The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
North of 60 Mining News – September 2, 2022
Cathedral lies about 1,000 meters southwest of the Korbel Main gold deposit that is being drilled by this rig in 2021.
Click on image for larger map.
Nova Minerals Ltd. Aug. 30 reported the start of drilling at Cathedral, an exploration target about 1,000 meters southwest of the 8.1-million-ounce Korbel Main gold deposit on the company's Estelle property in Alaska.
Reconnaissance exploration at Cathedral target in 2020 included sampling of outcropping quartz-arsenopyrite veining that returned grades as high as 114 grams per metric ton gold. Five other samples collected from this highly prospective target contained more than 10 g/t gold – these samples returned grades of 98.3, 37.1, 24.5, 19.6, and 11.1 g/t gold.
Nova says the correlation between gold and arsenopyrite, which has been proven from drilling and metallurgical testing within the Korbel Main Deposit, provides encouragement that the Cathedral target has the potential to be the feeder system for the large presently identified gold system at Korbel Main.
According to the most recent calculation, the Korbel Main deposit hosts 286 metric tons of indicated resource averaging 0.3 g/t (3 million oz) gold, plus 583 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.3 g/t (5.1 million oz) gold.
Nova says the resource potential within the Korbel Valley, which includes Cathedral, Isabella to the northwest of Korbel Main, and four other target areas within the valley, has progressively grown with each round of drilling completed to date.
This targeted drilling at Cathedral is not only aimed at adding additional gold to the Korbel resources but also providing Nova with an improved geological understanding of the systems within the wider valley.
"We are pleased to have recommenced drilling in the wider Korbel Valley area again with a targeted program that will test the theory of Cathedral being the high-grade feeder zone to the already established 8.1-M-oz Korbel Main Deposit," said Nova Minerals CEO Christopher Gerteisen. "Rock chip samples obtained in 2020 showed that Cathedral could open up another significant area within the wider Korbel Valley with the potential to provide a localized higher-grade feed for the proposed Korbel Central Processing Facility for the starter years."
In addition to Cathedral, the company continues to explore RPM, where drills are tapping wide sections of high-grade gold mineralization.
The volume of samples from the companies carrying out mineral exploration during the summer season in Alaska and northern Canada has slowed assay turnaround times. Because of this, Nova has results pending from more than 50 holes drilled at RPM and Korbel this year.
Despite the slow assay turnaround times, the Australia-based company says prefeasibility-level test work and trade off optimization studies are underway for Estelle.
"In addition to the drilling at both Cathedral and RPM, and in light of the bottleneck at the assay laboratory, we have now also commenced our PFS level test work and trade off optimization studies in tandem with the ongoing Phase 2 Scoping Study, as we continue on our path towards commercial production across the Estelle Gold Trend."
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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