Aben seeks Justin gold project partner

Aben Resources Ltd. April 19 announced an update for its Justin gold project in southeastern Yukon, including the ongoing search for a partner to move the nearly decade-old project forward.

The 7,400-hectare (18,286 acres) Justin gold project, which lies immediately southeast of Seabridge Gold's high-grade 3 Aces gold project and approximately 35 kilometers (22 miles) southeast of the Cantung Mine, is equipped with an all-season road running through its claims. Exploration work began at the project back in 2011, with Aben working at the site to further define and explore its potential.

Recent work led to the company announcing an NI 43-101-compliant technical report in preparation for finding a partner regarding option deals to secure future exploration on the early-stage gold exploration property. A permit application for the rights to explore the property is currently in the review stage with the Yukon Environmental and Socio-Economic Assessment Board.

"We've just finished an NI 43-101 technical report that's been filed on Sedar," said Aben Resources Chairman and CEO Jim Pettit. "The report is a beneficial asset and provides context to our historical work on the Justin gold project. This will enable potential interested parties to review previous work done on the property and provide data for future programs."

During 2018, exploration work included the collection of 19 channel and 28 chip samples from five trenches, 16 rock samples, seven till samples and 240 soil samples over a six-kilometer- (3.7 miles) long area. This program targeted specifically the Lost Ace zone, an orogenic-style quartz-gold bearing zone previously discovered in 2017, which returned 1.44 grams per metric ton gold over five meters, 4.77 g/t gold over one meter, and a bulk soil sample that contained 1,135 visible gold grains.

The overall Justin property is host to rocks that have undergone multi-phase hydrothermal alteration that has produced two distinct mineralizing systems.

Drilling has shown that precious metal mineralization on the property is part of an intrusion-related gold system featuring multiple mineralization styles, including sheeted vein arrays, vein breccias, stockwork veining, fault-controlled mineralization, and skarn-hosted gold horizons.

The initial drilling nearly a decade ago was conducted at the property's POW zone, where 2011 and 2012 programs successfully discovered intrusion-related gold mineralization with intercepts reported ranging from trace values to highs of 1.19 g/t gold over 60 meters, 2.47 g/t gold over 21 meters, and 1.49 g/t gold over 46.4 meters.

With Lost Ace being just 2,000 meters west of POW, geologic evidence and observations at Lost Ace point toward the existence of a multi-phase hydrothermal system with the potential for overprinting mineralizing systems with the POW zone.

The POW zone will be further evaluated as a potential host for bulk-tonnage gold mineralization and to test for the continuity of higher-grade skarn mineralization along strike.

In addition to drill testing both of these exciting targets, several other high-priority exploration targets that have seen limited work but have yielded encouraging results will receive field evaluation and surface sampling.