Long before Snowline Gold’s (TSX: SGD; US-OTC: SNWGF) Valley deposit attracted industry attention, cofounder and CEO Scott Berdahl struggled to find backing for the Yukon properties assembled through his family’s prospecting business.
He eventually prepared a presentation for a proposed exploration company. Investors backed the idea, and Snowline listed in March 2021.
“Snowline came out of that where I put together a slide deck really for an imaginary junior,” Berdahl told The Northern Miner in a 2023 interview. “Instead of selling the company, we ended up with investors.”
Snowline’s exploration team has won the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada’s (PDAC) 2027 Bill Dennis Award for discovering that gold deposit, a breakthrough rooted in years of family prospecting and an early willingness to test the system’s size with bold drilling.
PDAC’s award recognizes the team’s discovery and rapid advancement of Valley, part of its Rogue project. It is among six honours recognizing achievements spanning exploration, mine financing, renewable energy, Indigenous participation and artificial intelligence. Recipients will be celebrated March 9 at Toronto’s Fairmont Royal York during PDAC’s 2027 convention.
Father-son team
Valley’s discovery drew on work begun by Ron Berdahl, Scott’s father, in 2008 and subsequent exploration by Shane and Luke Carlos. Snowline’s first four holes in 2021 all intersected gold. The following year, a 340-metre step-out returned 410 metres grading 1.89 grams gold per tonne, including 146 metres at 3.24 grams from 56 metres depth, helping establish the deposit’s scale.
By 2025, Valley hosted measured and indicated resources of 204 million tonnes grading 1.21 grams gold for 7.94 million oz., plus 44.5 million inferred tonnes at 0.62 gram gold for 890,000 ounces. A preliminary economic assessment followed that year, with a prefeasibility study expected in 2027.
“It’s the kind of deposit that you could build a major around,” Scott Berdahl told The Northern Miner in a 2025 interview.
Mexican find
Pan American Silver’s (TSX, NYSE: PAAS) La Colorada exploration team will receive the Thayer Lindsley Award for discovering the skarn deposit beneath its existing silver-lead-zinc mine in Zacatecas, Mexico.
A 2018 hole intersected about 300 metres of high-grade mineralization, validating a geological possibility considered for decades. Roughly 360,000 metres of drilling followed, outlining a large polymetallic system beneath the established operation.
Cupric Canyon Capital takes the Viola R. MacMillan Award for financing and developing Botswana’s Khoemacau copper-silver mine. The private company assembled $650 million (C$863 million at the time) in 2019 through debt, a silver stream and equity. First concentrate followed in June 2021, and MMG acquired its operating subsidiary in March 2024 in a transaction valued at about $2.1 billion, including assumed debt.
B2Gold (TSX: BTO; NYSE-A: BTG) wins the Sustainability Award for transforming the energy supply at Namibia’s Otjikoto mine. Heavy fuel oil use ended by late 2022, and renewable sources supplied about 79% of electricity by 2025 through solar generation and the national grid. The projects also trained Namibian workers and employed local contractors.
Indigenous knowledge
The Citxw Nlaka’pamux Assembly receives the Skookum Jim Award for Indigenous-led assessment and stewardship, particularly its work on the Highland Valley Copper mine extension in British Columbia.
Representing eight participating bands, the assembly developed a process incorporating Indigenous knowledge into the environmental assessment while retaining ownership and control over its collection and sharing.
Finally, SRK Consulting structural geologist Antoine Caté is the inaugural Emerging Leaders Award recipient.
PDAC recognizes his integration of geology, data science and artificial intelligence, including automated logging that identifies geological features in drillcore photographs. He also leads a multidisciplinary team connecting geoscientists and data scientists, alongside mentoring and contributing to PDAC’s technical programming.
Source: www.northernminer.com — article syndicated from the publisher’s feed; all rights remain with the original publisher.
