Critical minerals company Terrain Minerals has unveiled high-grade gold hits of up to 6.22 grams per tonne from drilling at its 100 per cent-owned Smokebush project at Yalgoo, some 350km north of Perth in Western Australia.
The high-grade assays were returned from recent reverse-circulation (RC) drilling at the company’s new induced-polarisation (IP)-generated Lightning target – a highly-prospective area that runs parallel with its existing Monza prospect. A single hole was drilled into each end of a 600m-long IP chargeability anomaly, about 400m apart. Management says it confirmed a 600m strike length.
Significant intersections returned included 2m at the high 6.22g/t grade of gold from 61m downhole and 1m at 5.94g/t gold from 82m downhole. The gold hits at Lightning sit nicely along historic RC drilling results from the Monza prospect that returned encouraging results of 4m at 4.46g/t gold from 51m, 7m at 2.72g/t from 25m and 6m at 2.12g/t gold from 80m.
The high-grade gold mineralisation is associated with a north-trending geological structure – the same orientation as the structures hosting the neighbouring 945,000-ounce gold resource at 29Metals’ Golden Range project.
Terrain says drilling has only tested the northern and southern ends of its IP anomaly, with both holes intersecting high-grade gold within the modelled chargeability zone. No systematic drilling has been undertaken across the full extent of the highly-prospective gold-bearing anomaly, representing a significant target for the company going forward.
Earlier this year, it completed a series of IP geophysical surveys across its Smokebush project area, with the objective of mapping the location and distribution of any disseminated sulphide minerals down to an initial depth of 200m from surface. Management says it successfully mapped several chargeability zones.
The success of Terrain’s recently completed RC drilling, in addition to the impressive size of the IP chargeability anomaly, reinforces its view that its Lightning and Monza gold prospects have the potential to host a possible future gold deposit.
The company is currently working through several other potential specialty metals seen within its drilling data and plans to update the market accordingly once the specific geology is better understood. Its exploration team will now begin to model the new data and work towards designing the next drill program, which will test the full strike extension of the gold mineralisation across the 600m anomaly.
Terrain is targeting many critical minerals at Smokebush, including gold, lithium, copper and gallium. Multiple potential lithium-bearing pegmatites, gold, gallium and emerging copper and nickel targets have been confirmed across the company’s many project areas, including gold and gallium at Smokebush and the Lort River rare earths play near Esperance.
Smokebush is within the Yalgoo Mineral Field, the same mineral province that hosts the Golden Grove copper-gold-silver-zinc-lead mine, Silver Lake Resources’ Rothsay gold mine and Warriedar Resources’ Golden Range gold operation. Silver Lake’s high-grade Deflector gold mine is also within the region.
Interestingly, Silver Lake, which recently bought a strategic 11 per cent stake in ASX-listed Red 5 for nearly $100 million, says it is committed to making an estimated $43 million investment in exploration this financial year in an effort to potentially leverage the installed infrastructure across its operations in the region. Ore from Rothsay is being transported for processing at the company’s nearby Deflector mill.
Terrain’s Smokebush project is about 20km from the Rothsay mine site, which may provide future options for processing any ore that may come from the project. If its next drill program can confirm further gold hits at Smokebush, it could really prove to be on solid ground in the prospective multi-critical mineral region.
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