Silica, silica-carbonate and phyllic alteration intersected over 100 metre durations in all four diamond drill holes in the South Zone directly beneath and nearby the Athelstan mine. These mineralized zones appear to be correlative between drill holes and could represent a 100 metre step out, along the strike of the Athelstan gold zone trend. The discovery of multi-metre quartz shear and stockwork style vein intersections with all lithologies hosting widespread pyrrhotite and pyrite and lesser chalco and arsenopyrite may potentially be one or more conduits and fracture spaces for deep seated mineralizing hydrothermal fluids and related to the auriferous deposits found in the historic gold mining above.
Shallow listwanite units (oxidized to unweathered) were consistently intersected along with very wide intense alteration zones with moderate sulphide mineralization at depths previously untested with historic exploration drilling or mining.
The recently completed 9 hole, 2,000m drill program tested several coincident geophysical-geological anomalies on the A-J property. Drill holes AJ23-01 to 05 were drilled in the North Zone with drill holes AJ23-06 to 09 drilled in the South Zone.
South Zone: Potential near-surface resource with high-grade feeder system
South Zone drilling tested for a potential feeder contact/structure for the near-surface gold mineralization within a 1.0 km mineralized gold trend which includes the Athelstan and Jackpot past producing gold mines which produced 7,600 ozs Au & 9,000 oz Ag (Minfile 082ESE047)
Along with the two former gold mines this trend includes numerous trenches, pits and adit as well as mine waste dumps. Sampling in this area has returned extensive high gold and silver results. In particular sampling of the mine dumps have returned grades as high as 1 oz/ton gold and over 5 oz/ton silver.1.
A 2002 Report by R.E. Miller B.Eng., P.Geo states “A potential resource of 2,0005,000 ounces of gold in the surface and near surface mineralized areas appears to exist within the AJ Group based on previous trenching results and sampling of mine dumps. The identification of one to two areas of ore have been identified having dimensions of 2.0 metres thick, 15 metres in width and 90 metres in length with an average grade of 0.3 opt gold.” 2
Gold mineralization in this zone is coincident with 2020 IP survey signatures of subsurface chargeability and resistivity highs, in addition to overlapping magnetic lows. All interpreted to potentially relate to the presence of sulphide mineralization, as well as silica, silica-carbonate and phyllic alteration zones.