RENO, Nev., March 31, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Nevada Exploration Inc. (“NGE” or the “Company”) (TSX-V:NGE; OTCQB:NVDEF) is pleased provide the first monthly update from its 2021 core drilling program at South Grass Valley. The initial hole of the program, SGVC012, is currently at a depth of 710 metres, and proceeding well within characteristic Carlin-type lower-plate host rocks. NGE is also pleased to announce that it has completed the commissioning of its newly upgraded core logging facility, which has included the addition of some of the latest exploration technologies to provide critical and timely information to guide the Company’s ongoing drilling.
With respect to the current drilling, NGE reports that:
- SGVC012 encountered 559 metres of alluvium followed by 32 metres of the distinctive Nine Hill Tuff, before entering what appears to be a lower plate bedrock unit at 590 metres;
- Preliminary observations indicate that this first lower-plate unit is consistent with Roberts Mountains formation, which sits higher in the stratigraphy than the units encountered to the west in earlier drilling; and
- Preliminary observations show that this unit is oxidized and exhibits numerous broken zones associated with the effects of decarbonatization and argillic alteration, which together are consistent with the drill hole approaching the projected Water Canyon Structural Corridor.
In preparation for supporting its current drilling program, the Company has now completed a major upgrade to its logging and storage facility in Sparks, Nevada. The Company has partnered with a number of industry leaders to maximize the information it can extract from each of its drill holes, reduce the timelines for integrating this new data into its exploration model, and improve its core handling infrastructure to accommodate the expected volume of core from its planned deeper drill holes.
NGE’s upgraded facility now includes:
- A palletized core storage and retrieval system, with associated forklift and racks, to provide easy access to all current and historical drill samples;
- A higher-capacity core saw and core washing station to improve throughput at what is regularly a bottleneck in the early stages of logging;
- Expanded logging tables capable of accommodating up to 500 metres of core to support reviewing geological features across long intervals and multiple drill holes;
- An enclosed, dual-purpose Imago ( www.imago.live ) core photography workstation that in addition to acquiring high-resolution traditional white-light imagery also collects short-wave ultraviolet imagery, which provides important and otherwise-invisible information for mapping hydrothermal fluid pathways and alteration features;
- A REFLEX XRF Geochemical Analyzer Workstation with an Olympus VMR instrument, supplied by IMDEX ( www.imdexlimited.com ), to provide rapid geochemistry data from core samples;
- A new geoscientific information management system built on a cloud-hosted acQuire platform ( www.acquire.com.au ) to provide form-based logging, assay management, and other sample management tools to standardize the entire core logging and sample handling procedures, to automate much of the integration of new assay results, as well as to provide improved connectivity between each of the major geochemistry and geologic modeling software programs used by NGE’s team.
Commenting on the commissioning of the Company’s upgraded logging facility and the start of the 2021 South Grass Valley drilling program, NGE President, James Buskard:
“Drilling is by far the most expensive thing we do. With this current program we are using deep holes to test a very large target, and it is our job to extract as much information as possible from every new batch of core samples. The faster we can incorporate this new information into our geologic model, the better decisions we can make at the drill rig.
“Since closing our financing at the end of 2020, our team has worked tirelessly to upgrade our core logging facility to be able to collect additional information from our drill samples, and to improve our physical and digital infrastructure associated with all aspects of processing and managing the samples and the resulting information they provide.
“One of the biggest investments we’ve made is adding an XRF workstation into our logging workflow to provide early geochemistry data. To integrate this XRF data into our exploration decision making, we’ve completed an orientation program using samples from our earlier drilling programs. The results have given us confidence in the data across useful concentrations for our primary Carlin-type pathfinders, as well as for other important elements used to characterize and identify different stratigraphic units as we’re drilling.
“Our current hole, SGVC012 is in good shape and progressing smoothly. We are retrieving core approximately weekly to bring back to our logging facility, and have just received the first load since entering the lower plate. Angled at about 70 degrees, towards the west, as the hole proceeds deeper we’re looking forward to sampling more of the Water Canyon Structural Corridor on our way down to the stratigraphic Clm Unit that defines our primary East Golden Gorge target. With our new core logging facility pieces in place to review each new batch of samples, we’re equipped to leverage the latest tools to make the most informed drilling decisions we can.”
As the 2021 South Grass Valley drilling program continues, NGE encourages its stakeholders to sign up to its email list to receive its monthly updates, as well as to subscribe to one or more of its social medial channels to follow along as its team shares photos from the field and its logging facility.