I'm not much for long-form editorial about junior mining stocks these days as everything's been said before, but sometimes it's worth the effort to unpack the work history of a project. The old reports on a good project read like an adventure story, with all kinds of mystery around who came on the scene when and why they did what they. The things they left undone are often the source of great opportunities for us today.
It was my pleasure to publish an interview recently with Chris Paul from Ridgeline Exploration, which was sponsored by Jiulian Resources. It's got less views on YouTube than some of my other recent stuff, but I think you'd enjoy it. Find it here, https://youtu.be/eZDB6EzCAWc.
I'm not a geologist, but I've enjoyed learning some general information about relevant deposit types and the specifics of this prospective area on either side of a stretch of highway between Kelowna and Vancouver.
No sooner do you turn onto this section of highway then the road bends to go around a bulging hilly area. Up that hillside is where Jiulian Resources is drilling now. See it on Google here.
I look forward to learning more about the regional geology here but, for now, I will simply point out that it's a "triple fault junction". Apparently the Kentucky-Alleyne, Allison and Quilchena faults come together in various ways around here, which makes for some interesting geology and lots of targets to investigate.
The target area that seems to get the least credit is a skarn at the south end of the property. For some sense of why the skarn gets limited attention from the BC geologists who've worked this project, consider this interview I did with Matt Liard a couple years ago where we discuss Skarnaphobia. Point being, skarns form from "regional or contact metamorphism" (thanks, Wikipedia) associated with high temperature environments, which means there was something cooking around the Big Kidd project area.
It's encouraging to see highlights from 1972 drill holes in that skarn with +2% copper in several places, as that would seem to suggest there's copper in whatever hydrothermal systems may have been active in the area.
In passing, I'd note that the Dago Zone appears to be off to the west from the of the heavy faults that trace through main attraction at the Big Kidd Breccia. Being away from the action may have been a good reason for prior operators to limit attention there, but that may change with new understanding of what happened at depth associated with the Big Brother.
Before I get to all that, consider the Big Sioux. This is the kind of thing that really catches my eye. It was mined around 1910 and then metal-rich rocks were exposed in 1990s when they were making the highway. The high-grade material reported from the old mine and modern drilling makes me wonder if it could be one of those tourmaline breccia pipes like Chakana Copper has been working up at Soledad in Peru? Hard to say without some more detailed description of the mineralization at Big Sioux, but here's a couple excerpts from a 1991 assessment report following the new exposure from the road-cut:
"An other sample taken from a heavily brecciated, sulfide rich zone near road bed and analyzed by Loring Lab of Calgary, also taken at the 130m mark, gave 3.82% Cu with 42.16g/T Au (1.24 oz/T).... At deeper levels, the volcanic rocks are brecciated and faulted, contain abundant pyrite and chalcopyrite with economical amount of gold and silver, especially where strong brecciation occur." http://aris.empr.gov.bc.ca/search.asp?mode=repsum&rep_no=20834
It may be noteworthy that the Big Sioux zone is found on the periphery of the chargeability high that surrounds the Big Kidd Breccia as the physics of these pipes ends up with richer mineralization at the edges. See the Chakana website for some cool geological diagrams on all that.
As I mentioned, the main attraction for Jiulian is now the Big Kidd Breccia. Old drill holes hit copper-gold, like DDH92-01 with 71 meters of 0.2% Cu, and 0.75 g/t Au from 171 meters depth in the northern part of the Big Kidd breccia pipe. See more info in this quote from a 1992 assessment report below, which describes an important feature you'd expect to see around porphyry copper deposits.
"The Big Kid appears to be a steeply dipping pipe (intrusion breccia) over 300 metres in diameter with varying proportions of monzonite, diorite and volcanic fragments in an altered microdiorite to syenomonzonite matrix. Silicification and carbonate alteration is widespread with variable chalcopyrite and pyrite mineralization (in matrix). A significant pyrite halo appears to surround the breccia and appears to be better developed in the north and east." http://aris.empr.gov.bc.ca/search.asp?mode=repsum&rep_no=22720
There's lots more to say about the Big Kidd Breccia but I will wait for results from Jiulian's current drill program. While we wait, I will simply ask -- if it's such a good program then why didn't somebody else do this work before now?
Well, the last work was done under by Xstrata as they were earning into the project from Jiulian almost ten years ago. They concluded,
"Follow-up drilling is not immediately recommended in the Big Kidd Breccia or Big Sioux area targeted in last year’s program. No alteration vector was identified in the area of the Big Kidd Breccia, and further work is required to complete outcrop sampling in the area and produce an alteration map." http://aris.empr.gov.bc.ca/search.asp?mode=repsum&rep_no=33851
That's a fair conclusion, but it wasn't in-line with the recommendation of what Peter Walcott recommend in the same report. He recommended 3D IP geophysics, which is the first thing JLR did when rebooting this project with the help of Ridgeline Exploration. Of course Walcott would recommend more geophysics, you might say, given that Walcott & Associates are a geophysics company but he wasn't wrong! That 3D geophysics program revealed a screaming target at depth now called the Big Brother Zone. Read more in the JLR news release here.
It's always a challenge to make the case that something deserves another look when others have come before, but Jiulian now has a good team with a good plan. Again, hear the details in this interview with Chris Paul from Ridgeline Exploration in interview here sponsored by Jiulian Resources.
Learn more about company here, http://jiulianresources.com/
