1. CopAur Minerals

Year-to-date gain: 617.24 percent; current share price: C$1.04

Copper and gold exploration company CopAur Minerals (TSXV:CPAU) is advancing its Williams project, located halfway between the Red Chris and Kemess North mines in the emerging Toodoggone district of the Golden Horseshoe region in BC. The company’s advisory board includes members of explorer Benchmark Metals (TSXV:BNCH,OTCQX:BNCHF).

The Williams project is home to the T-Bill gold prospect and GIC porphyry prospect. CopAur began a 5,000 meter drill campaign in June that was focused on two targets. One is prospective for mesothermal-style gold and the other for copper-gold porphyry. The company believes the property hosts geological similarities to Centerra Gold’s (TSX:CG,NYSE:CGAU) Kemess South copper-gold porphyry deposit.

2. Pacific Ridge Exploration

Year-to-date gain: 570 percent; current share price: C$0.34

Pacific Ridge Exploration (TSXV:PEX) is focused on its flagship asset, the Kliyul copper-gold project in BC's Quesnel Trough. The company also holds a portfolio of assets that includes the RDP and Redton copper-gold projects.

On December 1, the company released assay results from the first of three diamond drill holes completed during a 2021 drilling campaign at Kliyul. Highlights include 437 meters of 0.61 percent copper equivalent, or 0.96 g/t gold equivalent, comprising 0.22 percent copper and 0.6 g/t gold. The interval contains 53 meters at 0.7 percent copper equivalent, or 1.17 g/t gold equivalent, comprising 0.22 percent copper and 0.83 g/t gold.

3. Cornish Metals

Year-to-date gain: 377.78 percent; current share price: C$0.43

Cornish Metals (TSXV:CUSN) is building a portfolio of strategic metals assets in North America and the UK. Its near-term focus is on its United Downs project, where the company intends to explore and delineate near-surface high-grade copper and tin mineralization. Cornish Metals also holds the South Crofty tin project, which it says is "one of the highest-grade undeveloped tin resources globally."

Cornish reported its most recent results from ongoing drill work at United Downs in early December, including results from one diamond drill hole that intersected 2.53 meters grading 4.61 percent copper and 0.05 percent tin, including 10.4 percent copper and 0.09 percent tin over 0.78 meters.

4. Foran Mining

Year-to-date gain: 322.41 percent; current share price: C$2.45

Copper-zinc development company Foran Mining’s (TSXV:FOM) flagship property, McIlvena Bay, is the largest undeveloped volcanogenic massive sulfide deposit along Saskatchewan’s Flin Flon greenstone belt. According to the company, McIlvena Bay is also the world’s first carbon-neutral copper development project.

Work at McIlvena Bay has been ongoing throughout 2021. In June, a drill program delivered one of the project’s widest intercepts of high-grade copper to date: 28.7 meters of continuous mineralization grading 2.05 percent copper equivalent. The company also identified six new regional high-priority targets. Toward the end of the year, in mid-October, Foran reported a 70 percent increase in the indicated resource at the project.

5. Cardero Resource

Year-to-date gain: 200 percent; current share price: C$0.12

Cardero Resource (TSXV:CDU) is focused on its Arizona-based Zonia copper oxide project. The asset was mined in the late 1960s and 1970s, and the company describes it as a "near-surface copper-oxide resource and a brownfields site." The firm completed a preliminary economic assessment for Zonia in 2018, and the plan moving forward is to put together a feasibility study and work on permitting.

In April, Cardero entered into a letter agreement to merge with World Copper. The letter agreement was amended in June, and the parties then entered a definitive arrangement agreement in September. The deal has yet to close.