Onyx discovers clues to King Tut treasure

Onyx Gold Corp. Nov. 15 announced that its first drill program at King Tut has revealed the "smoke" to what it hopes is a gold deposit "fire" at this early-staged project in eastern Yukon, Canada.

Nestled between Snowline Gold's Rogue and Golden Oly properties to the north and south and Fireweed Metals' Macmillan Pass project to the northeast, Onyx Gold holds 100% interest in four separate properties in the Yukon's emerging Tombstone Gold Belt, as well as three properties in the Timmins area in Ontario.

Totaling 1,075 claims in 21,000 hectares (51,892 acres), its Yukon properties comprise the King Tut, RGS, Canol, and Stan properties, with the most compelling of the company's Yukon properties being King Tut, in the heart of this emerging reduced intrusive-related gold district.

While previous fieldwork on the project had identified large-scale gold-in-soil anomalies in a comparable geological setting as those found 50 kilometers (31 miles) north at Snowline's Valley target, these had never been historically drilled.

Kicking off its inaugural 2,500-meter program at King Tut in August, the short but sweet season has been fruitful for Onyx.

"Our field program at King Tut has been a real success," said Onyx Gold President and CEO Brock Colterjohn. "The drilling has validated that these anomalies have potential as large, bulk tonnage targets with the opportunity to vector in on a higher-grade zone, and the geophysical and geochemical surveys have also significantly expanded the extents of the Golden Mask intrusive by seven times relative to previously mapped outlines."

Drilling began at Golden Mask, a 1,000- by 1,000-meter gold-in-soil anomaly with associated bismuth, tellurium, tungsten, and arsenic – geochemical signatures associated with a reduced intrusion-related gold system.

Nearly every sample collected from Golden Mask returned assays of greater than 20 parts per billion gold, with most of the samples running above 50 ppb gold to a peak of 1,423 ppb (1.42 grams per metric ton) gold.

Roughly 75% of the 2,500 meters slated for 2023, or around 1,875 meters, was targeted at Golden Mask, with the balance planned for Main Tut – a large gold-in-soil anomaly roughly nine kilometers (five miles) east of Golden Mask.

Results from the nine-hole drill program confirmed widespread gold mineralization across the Main Tut and Golden Mask anomalies, validating the existence of potential bulk-tonnage reduced intrusion-related gold systems on the property.

"The increase in scale of the intrusion at Golden Mask, especially below cover on the valley floor, provides more room to expand the mineralized footprint, potentially including a higher-grade core," said Colterjohn.

With the goal of the 2023 drilling being to determine the potential or presence of reduced intrusion-related gold systems, the results have proved the successful accomplishment of that mission.

Highlights from the drilling at Main Tut and Golden Mask include:

• 122 meters averaging 0.12 g/t gold from a depth of 63 meters in hole KT23-001 (Main Tut), including 18.1 meters averaging 0.2 g/t gold.

• 187 meters averaging 0.13 g/t gold from seven meters in KT23-002 (Main Tut), including 21 meters averaging 0.36 g/t gold and one meter averaging 2.93 g/t gold.

• 53 meters averaging 0.13 g/t gold from 119 meters in KT23-003B (Golden Mask).

• 32.5 meters averaging 0.3 g/t gold from 62 meters in KT23-005 (Golden Mask), including eight meters averaging 0.56 g/t gold and one meter averaging 1.06 g/t gold.

"The results at Golden Mask, in particular, have demonstrated gold grades and widths consistent with what is known about Snowline Gold's Valley intrusion outside of the Valley target high-grade core," added Colterjohn. "We look forward to interpreting this data as the 'smoke' to the high-grade 'fire,' and we are anxious to get back on the ground at King Tut again next year."

In addition to drilling, Onyx conducted a 1,692-line-kilometer property-wide drone-based airborne magnetic geophysical survey over King Tut. Results from this survey, according to the company, dramatically increased the projected size of the granite body at Golden Mask from 600 by 400 meters to approximately 1,300 by 1,300 meters – a 700% increase in size.