Ardiden bullish on gold play after finding historical assays

Ardiden has opened the vaults of its Pickle Lake gold project in Ontario, Canada and discovered a swag of historical exploration records that cover its newly acquired Dorothy-Dobie and New Patricia properties that are along trend from Barrick Gold’s historical Golden Patricia mine. One 0.5m historical drill intercept showed a stellar 472.8 g/t gold from 184.1m downhole, providing a touch of excitement for the Perth based company.

The data review and results compilation also included proprietary data from the New Patricia gold property recently acquired with Exiro Minerals Corporation.

Amongst the list of the best intercepts discovered in the review was one that returned 8.63m at 5.5g/t gold from 55.82m, including 3.8m at 10.8g/t gold and another 20.65m intersection at 3.6g/t gold from 96.85m, including 1.5m at 14.9g/t gold.  A third, deeper but uber-large grade intercept returned 0.44m grading 153.5g/t gold from 111.4m.

Ardiden management said that the intersected mineralised zones at the Dorothy-Dobie and New Patricia Properties appear to be extensions of the Golden Patricia Shear Zone which hosted gold at the old Golden Patricia underground Mine.  That mine was operated by Barrick Gold and produced 619,796 oz of gold at a whopping grade of 15.2g/t between 1987 and 1993 by underground mining to a depth of 750m.

The property portfolio that makes up Ardiden’s Pickle Lake gold project covers over 40km of a prospective geological trend that includes Barrick’s historical Golden Patricia gold mine.

The numerous high-grade drill intercepts come from historical records that date back to 1971 and include data obtained right up until 2009.  The entire data set represents 480 drill holes for a total 38,000m that is spread over a distance of more than 25km within the mineralised belt.

Ardiden’s Managing Director, Rob Longley said: “Our review of historical data provides clear evidence of significant extensions of high-grade gold mineralisation on our ground along strike of the historical underground gold mine at Golden Patricia. In addition to good width intercepts of high-grade gold, this data shows numerous spectacular grade intercepts along a 25km strike.”

“An intersection of 472.8 g/t Au over half a metre supports our exploration strategy to focus on high grade lode- style gold mineralisation. Our aggregation of a compelling ground holding at the Pickle Lake Gold Project has a clear objective of defining the next World Class gold deposit in Ontario.”

There is a spate of listed exploration companies on the ASX right now that are successfully setting drill targets by dusting off old reports.  Many are having good success too and with super high grades hanging around Ardiden will be on a roll if it can increase the metres and tonnes associated with those very high grades.

Is your ASX listed company doing something interesting ? Contact : matt.birney@businessnews.com.au