After a significant weather-related exploration setback at its exciting Yidby gold discovery in the Murchison region of Western Australia, Surefire Resources is back in the field with a turbocharged exploration program that will look to follow up on prior stellar drill results. The drill rods are set to start turning again in September, a drone survey has been commissioned and a 500 strong soil sampling campaign has now been completed.
Surefire says it is poised to plough about 2,000 metres into Yidby across 15 holes with drilling set to kick off on September 1.
The company will be aiming to test for along-strike and down-dip extensions of the Yidby gold mineralisation as it looks to progress towards a maiden mineral resource estimate.
Before the heavens opened up Surefire had racked up a pile of wide intersections from a couple of phases of drilling at Yidby earlier this year comprising 30 RC holes for an aggregate coverage of 4,020m.
Stand-out gold hits were a 44m interval grading an average 2.77 grams per tonne gold from 149m including 3m going 26.47 g/t from 150m and 13m at 2.17 g/t from 113m including 1m at 23.13 g/t from 113m.
Other notable results were 26m at an average grade of 2.02 g/t from 126m including 14m at 3.01 g/t from 133m and 19m at 1.28 g/t from 84m including 2m at 7.29 g/t from 84m.
According to the company, the drilling it has undertaken so far has delineated a north-west-south-east trending, east dipping, mineralised zone along the boundary between the sheared ultramafic and mafic rocks and a large felsic quartz porphyry intrusion.
Historical aircore drilling at Yidby encountered gold mineralisation across a 400m-wide shear corridor extending to the west of the recently discovered zone.
Management says data generated from soil geochemical surveying carried out by the company along strike not only confirms the 400m-wide anomaly or mineralised corridor but also points to the zone extending at least another one kilometre to the north-west where it remains untested.
Surefire Resources Managing Director Vladimir Nikolaenko said: “We are very excited to recommence the drilling program at the Yidby gold deposit. We will be testing the gold-bearing structures within this wide 400m corridor with an east-west RC fence line. This may identify new mineralisation along strike to the north-west of the main orebody in a network of parallel shears.”
The latest follow-up drilling will encompass an east-west line that intersects a soil geochemical anomaly coincident with a series of interpreted cross faults and splays off the main Yidby faults.
Surefire’s recently completed soil geochemical survey consisting of about 528 samples ventured across a grid pattern along strike and south-east of the Yidby deposit where it was looking to probe the potential fertility of a sheared contact between the banded iron formation and ultramafic rocks. Assays are pending.
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By Matt Birney
