Alpha Copper Corp. introduced the road-accessible Hopper copper-porphyry project to its shareholders. The company also reported that it has been issued a Class 3 exploration permit for 10 years, which allows for drilling with up to three drills, road and trail building.

The permit expires in January 2033. The Hopper is a porphyry copper project with adjacent skarn mineralization in southwest Yukon. Most of the drilling to date has focused on the skarn horizons, which are near-surface and host abundant copper, silver, gold and molybdenum mineralization.

There are over eight defined skarn horizons from surface to over 400m depth. Drilling of the skarns in 2021 and 2022 has indicated high-grade mineralization is open along strike. The porphyry target area has seen limited testing, despite many indications of a large porphyry-style hydrothermal system at surface.

In 2021 drilling intersected strong propylitic, and intervals of potassic, alteration and copper mineralization from surface down to 116m depth. In 2022, drilling intersected over 300m at 0.11% Cu with intercepts of more typical porphyry-grade, including 0.348% Cu over 31.82 m within that interval. The Copper Castle skarn zone is an area of over 1 km in strike length with over 8 skarn horizons that contain variable amounts of copper, gold, silver and molybdenum.

The skarn horizons are up to 25m thick and, where prograde, contain mostly copper, whereas retrograde skarns yield higher gold grade. The skarns have been intermittently explored since the 1970s, when they were discovered from outcrop in Franklin Creek. Most of the drilling has focused on skarn mineralization near the discovery exposure.

In 2021 a geophysical anomaly was tested and yielded some of the longest high-grade intercepts on the skarn zone. This geophysical anomaly was further tested in 2022 and again yielded excellent results. The shallowest and highest-grade skarn horizon, to date, that was the target of 2021 and 2022 drilling is ready for denser drill spacing to prepare for a maiden resource.

The Hopper Porphyry zone is centered within a large Late Cretaceous intrusion1. This intrusion age is similar to those in the Dawson Range gold belt, such as Patton Porphyry that hosts the world-class Casino deposit2. The Hopper intrusion is approximately 7 x 3km in size and contains wide soil anomalies with elevated Cu and Mo that correlate with chargeability and radiometric anomalies.

The entire porphyry target has only been tested with six diamond drill holes to date. The results from diamond drilling indicate that the Hopper Porphyry contains a large, strong propylitic zone from surface and locally fault-associated mineralization with overprinting phyllic alteration. Potassic alteration appears at depth, locally relic and intermittently associated with well mineralized rock.

Drilling on the porphyry will be focused on discovery of the central potassic zone of the porphyry-style hydrothermal system.