Legend Mining has unearthed a bounty of compelling gold and base metal targets at its newly acquired Pinnacle Well project north of Leonora in Western Australia’s prolific Goldfields. Eight soil anomalies have already been flagged, drill targeting is underway and early-stage prospects are rolling in.
The 110-square-kilometre project sits in the heart of the Yilgarn Craton’s Archaean greenstone belts, a region synonymous with multi-million-ounce gold deposits including Gwalia, Tarmoola and King of the Hills, along with nearby base metal giants including the Teutonic Bore and Jaguar volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) deposits.
A meticulous data review and boots-on-ground work has confirmed Pinnacle Well’s potential to host both intrusion-related and structurally controlled vein-hosted gold systems, as well as VMS deposits rich in copper, lead, zinc and silver.
The company says its data has delivered a swag of targets that underscore Pinnacle Well’s prospectivity from untested soil anomalies, regional structures and classic mineralisation indicators like outcropping quartz veining and gossans littered across the fresh new block.
Legend’s standout results come from machine-learning analysis of 2813 ultrafine fraction soil samples collected in 2022, revealing eight distinct geochemical anomalies. The most prominent, labelled Au1, spans nearly 3sq.km and is supported by outcropping quartz veins, a historic high-grade rock chip sample of 11.95g/t gold and gold nugget sightings by prospectors.
Three additional gold anomalies and three base metal anomalies highlight the multi-commodity prospectivity at Pinnacle, with a further unique hydrothermal alteration anomaly showing elevated silver, cadmium and mercury signatures within its structurally significant Pig Well prospect.
Legend says its next steps will be focused on closing data gaps and sharpening drill targets. The company plans to extend its UFF soil sampling across the untested project, followed by induced polarisation (IP) surveys planned to pinpoint drill-ready prospects. “
About 70 per cent of the project is under transported cover, making geophysics critical to sniffing out blind intrusions and hidden mineralised systems.
Legend Mining executive chairman Mark Wilson said: “The results of this review have identified numerous prospective areas and data gaps which require additional work at our newly acquired Project. The fact that the Project tenements straddle big regional structures with alteration and proximal untested soil anomalies speaks to its prospectivity.”
Pinnacle Well falls in a surprisingly underexplored tenure adjacent to the Linger and Die gold mine, which the company says shows features of intrusive-related and vein-hosted gold, as well as VMS style zinc-copper-lead-silver deposits akin to its regional neighbours.
Legend says its now reprocessed aeromagnetic, radiometric and gravity data has already uncovered the project’s untested structural architecture, spotlighting the NW-SE trending Keith-Kilkenny and Melita-Emu faults, alongside a newly interpreted fault defining the Pig Well feature.
Historical exploration was last conducted back in 2003 when the gold price was US$330 per ounce – just a tenth of what it is today. While limited drilling was conducted, shallow rotary air blast drilling to depths of around 50m and a couple of deeper holes threw up a best intercept of 4m grading 2.5g/t gold from 28m. Crucially, most of the newly identified anomalies remain untested or minimally explored, offering Legend a fresh canvas to apply its modern exploration toolkit.
While the company’s nickel-copper hunt in the Fraser Range takes a back seat, Pinnacle Well looks set to become the front-runner in Legend’s exploration strategy, with its cash reserves, geophysical muscle and early signs of a fertile mineral system all pointing to an action-packed year ahead.
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By Andrew Todd
