Marmota (ASX: MEU) has begun a 5200m reverse-circulation drilling program at its 100 per cent owned South Australian Aurora Tank gold deposit as the company seeks to define the extent of all open drill targets at the project with a view to tabling a maiden resource at the exciting discovery.
Remarkably the company says the deposit is still open to the south, west, east, north and also at depth and the latest program will seek to either close these targets off or extend them.
About 58 holes are planned for an average depth of 90m to acquire further information between drill sections and extend some of the sections in depth, with a focus on higher grade open-pittable gold.
The company has already undertaken extensive metallurgical testwork to establish the best possible recovery pathway from its preferred low capex heap-leach operation.
Marmota identified its Aurora Tank zone more than two years ago when its 9th drilling program came up with a string of high grade gold results while exploring the extent of the first high-grade gold result it had picked up in a preceding program.
That high grade result was from deeper than 80m, with one intercept including 1m going as high as 36g/t gold from 120m downhole.
The company’s follow-up results announced in August 2022 included 4m at 18g/t gold from 76m, 4m going 12g/t gold from 116m and 4m running 6g/t gold from 72m downhole.
Aurora Tank is advancing beautifully: we have outstanding bonanza intersections, close to surface, open-pittable, with a low-cost low capex heap leach pathway, the critical metallurgy recovery program already more than 75% complete, and now a RC program underway to hopefully bring it all together and close off loose ends.
Marmota Chairman, Dr Colin Rose
The early work presaged what was soon to become a desirable feature of the mineralised zone at Aurora which is the prevalence of high near-surface grades, often within 20m to 50m from surface.
Marmota’s Aurora Tank discovery features remarkable gold intersections including multiple bonanza grades close to surface which exceed 100g/t gold over 1m, indicating excellent potential for low-cost, low capex open-pit heap leach gold production.
The best intercepts from the core of the Aurora zone highlighted to date include 217g/t gold from 103m, 197g/t gold from 57m, 120g/t gold from 18m, 105g/t gold from 33m and 93g/t gold from 28m.
The latest round of drilling is focussed mainly on the south-western extents of the mineralised zone defined so far, with a handful of other holes at the north-eastern end of the deposit.
The program follows hard on the heels of Marmota’s recent drilling at its new gold discovery at Goolagong, about 73km to the south-west of Aurora, where 16 holes were put down for a total of 1350m.
That program was designed to follow up a gold hit in a previous air-core hole at the southern extremity of the Goolagong ground which nailed a 2m intercept grading 0.6g/t gold from 36m to end of hole.
That hole was terminated at 38m due to hard ground beyond which the AC rig could not penetrate, leaving mineralisation open below that depth.
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