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In a significant departure from our Central American focus of the last few years, Radius recently acquired a large gold target at the head of Ten Mile Creek, roughly 70km south of Dawson City in the Yukon Territory of northern Canada. The Company also staked the Snowcap project in central Yukon. In keeping with Radius's strategy of acquiring and joint venturing quality exploration projects, Radius has optioned out both projects.
60 Mile
Through claim staking and negotiating a number of option deals with local placer gold miners and mineral claim holders, Radius has successfully consolidated the Sixty Mile placer gold district which reportedly produced over 500,000 oz of gold from the creeks that drain the Company's land position. The hard rock source for this placer gold has never been determined. The regional geology, geochemical signature and structural setting have strong similarities to the setting of International Tower Hill's (TSX-V: ITH.V) major Livengood gold discovery in Alaska, a multi-million ounce gold discovery motivated by the search for the source of placer gold in that area.
Gold in the Sixty Mile district was first discovered in 1892 when C. Miller staked claims on what was to become known as Miller Creek. Placer gold mining has been continuous in the district since that time and is still active today. The area was targeted by Kennecott in their Yukon-Alaska intrusion-related bulk tonnage gold program in the 1990s. Kennecott conducted a property-wide reconnaissance soil and stream geochemical sampling program, geological mapping and a 640 line-km helicopter magnetic and radiometric survey.
The soil sampling defined several arsenic/gold anomalies, including a coherent 1.5 km x 2 km-diameter, gold-arsenic soil anomaly on the south side of lower Miller Creek. Mechanized trenching at the accessible southern edge of this anomaly revealed easterly striking sheeted mesothermal quartz veins returning 1.6 g/t gold over a 13 meter interval. Kennecott noted that the mineralization is very similar in style to that found in other metasediment-hosted granite-related porphyry gold systems within the Tintina Gold Belt and that additional work consisting of further soil sampling, trenching and drilling was required to delineate and define the anomaly. However, no further work has been conducted on the property by Kennecott or any other party.
The properties are located approximately 75 km due west of Dawson adjacent to the Yukon-Alaska border. Access to the claims is by the posted 15-km long Sixty Mile road, from the Top of the World Highway.
Snowcap
In late 2009, Radius staked staked a 100% interest in 198 mineral claims (45 square kilometers) known as the Snowcap property in central Yukon Territory considered prospective for epithermal gold mineralization. Tertiary volcanic rocks were first mapped in the Snowcap area in the 1960's by the Geological Survey of Canada. A variety of felsic volcanics have been mapped, including chalcedonic tuffs and phreatic breccias with sinter clasts. Surficial exploration work completed in the late 1980's identified anomalous gold and mercury values in rock, soil, and stream sediment samples closely associated with quartz-sericite-hematite alteration zones near a regional fault which localized the volcanic activity and potential epithermal style mineralization. The project has nearby powerline and road access.
In November 2009, Radius granted an option to earn a 60% interest in the Snowcap project to Wesgold, a private B.C. company which intends to apply for a listing on the TSX Venture Exchange. In order to exercise the option, Wesgold must incur an aggregate of $1,000,000 of exploration expenditures on the property and issue to Radius a total of 1,000,000 Wesgold shares. It is a further condition of the agreement that Wesgold obtain a public listing on the TSX Venture Exchange by May 1, 2010. Once Wesgold has completed its share payments and exploration expenditures, Wesgold and Radius will enter into a 60/40 joint venture to further explore and develop the property.
Wesgold intends to carry out a low-level, high resolution, multi-sensor airborne geophysical survey to map lithological units, structure, and alteration zones at Snowcap. In addition, Wesgold will carry out deep soil sampling to confirm and enhance gold and mercury anomalies identified in the 1980's proximal to a complex sequence of chalcedonic tuffs and phreatic breccias with sinter clasts associated with Tertiary felsic volcanic centers along a 15 kilometre long structural trend. Both Radius and Wesgold consider the known geological and geochemical setting as highly favourable for the location of low-sulfidation, structurally controlled, epithermal gold mineralization.
