ASX-listed gold explorer, Classic Minerals, now looks to have a tiger by the tail at its emerging Kat Gap project near Southern Cross, WA, with the company outlining spectacular new drilling intercepts at depth.
The cracking new assays include 9 metres grading 20.94g/t gold from 123m down-hole, which incorporated a metre section going more than four ounces to the tonne gold from 126m.
Other holes up-dip of the first, nailed 13m @ 4.91g/t gold from 33m down-hole, including 1m @ 22.1g/t gold from 36m and 8m @ 4.19g/t gold from 109m that contained a metre going 13.5g/t from 115m.
Importantly, drilling at depth on the granite-greenstone contact at Kat Gap has shown that the ore system not only thickens, but the dip has shallowed, potentially enhancing the economics of any future open-cut mining operation.
The new drilling results extend the gold lode another 50m vertically lower than the existing drill intersections, with the system remaining open in all directions, according to management.
Classic also completed some regional exploration holes into granite about 400m southwest of the primary drilling targets at Kat Gap, where historical work had shown a significant gold geochemical soil anomaly about 400m to 600m west of the greenstone contact over about 4.4km.
The holes intersected broad zones of anomalous gold mineralisation up to 20m thick, with a peak result of 3m @ 1.29g/t gold from 96m down-hole.
Given that the area has never been drill targeted for gold in the past, these first-pass results with economic grades of mineralisation are intriguing and do not explain the size and magnitude of the anomalous soil geochemistry in that region, the company said.
Classic will now complete follow up reverse circulation, or “RC”, and diamond drilling over the main granite-greenstone contact starting in the middle of October, targeting areas northwest, southeast and down-dip of the current results.
More comprehensive programs of aircore and RC drilling are also planned to further test beneath the surface geochemical gold anomalies in the granite host rocks to the southwest, particularly close to a cross-cutting intrusive mafic dyke, where higher and more coherent soil anomalies occur.
Classic CEO Dean Goodwin said:“These deeper gold intersections show that Kat Gap has legs with the potential to grow significantly at depth. The further down we drill the wider the gold zones seem to be getting. This is a function of the structural setting (and) as the contact flattens out the fault zone opens up wider and the gold lodes thicken accordingly.”
“Only a handful of deep holes have been drilled at Kat Gap to date (and we) need to drill more holes to follow the system down.”
“We also ventured out into the granite to drill for the first time 400m west of the main granite-greenstone contact. Here we tested a very small section of the 4.4km long auger soil anomaly looking for primary gold within the granite. Results were very encouraging with plenty of anomalous gold below the oxide profile.”
“The next stages for Kat Gap will be to extend the known gold mineralised zone further north and south from our current drilling area. This (will) entail testing the northerly extensions for another 300m and the southerly extensions for 300m.”
“We would also probe at depth down-dip along the entire 400m of gold mineralised granite-greenstone contact we have delineated to date. A few deep diamond holes to collect valuable structural data will also be incorporated into the program to probe at depth 200-300m below existing drill coverage.”
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By Matt Birney
