EXPLORATION

Seabridge Gold mammoth hunting at Courageous Lake

Early stage exploration is the name of the game for Seabridge Gold this year at Courageous Lake; is there another multimillion ounce gold deposit to be found?

HALIFAX, NS (MINEWEB) - 

This year Seabridge Gold (TSX: SEA, AMEX: SA) is bent on discovering a twin or cousin to its 8 million ounce FAT deposit at its Courageous Lake project in Canada's Northwest Territories according to an C$8.5 million exploration plan it laid out today.

FAT is one of Seabridge's core assets, holding some 107 million tonnes @ 2.31 g/t gold in measured and indicated resources or about 8 million ounces in contained gold. Delineating it and pushing it through a prefeasibility study, due out in June, has been Seabridge's chief focus in recent years.

But Seabridge is now going back on the hunt for another FAT or something like it. Seabridge, which outlined exploration plans Wednesday morning, described three targets it would drill this year in the Matthews Lake greenstone belt that hosts the FAT deposit.

"We see the potential to find additional higher-grade deposits along the belt as well as larger, open pit deposits similar in style to FAT," Rudi Fronk states in a press release about the exploration plans.

In a couple of cases, some amount of drilling, either by Seabridge or previous project owners, has pointed the way. Target one, aptly called the Plant zone, will get three drillholes. Seabridge discovered gold mineralization in this area in 2010 when it tested soil from geotechnical drillholes as prep-work for the design of Courageous Lake site facilities. In 2011 it then drilled as much as 2.3 g/t Au over 18 metres and 44 g/t Au over 2 metres.

The second target, NW FAT, is more of a gamble. Seabridge reckons the area, west of FAT, could hold an extension of the deposit that was long ago ripped away by a northeast-southwest striking fault. In addition Seabridge says there might be "high-grade FAT feeders" or perhaps another, older, FAT-style deposit in rock quite similar to that hosting FAT. Seabridge plans 14 drillholes at NW FAT.

Target three is Walsh Lake. Seabridge calls it a "historical prospect" owing to the fact it was drilled in the late 1980s and that there was an underground mine in the vicinity. The structure is fairly wide, 10 to 30 metres, Seabridge says, and dips steeply to depths of "at least 250 metres." Previous exploration drillholes were drilled over about 300 metres strike some 700 metres south of the historic mine. Over this kilometre-long section of the Walsh Lake structure Seabridge aims to drill 15 holes.

Meanwhile, Seabridge also says it will drill the FAT deposit in the hopes of upgrading in-pit inferred resources and that it would conduct a regional exploration program via an air-borne geophysical survey.