The global minerals rush has found its ultimate overdrive this week as the junior resource sector cracked open a series of monster intercepts spanning from the historic goldfields of Western Australia to the rugged peaks of Idaho and the premier lithium belts of northern Quebec.
Leading the charge is a cracking drill hole that has set a blistering new benchmark for grade, while both of Big Hits’ runners-up prove that when it comes to tonnage and scale, they are all playing in the absolute deep end of the pool. So let’s dive in.
NEW MURCHISON GOLD LIMITED (ASX: NMG)
Project: Garden Gully gold project, Crown Prince gold mine, Western Australia
Hit: 14m at 231.67g/t gold from 80m downhole
Shallow exploration triumphs which immediately break open existing resource boundaries are the lifeblood of junior resource players and this week, New Murchison Gold claimed the top step on the podium after turning an ongoing reverse circulation (RC) drilling campaign into a spectacular high-grade gold revelation.
Drilling from a pad within the stage two Crown Prince open pit, the company speared its headline hole into the Main Ore Body area to test for resource extensions beneath the current open-pit floor.
The hole immediately hit a discrete high-grade quartz shoot within foliated chlorite-talc ultramafic schist metamorphic rock, breaching a 14-metre zone assaying an eye-watering 231.67g/t gold from 80m downhole.
That already impressive intercept is no ephemeral prospector’s flight of fancy; it's firmly anchored by a phenomenal four-metre centre averaging 805.2g/t gold from 80m downhole for a whopping 3243-gram.metre comparative index. That section glistened with a spectacular single-metre section that initially came back from the lab grading 2620g/t gold.
Not quite satisfied with the bonanza numbers, the laboratory triggered a repeat assay on the mineralised drill-chip sample, which came back with blistering 3100g/t gold, pushing the averaged value for that high-grade one-metre interval to 2860g/t gold.
Remarkably, the entire 14-metre intersection showed zero internal dilution and visible gold was readily identified, glinting among the RC drill chips. The spectacular hit stands as the absolute highest-grade single-metre sample ever captured in the company's Garden Gully database and sits entirely outside the current resource interpretation for Crown Prince.
As studies advance towards a high-grade underground concept beneath the current open pits, this fresh lode sits near the company’s proposed mine design and just 43m metres vertically below the targeted underground portal elevation.
Given that coarse gold shoots of this calibre can exponentially supercharge an underground head grade, New Murchison has already hit the ground running with plans for a diamond twin hole to lock down the exact structural orientation and plunge of this wild new zone.
New Murchison Gold’s headline reverse circulation drillhole delivered abundant coarse gold in drill chips from its high-grade interval. Credit: File
ELK RANGE MINING LIMITED (ASX: ELK)
Project: Friday gold project, Idaho, USA
Hit: 290.3m at 2.8g/t gold from 18.7m downhole
A classic, age-old riddle in the junior mining arena asks whether the gold truly cuts off where historical exploration stopped and this week fresh-faced IPO player Elk Range Mining provided a definitive, 170-metre answer in Idaho, in the United States’ northwest.
With the very first diamond drill hole of its maiden campaign punching into the Friday shear zone to validate historical data and check its continuity, Elk Range bored through what seemed to be a virtual wall of continuous gold mineralisation.
Black Cloud Drilling’s skid-mounted diamond drill drilled the hole to a total depth of 336.80m using HQ3 triple-tube diamond core, which offers a high level of recovered core integrity. It was collared 8m away from a historic 2014 hole, abandoned at 137.16m depth due to the technical limitations of earlier drilling methods.
The new hole tracked parallel to and within 8m of the old hole and not only successfully intersected the same mineralised zone but charged on for a further 200m beyond the end of the old hole, into a largely untested area.
Notably, throughout that final 200-metre run, Elk Range has managed to extend its high-grade mineralisation by a whopping 171m to 308.91m downhole, including an initial 11.3m going 21.4g/t gold from 137.2m, immediately below the end of the old hole.
The resulting total mineralised envelope is a certified heavyweight, tracking at 290.3 metres grading 2.8g/t gold from a shallow depth of just 18.7m. This mega-run equates to a significant 820 gram-metre comparative index.
Within the massive broader envelope, the core of the shear zone delivered a hefty high-grade block of 89.6m running 5.5g/t gold from 76.6m, which itself includes a multi-ounce chunk of 11.3m at 21.4g/t gold from 137.2m - exploding into life at the exact depth the old drilling had been abandoned.
Assays have also confirmed earlier observations of visible native gold at five distinct depths throughout the core, highlighted by a brilliant 1.5cm long crystalline gold veinlet that returned a localised assay of 120g/t gold across a 0.39-metre interval.
Importantly, Elk Range is conducting this work on patented ground with existing underground mine infrastructure already in place, giving it a massive head start over traditional explorers working from a bare hillside.
Equipped with the project's first-ever oriented modern structural core dataset to sharpen their modelling, the company's rigs are busy boring into the next set of holes with a clear view towards the earliest possible delivery of a maiden JORC resource estimate.
WHITEROCK LITHIUM CORP. (ASX: WLC)
Project: Banana lithium project, Spodumene Mountain prospect, Quebec, Canada
Hit: 84m at 1.84% lithium oxide from 8m downhole
If you are going to stake your claim in the highly competitive North American lithium race, it pays to come armed with intercepts that combine massive width with premium grades close to the surface and that's exactly the hand WhiteRock Lithium revealed this week.
Fresh from winding up a comprehensive 65-hole diamond drilling campaign at its flagship Banana lithium project in northern Quebec, the company has received a premium set of first assays from the first 17 holes.
The results have definitively confirmed the presence of multiple thick, stacked, high-grade corridors of spodumene-rich pegmatites across the Spodumene Mountain prospect, led by a monster shallow intercept in the northern part of the project area that bored through 84 metres assaying a premium 1.84 per cent lithium oxide from just 8m downhole.
Individual pegmatite bodies in the field are interpreted as sub-parallel sheets ranging in thickness from a few metres of drilled thickness to several tens of metres.
Stepping back further down-dip on the same section, a second hole proved the system's continuity at depth by intercepting a solid 38.6m at an even higher grade of 2.29 per cent lithium oxide from 156.5m depth, followed by an underlying stacked pegmatite run of 7.4m at 2.11 per cent lithium oxide.
Meanwhile, a third hole a short distance further south lit up the central zone of the project area by tracking three distinct, stacked lithium-rich domains that included intercepts of 51.0m going 2.24 per cent lithium oxide, 29.9m at 2.14 per cent, and 14.5m at 1.97 per cent lithium oxide.
Extensional drilling has successfully expanded the Spodumene Mountain pegmatite cluster beyond its original 650-metre strike length, extending it to a continuous 1.4km strike corridor that remains open in all directions.
Preliminary metallurgical testwork has already shown that the coarse-grained spodumene responds exceptionally well to heavy-liquid separation, producing a premium six per cent plus lithium oxide concentrate at robust recoveries, up to 87 per cent.
Although the company’s rigs may be paused for the Canadian winter, core processing and interpretation of results are in overdrive to figure out the distribution of lithium grades and continuity, putting WhiteRock well on track to compile a maiden resource estimate in the first half of 2027.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
