The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
As resource drilling results roll in, company explores pipeline North of 60 Mining News – August 19, 2022
As drills test the known resource areas at Ulu, the Blue Star exploration team has been generating new drill targets across the company's properties covering High Lake Greenstone Belt.
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Blue Star Gold Corp. Aug. 15 announced that drilling has tapped additional high-grade gold in the Flood Zone at Ulu, one of the company's three properties that cover more than a 45-kilometer (28 miles) stretch of the High Lake Greenstone Belt in Nunavut.
According to a 2015 calculation, the Flood and Gnu zones on the Ulu property host 2.5 million metric tons of measured and indicated resources averaging 7.53 grams per metric ton (605,000 ounces) gold; and 1.26 million metric tons of inferred resource grading 5.57 g/t (226,000 oz) gold.
In June, Blue Star launched a roughly 3,500-meter drill program to upgrade and expand these resources, as well as test high-priority targets across its three properties – Ulu, Hood River, and Roma.
The company started this program with drilling at the Flood Zone.
In July, the company reported assay results from the second hole, DD22-FLO-002, which cut two zones of mineralization – 17.65 meters averaging 15 g/t gold from a depth of 115.1 meters and 5.7 meters averaging 5.31 g/t gold from 143 meters.
"The intercepts in FLO-002 are expected to allow the conversion of existing inferred ounces to an indicated category and expand the Flood Zone resource," Blue Star Gold CEO Grant Ewing said at the time.
The latest assays are from the first hole, DD22-FLO-001, which was drilled about 125 meters northeast of the previously reported hole 2.
DD22-FLO-001 cut 17.4 meters averaging 6.52 g/t gold from a depth of 4.4 meters.
In addition to the four holes drilled so far at Flood, Blue Star has completed eight holes at the Gnu Zone, which lies about 500 meters to the north, and four at Central-C, a target between the two deposits.
DD22-MIQ-002, the first hole reported from this year's drilling at Gnu, cut three meters averaging 2.51 g/t gold from a depth of 137.4 meters.
While drills are turning within the resource area, Blue Star says its geological team has made significant progress on field reviews of the extensive pipeline of prospective targets and expects to allocate some drill meters to at least one target by the end of the program.
This exploration work includes regional geochemical sampling on the Roma property, which lies on the north end of the High Lake Greenstone Belt about 32 kilometers (20 miles) north of the adjoining Ulu and Hood River properties.
So far, more than 900 samples have been collected and analyzed at Roma, representing approximately 50% of the planned program.
Blue Star is carrying out this sampling with the use of detectORE, a new technology that allows for quantitative gold analysis in the field with a portable XRF (X-ray fluorescence) scanner.
Eight anomalies crossing at least two till lines are in the process of additional sampling and prospecting.
Blue Star says the use of detectORE on selective soil and weathered rock samples has highlighted areas for additional follow-up. Given these rapid results, the company has expanded its use of this technology.
In addition to the sampling, Blue Star has received the data from airborne magnetometry geophysical surveys flown over almost the entirety of Blue Star's High Lake Greenstone Belt landholdings earlier this year. This data is expected to help guide further exploration.
"I am encouraged to see that our regional and prospect level work is generating new targets to drill evaluate in future programs," said Blue Star Gold Vice President of Exploration Darren Lindsay. "Our pipeline has been very bottom heavy and with this work we will see key targets moving up to the drill ready stage."
Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.
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