Ten Mile Creek
Ten Mile Creek is an active placer gold producing creek with significant historic production. The head waters of Ten Mile drain into an area underlain by an intrusive complex of probable Cretaceous age. Work by previous operators in the area identified anomalous gold values in stream sediment, soil and rock samples. The area has never been drill tested.
In 1998, Teck Resources Limited ("Teck") staked over 200 claims in the area and in the following three seasons carried out a reconnaissance program of geological mapping, soil and rock sampling and a minor trenching program on the property. This work outlined 5 gold-mineralized zones hosted in and adjacent to two Mesozoic quartz monzonite intrusive bodies. Their final report summarizes the gold zones as follows:
1. Jual Vein System: Numerous northwesterly trending, flat to moderately dipping quartz veins, stockworks and fault zones occur, with many (gold) values in the 8-16 g/t Au range. Strong northwest trending gold in soil anomalies (values from <5 to 670 ppb Au) cover a 1.4 x 0.6 km area on the Val / Jual grid. Trenching of lower order gold-in-soil anomalies peripheral to the above, yielded results of 1.6 g/t Au over 25m (including 11.1 g/t Au over 3m), and 1.0 g/t Au over 19m (including 8.5 g/t over 1.5m).
2. Cupid Zone: this zone, similar to the Jual, lies 3km to the west and contains mineralized float to 3.5g/t Au. Quartz and altered intrusive boulders, with disseminated sulfide, were uncovered over a 600m by 500m area near Twenty Mile Creek. Galena is the most common sulfide with minor pyrite. The Jual Vein system and the Cupid zone may be connected on the basis of gold anomalous streams and reconnaissance soils with values up to 70ppb Au.
3. Ten Grid: an open ended, 1.6km long gold/arsenic soil anomaly, with values up to 255 ppb Au and 1280 ppm As, occurs 4.5 km to the southeast of the Cupid Zone. The anomaly covers the contact between a metasedimentary unit and an intrusion. The strong correlation between gold and arsenic on the anomaly suggests that the style of mineralization here is distinct from that exposed in the Jual Vein System.
4. Ten West: Quartz vein float with values up to 3.76g/t Au and reconnaissance soil anomalies to 150ppb Au and 220ppm As occur 2km to the southwest of the Ten Grid. The gold/arsenic signature and presence of arsenopyrite suggests a similarity and possible continuity between the Ten Grid and Ten West zones.
5. Galena Creek-Five Mile: At the south end of the property, sheeted quartz veins with values up to 3.98g/t Au, quartz stringers carrying 5.36g/t Au, anomalous reconnaissance soils and local stream sediments exceeding 1g/t Au occur along trend of anomalies.
Much of the Property has not been tested by soil or rock sampling. After completion of a follow-up ground program (to commence shortly), Radius intends to test the above gold targets by drilling.
The property was acquired in part by staking and in part under an option agreement with Bernie Kreft, a Yukon resident and renowned prospector. The option agreement calls for cash and share payments to Mr. Kreft, and an initial sampling program. As well, a 1.0% NSR is payable to Mr. Kreft and a 1.5% NSR is payable to Teck. Radius has the right to reduce the Kreft NSR to 0.25% for $1.0 million.
The historic results reported in this release were outlined in Teck's January 2001 assessment report "2000 Geological and Geochemical report on the Ten Mile Creek Property" filed with the Mining recorders Office, Dawson, Y.T in January 2001. The reader is cautioned that Radius has not yet completed sufficient work to verify Teck's results. However, Teck's exploration work is believed to be of high quality. Samples were prepared and assayed at Eco-Tech Labs, Kamloops. Gold was assayed by Fire Assay/AAS finish, and multi-element geochemistry by ICP Aqua Regia.
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