The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
North of 60 Mining News – March 1, 2024
Stoney hosts an up to a 10-meter-thick vein enriched with gold, silver, copper, and antimony that can be traced for nearly 1,000 meters along the surface at Estelle.
Nova Minerals Ltd. Feb. 26 announced that the property-wide sampling and mapping program carried out last year at Estelle has discovered another area of high-grade gold and antimony mineralization on the company's 198-square-mile (513 square kilometers) property in Alaska.
According to an early 2023 resource calculation, Estelle hosts 1.1 billion metric tons of global resources averaging 0.3 grams per metric ton (9.9 million ounces) gold.
The largest portion of this resource is found at Korbel, which consists of two deposits at the north end of the Estelle property that host 320 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 0.3 g/t (3.09 million oz) gold and 720 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.2 g/t (5.56 million oz) gold.
The RPM North and South deposits about 16 miles (25 kilometers) south of Korbel host an additional 4.7 million metric tons of measured and indicated resources averaging 2.3 g/t (340,000 oz) gold and 57 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.5 g/t (900,000 oz) gold.
In addition to resource expansion drilling focused primarily on RPM, the 2023 program at Estelle involved an extensive sampling and mapping program led by Nova Minerals Head of Exploration Hans Hoffman. This reconnaissance exploration included the collection of 674 soil, 446 rock, and 21 stream sediment samples from across the district-scale property about 100 miles (160 kilometers) northwest of Anchorage, Alaska.
The property-wide exploration has turned up high-grade antimony and gold at the newly discovered Stibium and Styx prospects; high-grade gold, antimony, silver, and copper in the Train and Trumpet resource target area in the southern part of the Estelle property; high-grade gold, antimony and copper at the Shoeshine and Shadow prospects about 1,000 meters east of Trumpet and Train; high-grade copper and gold at the Discovery and Muddy Creek targets immediately north of Trump and Train; and thick gold-bearing veins with associated antimony and copper at the Wombat target about midway between Korbel and Trumpet and Train.
The latest gold-silver-antimony-copper discoveries were made in the Stoney area at the center of the Estelle property.
Lying about midway between the Korbel deposit, Stoney hosts an up to 10-meter-wide gold-bearing vein that can be traced along the surface for nearly 1,000 meters. Interpreted continuations of Stoney Vein have been identified over a strike of 3,800 meters. T5 is located immediately southeast of Stoney, and West Wing lies about 3,000 meters to the west.
Click on image for larger Estelle deposit and prospect map.
"The greater Stoney area, which now includes West Wing and T5, has a strong polymetallic signature with elevated levels of silver, copper, and antimony – in addition to gold," said Hoffman.
Last year, the Hoffman-led team of Nova geologists collected 59 soil and 27 rock samples from these three prospects. Highlights from the rock sampling include:
• 74.5 g/t gold, 1.2% copper, and 0.3% antimony (T5).
• 48.4 g/t gold and 3.6% copper (Stoney).
• 25.9 g/t gold and 0.6% copper (West Wing).
• 5.1 g/t gold, 2,390 g/t silver, 8.5% copper, and 1.3% antimony (Stoney).
• 0.6 g/t gold, 2,720 g/t silver, 10.6% copper, and 0.1% antimony (Stoney).
"Our field crews are eager to get back here in 2024 to follow up on these anomalies and to collect chip samples across the main Stoney Vein," Hoffman added.
Nova Minerals CEO Chris Gerteisen says the discovery of high-grade antimony, copper, and silver at multiple target areas across the property is a fortunate coproduct of the company's primary objective.
"To be clear, we are a gold company, and our primary focus has been to search and find gold, and now this multitude of elements, some of which are very lucrative in their own right, are finding us," he said. "We intend to take advantage of the fact that these additional elements are coincident with the gold and pursue this potential."
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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