ASX listed small cap gold explorer Classic Minerals has delivered more outstanding drilling results from targeted exploration programs at its Forrestania gold project, south of Southern Cross in W.A.
Follow-up RC drilling at the emerging Kat Gap prospect produced wide intercepts of shallow high-grade gold mineralisation up to 8 metres grading 19.05 grams per tonne gold from 32m down-hole, including 4m @ 28.8g/t gold from 32m.
Other impressive results included 12m @ 7.52g/t gold from 39m down-hole, including 2m @ 20.2g/t gold from 48m and 12m @ 5.39g/t gold from 30m down-hole, including 1m @ 20.8g/t gold from 30m.
Importantly, Classic has also identified a completely new gold zone hosted within a granite 30m west of the historical Kat Gap mineralisation. It appears to have been completely missed by previous explorers.
All three holes drilled into this new zone were mineralised, returning results up to 8m @ 7.14g/t gold from 82m down-hole, including 1m @ 21.1g/t gold from 82m.
The remaining holes showed results of 4m @ 7.44g/t gold from 92m down-hole and 3m @ 10.7g/t gold from 69m down-hole, including 1m @ 23.1g/t from 69m.
The exciting new find is open along strike and also up-dip and down-dip at present.
The discovery of granite-hosted gold mineralisation at Kat Gap is a potential game-changer for Classic, as the same geological setting may be able to be repeated elsewhere in the company’s 500 square kilometre tenement holdings at Forrestania.
Classic will continue to track this unexpected find in its upcoming drill program at Kat Gap, which is due to start in August.
According to Classic management, considerable potential exists to extend and add new gold mineralisation at the prospect, due to fact that only 140m of the 3.5km strike has been tested in the latest program.
Elsewhere, the company drilled a further 10 RC holes for 938 metres, to identify cross-cutting east-west quartz veins within narrow shear zones at the Lady Magdalene prospect.
Best results include narrow, high-grade intersections of 1m @ 13.4g/t gold from 64m down-hole, 1m @ 9.36g/t gold from 44m down-hole and 4m @ 3.9g/t gold from 46m down-hole.
The drilling also targeted the thicker zones of lower-grade gold mineralisation known historically from Lady Magdalene and returned shallow results up to 10m @ 2.1g/t gold from 43m down-hole, 11m @ 2.39g/t gold from 38m down-hole and 15m @ 1.41g/t from 36m down-hole.
The latest drilling effectively confirms the existence of significant gold-bearing quartz veins between existing wide-spaced drilling traverses which could possibly be high-grade sweeteners to the larger bulk tonnage, modestly graded Lady Magdalene deposit.
Classic Minerals CEO Dean Goodwin said: “Kat Gap is shaping up to become a prolific shallow high-grade gold deposit with so much remaining upside potential.”
“At Lady Magdalene, we have proven the existence of 3 potentially new high-grade cross-cutting quartz veins.”
“…… these quartz veins could be analogous to those at Lady Ada – reinforcing the view that plenty more high-grade ounces are potentially hiding between the existing drill lines at Lady Magdalene. We will track these new quartz lodes both east-west and test for additional cross-cutting veins all the way south to Lady Ada.”
“We are planning to restart drilling at Kat Gap and Lady Magdalene in early August. This program will also include the drilling at Lady Lila and Van Uden West so there is plenty of good results to look forward to.”
Additionally, Classic said it had embarked on a lithium orientation sampling program of historical RC drill holes at Kat Gap that were selected because they previously had pegmatites logged in the hole.
No previous sampling for lithium has reportedly been undertaken by former explorers on the tenement, which is surprising given that the Forrestania belt hosts the world-class Earl Grey spodumene deposit just down the road.
The company collected two composite samples from areas both north and south of the Kat Gap gold prospect area.
Whilst the northern composite returned no anomalous results, the southern composite gave encouraging results of up to 0.23% lithium oxide and highly elevated values of tantalum, caesium and tin.
The results bear all the hallmarks of LCT pegmatite geochemical signatures and outline the potential for broader, pegmatite-hosted lithium mineralisation at Kat Gap.
Western Areas recently announced an intersection of 50m grading 0.95% lithium oxide in a spodumene-rich pegmatite, including 9m at an incredible 2.85% lithium oxide from re-sampling of an old diamond drill hole, located only a short distance northwest of Classic’s Kat Gap prospect.
