The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Drilling at Steve cuts gold zones, with higher-grade kickers North of 60 Mining News – December 8, 2023
Thesis Gold CEO Ewan Webster inspecting core from the 2023 drilling at the Ranch gold project in Northern British Columbia.
Thesis Gold Inc. Dec. 7 reported strong gold mineralization at the Steve Zone, a new gold target on the company's Ranch property in the Toodoggone mining district of Northern British Columbia.
In August, Thesis finalized a merger with Benchmark Metals Inc. that consolidates its Ranch property with the adjacent Lawyers property held by Benchmark into a single 325-square-kilometer (125 square miles) gold-silver project.
Lawyers, the most advanced of the two properties, hosts 67.38 million metric tons of measured and indicated resources averaging 1.26 grams per metric ton (2.74 million ounces) gold and 24.39 g/t (52.9 million oz) silver; plus 4.87 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 2.39 g/t (378,000 oz) gold and 39.41 g/t (6.2 million oz) silver.
A 2022 preliminary economic assessment based on this resource envisions ore from open-pit mines at three Lawyers deposits – AGB, Cliff Creek, and Dukes Ridge – feeding a centrally located mill that would produce 1.7 million oz of gold and 26.7 million oz of silver over an initial 12 years of mining.
Lying immediately north of Lawyers, Thesis' Ranch property is at an earlier stage of exploration but has shown some intriguing near-surface gold results.
Prior to the merger, Benchmark launched a 20,000-meter drill program focused on expanding higher-grade underground mineable resources at Lawyers and Thesis initiated a 30,000-meter program focused on building resources at Ranch that could support an expanded operation at Lawyers.
Once the merger was finalized, the merged Thesis Gold continued with both programs.
The 2023 resource drilling at Ranch primarily targeted the 1,500-meter-long Thesis Structural Corridor (TSC) and the 700-meter-long Bonanza-Ridge zone to the north but also included smaller and earlier staged zones to the south, such as BV and Steve.
Highlights from previously reported results from the 2023 Ranch drilling include:
• 4.1 meters averaging 119.49 g/t gold in hole 23BNZDD001 (Bonanza-Ridge).
• 12.6 meters averaging 3.87 g/t gold in hole 23BNZDD004 (Bonanza-Ridge).
• 6.1 meters averaging 5.39 g/t gold in hole 23BNZDD013 (Bonanza-Ridge).
• 79.7 meters averaging 1.52 g/t gold and 0.42% copper in hole 23BNGDD01 (Bingo Zone – TSC).
• 24.8 meters averaging 3.38 g/t gold and 0.36% copper in hole (Bingo Zone – TSC).
• 24.7 meters averaging 5.37 g/t gold in hole 23BNGDD012 23BNGDD08 (Bingo Zone – TSC).
• 6.3 meters averaging 14.87 g/t gold in hole 23BVDD001 (BV Zone).
• 10.8 meters averaging 2.32 g/t gold in hole 23BVDD003. (BV Zone).
The latest results are from Steve, a zone about 3,500 meters south of Bonanza-Ridge that was discovered with a 2022 hole that returned 119.2 meters averaging 0.97 g/t gold. Highlights from six follow-up holes drilled this year at Steve include:
• 10 meters averaging 3.01 g/t gold from a depth of 18 meters in hole 23STVDD003.
• 60.2 meters averaging 0.78 g/t gold from a depth of 90 meters and 71 meters averaging 1.2 g/t gold from 221 meters in hole 23STVDD005.
"The 2023 drilling, building upon our 2022 discovery, establishes mineralization from surface to an impressive depth of 400 meters and a strike length of 330 meters," said Thesis Gold President and CEO Ewan Webster. "With a total of just eight widely spaced drill holes into the Steve Zone over the past two years, there's substantial upside potential to develop this into a significant deposit."
The wider intercepts at Steve Zone include higher-grade subsections. This includes a three-meter section of the 23STVDD003 intercept averaging 7.06 g/t gold, and a 6.6-meter section of the upper zone in hole 23STVDD005 averaging 3.49 g/t gold.
"The initial results at Steve share similarities with other zones at Ranch, and what's particularly promising is the presence of localized higher-grade zones, hinting at the possibility of Bonanza Zone-grade mineralization within this larger system, reinforcing the extensive exploration opportunities across our land package," Webster added.
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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