Western Alaska Mining (WAM.V) released the maiden resource calculation on its flagship Illinois Creek project in Alaska. The resource was focusing on Waterpump Creek zone where the company has now defined an initial inferred resource calculation of 2.4 million tonnes at an average grade of 279 g/t silver, 9.84% lead and 11.25% zinc for a total silver-equivalent grade of 977 g/t or a zinc-equivalent grade of in excess of 26%. That’s a good result considering the project has only seen approximately 23,450 meters of drilling in its history.
As the table above shows, this means the maiden resource contains 21.4 million ounces of silver, 518 million pounds of lead and 592 million pounds of zinc. When expressed in a silver- or zinc-equivalent content, the inferred resource stands at 75 million ounces of 1.38 billion pounds respectively. The resource was calculated using a cutoff grade of 200g/t silver-equivalent. The beauty of this resource is that even if you would increase the cutoff grade to 500 g/t or even 600 g/t, the inferred resource would hardly ‘lose’ any ounces or pounds which means the high-grade nature of the mineralized area is very consistent. And even at a cutoff grade of 800 g/t AgEq, the resource would still lose only 10% of the ounces in the base case silver-equivalent resource.
This maiden resource calculation is better than we had anticipated as the average grade comes in 40-50% above our expectations. Which means the maiden resource didn’t contain the 50 million ounces silver-equivalent we were originally aiming for but came in much higher, at 75 million ounces silver-equivalent. This also is just the first stepping stone to establish Illinois Creek as a true CRD district as the company still has plenty of exploration targets to follow up on.
Disclosure: The author has a long position in Western Alaska Minerals. Please read the disclaimer.
