek for 495 metres along strike. The Last Hurrah target, currently defined as a 1.4-kilometre geophysical anomaly from 2005 data is now being refined by a 3DIP high-resolution geophysical survey. Western Alaska’s geologists believe Last Hurrah could be the fault-offset extension of Waterpump Creek. A successful encounter with CRD mineralization at Last Hurrah during the drilling process could have a transformative impact on the company, unlocking substantial value and paving the way for further advancements. 

^{Kit Marrs and Peter Megaw in the Illinois Creek camp core shack 2022, discussing exploration theses of CRDs}

Led by a team with a deep background in this project and the CRD mineralization style

Marrs is intimately familiar with Illinois Creek, having managed the project when Anaconda Copper discovered a gold target here in 1981. Another company in the 1990s would take that target into production, but low gold prices shuttered it in 1997.

Marrs had gone on to other projects by that point, but he always had the district-scale potential of Illinois Creek in the back of his mind. The property went into the public domain after the mine closed, and Marrs and his wife staked claims over part of the northern half of the district and formed their own private company in 2010.  In 2018, along with Joe Piekenbrock who had also staked parts of the district, Marrs consolidated the land package into a district scale entity.  To Marrs, the fact that the project once hosted a historic mine “shows that we can have a fully permitted mine on site.”

The private entity that owned Illinois Creek prior to going public got all the data from decades of exploration. To assess that data, WAM has Marrs and Chief Exploration Officer Joe Piekenbrock, who has won industry awards for his work on Alaska’s massive Donlin Gold and Bornite Copper deposits. As mentioned, it also has CRD-expert Peter Megaw as a technical advisor. It is a team of ore-finders with decades of experience in Alaska.

Western Alaska’s “good neighbour” policy should help smooth development as the company advances Illinois Creek. According to Marrs, the company “maintains strong, positive relations with the villages in the area by offering job training grants, in-village trainings, open communication by presenting each summer to the tribal councils of the three villages as well as offering tours of the property.” WAM is currently one of the biggest private employers in the area.

With a team of experienced geologists and technical advisors, WAM is well-positioned to capitalize on the high-grade mineralization at Waterpump Creek and explore the potential extension to the Last Hurrah target in 2023.

Michael Gray, analyst at Agentis Capital, sees that extension as one of the major catalysts for WAM’s share price in 2023, an effort that will involve “testing the Last Hurrah manto, testing for an intrusive source and finally an initial resource estimate for Waterpump Creek.”

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