The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
North of 60 Mining News - November 29, 2024
Looking over the Whiskey Bravo airstrip toward the Muddy Creek target to the southwest.
Nova Minerals Ltd. Nov. 27 reported that a sampling program carried out this year has doubled the size of the high-grade gold zone at Muddy Creek, an exploration target that is part of a larger trend of gold, silver, copper, and antimony mineralization in the southeastern portion of the company's district-scale Estelle project in Alaska's West Susitna Minerals District.
Lying roughly 100 miles northwest of Anchorage, Estelle hosts 244 million metric tons of measured and indicated resources averaging 0.3 grams per metric ton (2.72 million ounces) gold, plus 231 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.3 g/t (2.45 million oz) gold.
This resource is divided into two project areas – the large bulk-tonnage Korbel area at the north end of the 198-square-mile (514 square kilometers) Estelle property and the higher-grade RPM area about 16 miles (25 kilometers) to the south.
A feasibility study currently underway will detail the economic and engineering parameters of establishing an initial mine at RPM that can be scaled up to a larger operation at Estelle.
Nova Minerals 2024 program at Estelle had three primary facets:
• A 21-hole drill program focused on upgrading and expanding the resources at RPM for the feasibility study.
• Evaluating the potential of establishing a pilot-scale, high-grade antimony operation with support from U.S. Department of Defense.
• Continue a reconnaissance exploration program to further detail the 198-square-mile (514 square kilometers) property's precious and critical metals potential.
This year's sampling of Muddy Creek was part of the third facet.
Reconnaissance exploration of Muddy Creek during the 2023 season included the collection of rock samples over a 400-by-400-meter area with grades as high as 127.5 g/t, 90.5 g/t, 76.8 g/t, 75.5 g/t, 65.6 g/t, and 51.8 g/t gold.
Looking to expand upon the zone of high-grade gold mineralization outlined so far, a team led by Nova Minerals Head of Exploration Hans Hoffman collected 14 rock and 11 soil samples during the summer program; highlights include:
• Rock samples with grades as high as 128.5 g/t, 93.2 g/t, 33.9 g/t, and 22.3 g/t gold.
• Soil samples with grades as high as 6.3 g/t, 4.7 g/t, 4 g/t, 3.2 g/t, and 3 g/t gold.
"Our 2024 field crews added considerable size to the high-grade gold zone identified at Muddy Creek," said Hoffman. "With the continued discovery of these high-grade gold-bearing quartz-arsenopyrite veins over an 800-meter strike length, Muddy Creek has elevated itself as a viable drill target, and certainly one of the best geochemical anomalies on the claim block."
This promising high-grade gold target lies at the northeast end of a more than 2.5-mile (four kilometers) trend of precious and critical minerals mineralization that extends through the Discovery, Shadow, Shoeshine, and Train prospects at Estelle.
Highlights from last year's reconnaissance sampling of the other prospects along this trend include:
• 1,290 g/t gold, 91 g/t silver, and 0.9% antimony (Shoeshine).
• 132.5 g/t gold, 1.2% copper, and 0.1% antimony (Trumpet).
• 96.5 g/t gold and 0.1% antimony (Shoeshine).
• 44.2 g/t gold and 1.8% copper (Shadow).
• 43.6 g/t gold and 1.2% copper (Discovery).
• 35.6 g/t gold and 1% copper (Shoeshine).
• 12.7 g/t gold, 779 g/t silver, 6.7% copper, and 0.1% antimony (Train).
• 7.6 g/t gold and 3% antimony (Shadow).
"These prospects combined represent an approximately 4.5km (2.8 miles) long and 2.5km (1.6 miles) wide anomaly and the potential for continuity between them certainly exists in what appears to be another massive intrusive related gold system," Nova Minerals CEO Christopher Gerteisen said upon the receipt of assays from 2023 sampling of the Train area.
Results from this year's sampling of the Stibium antimony-gold prospect in the area of the RPM gold deposits and within the Stoney gold-silver-copper-antimony prospect area remain pending.
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.
Reader Comments(0)