Chalice Gold Mines Limited (TSX/ASX:CHN) has announced “encouraging” air-core (AC) drilling results from the Karri Target at its 100%-owned Pyramid Hill Gold Project, located in the historic gold mining region of Bendigo in Victoria.
The company’s 25,000m Phase 2 reconnaissance AC drill programme at the Ironbark, Karri and Beech Targets continues in the Muckleford Area, with a total of 63 AC drill holes for 7,260m now completed at the Karri Target.
Managing Director, Alex Dorsch, said the identification of broad zones of low-level gold anomalism, such as these results at Karri, have been an important step in the discovery of numerous gold deposits throughout Australia and in Victoria in particular.
He said they are particularly important in undercover areas as they allow the target search space to be rapidly refined.
“The drill bit continues to build our excitement levels in Victoria, with another round of excellent results at the Karri Target. We knew from the outset that this target had all the hallmarks of a significant gold system, and we are optimistic that we are on track to make a gold discovery,” Managing Director, Alex Dorsch said.
“The strike extent of the parallel gold trends identified to date is particularly encouraging, as these sorts of multi-kilometre strike lengths point to the potential for a significant scale gold system.
“ Given the prolific high-grade nature of the Bendigo Zone and the lack of exploration in the undercover region, the Karri Target presents a rare discovery opportunity under shallow cover in Australia.”
“We are just beginning to scratch the surface on our district scale Pyramid Hill Gold Project and, given our strong financial position and significant technical expertise in-house, Chalice is positioned exceptionally well for the exploration journey ahead. We eagerly await the commencement of our first diamond drill program in January and look forward to releasing more drill results over the next few months.”
Mr Dorsch said the Phase 2 AC drill holes at Karri were designed as follow-up to the promising results generated from the Phase 1 AC drilling programme previously completed across the project area.
All holes were drilled vertically to AC blade refusal with good penetration into weathered Castlemaine Group sediments, the target basement rock and host to >60Moz Au of high- grade historic gold production in the Bendigo Zone to the south of the project.
Drilling has intersected several broad zones of anomalous gold with the better gold intersections associated with zones of abundant quartz veining with accompanying sulphides (pyrite ± arsenopyrite).
“The main anomalous gold trend (>25ppb Au) covers a strike length of >2km and strikes in a N-S orientation. Encouragingly, there are several sub-parallel zones of gold anomalism, all of which remain open along strike to the north and south,” Mr Dorsch said.
An additional ~5,700m of Phase 2 AC drilling is currently underway at Karri to in-fill drill coverage to 50m hole spacing on several existing lines and also tighten drill line spacing to 500m.
“Visual indications of abundant quartz veining in several step-out holes at 500m drill line spacing to the north and south of Section A-B are viewed as encouraging indications of a large-scale mineralised system.”
An initial diamond drill hole will be completed at Karri in late January 2020 in parallel to the ongoing Phase 2 AC drill programme.
Mr Dorsch said the diamond drilling will be used to gain an early understanding of the local stratigraphic and structural controls of the gold mineralisation and also determine the optimal drilling strategy for the next phases of exploration.
