Granite Creek prospects improve with AI

GoldSpot Discoveries Corp.'s machine learning analysis has confirmed and expanded upon the exploration target on Granite Creek Copper Ltd.'s Carmacks and Carmacks North properties in the high-grade Carmacks Copper Belt of Canada's Yukon.

Late last year, Granite Creek expanded its land position within Yukon's Minto Copper Belt to 176 square kilometers (68 square miles). This merged land package includes the Carmacks deposit, which hosts 23.76 million metric tons of resources averaging 0.85% (446 million pounds) copper, 0.31 grams per metric ton (237,000 ounces) gold, and 3.14 g/t (2.4 million oz) silver.

In April last year, GoldSpot and Granite Creek began a collaboration to create a prioritized exploration and drilling target strategy on the expanded copper-gold property. The approaches taken during this collaboration included:

• Re-interpretation of geophysical data using GoldSpot's GeoFEZ software.

• Supervised learning of various combinations of geophysical, topographic and surface geochemical data.

• Detailed statistical analysis of multi-element geochemical data.

• Map-based prospectivity analysis and exploration target generation.

• Generation of a revamped 3D geological model.

• Initial test study of company core logging compared with historic imagery, using GoldSpot's LithoLens.

"The prospectivity of the Carmacks project has been confirmed and expanded on by the excellent work completed by GoldSpot," said Granite Creek Copper President and CEO Tim Johnson. "The number of new targets combined with the existing targets developed from historical data continues to support our assertion that there is a lot of discovery yet to be made on the property."

Proof of concept was achieved when GoldSpot's artificial intelligence-driven analysis identified several grassroots target areas previously discovered by the Granite Creek geological team but not shared with GoldSpot.

"GoldSpot's work has advanced our understanding of the property and will become an integral part in our planning for our 2022 exploration program," said Johnson. "We look forward to discussing our plans for the upcoming field season and we are on track to deliver a significant update to the existing NI 43-101 mineral resource estimate Q1, as expected."

The collaboration additionally produced several potential new targets for the 2022 exploration and resource expansion, including sub-parallel raft-like domains of possible mineralization adjacent to zones 147, 2000S, and 13 at the Carmacks deposit.

These were initially hinted at through data mining of the drill hole database. Furthermore, follow-up geochemical analysis and 3D models suggest a previously unrecognized relationship between the geochemistry and mineralized zones, specifically a tell-tale halo around mineralization. These halos indicate several areas for follow-up drill testing.

"The technologies developed by GoldSpot to provide its innovative technology to partners such as Granite Creek and provided excellent results," said GoldSpot Discoveries CEO Vincent Dubé-Bourgeois. "The targets generated by GoldSpot AI showed the exploration potential on the Carmacks project."

New regional targets have also been produced at Carmacks North using multiple geophysical techniques, including aeromagnetic and induced polarity surveys.