The playbook — copper · September 3, 2026
Palmer VMS returns 49.2 m of 4.7% copper-equivalent in Alaska
Two holes confirm a thick, high-grade copper-zinc core and extend it deeper — from a project Vizsla acquired in December 2025.
Vizsla Copper drilled two holes into the South Wall Zone 1 of its Palmer project in Southeast Alaska and hit a wide slab of high-grade copper-zinc rock. The headline number: 49.2 meters grading 4.7% copper-equivalent — meaning the copper, plus the zinc, silver and gold converted into a copper number, add up to that figure. Inside that band sits an even richer core: 27.0 meters at 8.4% copper-equivalent. The two holes, CMR26-199 and CMR26-201, confirmed the high-grade core holds together and pushed it deeper down-dip.
Here’s the logic mining people use. For a base-metal deposit like this, grade is measured in percent, not gold grams, so the shorthand is percent-meters — grade times thickness. Zone 1 delivers roughly 231 percent-meters over 49.2 meters, with a roughly 227 percent-meters high-grade heart at 8.4%. For a copper-zinc massive sulphide, those are thick, genuinely high-grade widths — the kind that headline a sector weekly. Palmer is the project Vizsla acquired in December 2025 from American Pacific Mining for C$30 million, closing alongside a C$44,240,605 private placement and a 10-for-1 share consolidation. Running the show is Craig Parry, CEO and Chair, who co-founded NexGen Energy (the Arrow uranium deposit) and IsoEnergy (Hurricane). The market has noticed: over three months VCU rose 25.2% while copper itself gained 2.7% and the copper-equity index COPX added 1.1% — roughly 23 times the sector return, a divergence consistent with company-specific newsflow rather than broad sector movement, according to the three-month performance data.
Now the honest part. The 4.7% figure is copper-equivalent, and the release text did not state the formula, metal prices or recovery assumptions behind it — all of which move that number. This is only two holes in a single zone, so strike length and continuity across the wider system are not yet demonstrated. The reported 49.2 and 27.0 meters are core lengths, not true widths, and true width was not stated, so the real thickness of the zone could be narrower. No cut-off grade, QA/QC procedure, assay lab or qualified person was named in the text reviewed. What comes next is more drilling: about 15 additional holes across the HG, AG, South Wall Zones 2 and 3, and Waterfall targets, with assays expected from late September through early November, part of a roughly 12,250-meter 2026 program still underway.