Happy Creek Minerals Ltd. announced the results of field work and geophysical modelling completed at the Company's 100%-owned, 240-square-kilometre Highland Valley project in southern British Columbia.
The Company's 100-percent-owned Highland Valley Project, comprising the contiguous West Valley and Rateria properties, totals approximately 240 square kilometres. Happy Creek's Highland Valley Project is adjacent to Teck's Highland Valley Copper (HVC) mine that is Canada's largest copper mine with continuous production over a 60 years (See Reference Note 1). Happy Creek's Zone 1 and Zone 2 discoveries, which lie just 6.5 kilometres southeast of HVC's Highmont open pits, show laterally continuous mineralization that has been outlined with 28,000 metres of drilling and remain open in several directions. As announced on December 18, 2023, the Company recently completed rock and soil geochemical sampling, a deep-looking ground audiomagnetotelluric (AMT) survey, and 3D inversion modelling of AMT resistivity and airborne magnetic data. The geophysical survey and modelling were conducted by Peter E. Wallcott and Associates Limited and focused on the northeastern part of the property covering the Zone 1 and Zone 2 copper deposits and nearby targets. Geological work and rock sampling was also performed on the Abbott area in the southwestern part of the property. In December 2023, Happy Creek completed a ground-based AMT survey on the Highland Valley Project. This was the first AMT survey ever completed on the project and has successfully identified several very large and deep resistive or conductive features partially coincident with known mineralization at surface and in drill holes. The AMT survey results indicate areas with high resistivity that may potentially represent important younger-aged felsic intrusions, and/or low resistivity (more conductive) areas that are interpreted to represent rock- fracturing, structures and associated alteration. Both are useful to interpret geology which can be associated with buried copper porphyry mineralization. In 2023, the Company collected 165 reconnaissance soil (glacial till) and 10 stream sediment geochemical samples in the north part of Rateria property. The results indicate several new areas of interest at the Mystery Lake target, the Knight Lake area and southeast of Billy Lake. The thickness and composition of glacial till is variable, and therefore, care must be taken interpreting the results. Soil samples returned values from 18 to 1,580 ppm copper and 1 to 293 ppm molybdenum. Based on several thousand samples collected by the Company and others over the years, values for greater than 90 ppm copper and 3 ppm molybdenum are considered minimum anomalous values (85th percentile) in this environment.