Mining

Alderan Resources hits more high-grade oxide gold at historical Drum mine

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By Imelda Cotton - 
Alderan Resources ASX AL8 Drum gold Utah USA West Pit

Alderan managing director Scott Caithness says the results provide further confidence in the company’s modelling of historical data and indicate the remaining assays will also contain significant gold grades.

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Utah-focused explorer Alderan Resources (ASX: AL8) has encountered more high-grade oxide gold in two drill holes at the northern end of the West Pit of the historical Drum gold mine in US state.

Drum is within the wider Detroit project, which is located in Utah’s Drum Mountains region, and the two holes at the West Pit are part of a nine hole drilling program aimed at verifying and extending remnant oxide mineralisation at Drum and the nearby Mizpah deposit.

The first hole, which encountered high-grade oxide gold was designed to test the Chisholm Formation, which hosts historical mineralisation in the West Pit towards an interpreted steeply-dipping, northeast-trending structure defining the northern boundary of the corridor that hosts the Drum deposit.

Historical assays along strike of the hole include 9.1m at 2 grams per tonne gold from 48.8m and 7.6m at 2.8g/t gold from 42.7m.

Alderan’s hole intersected 6.08m at 2.31g/t gold from surface to successfully verify past exploration, with a highest grade assay of 7.17g/t over 1.61m at the top of the hole.

Chisholm Formation siltstones and shales were traversed from surface to 32.6m followed by Howell Limestone to the final depth.

Chisholm is typically altered and oxidised where silty and locally brecciated.

Second hole

The second hole was drilled from the same site in the West Pit, and targeted a deep test of the northeast-trending fault.

Modelling of nearby historical holes which intersected 9.1m at 2g/t gold from 48.8m and 10.7m at 2.1g/t gold from 32m suggest potential also exists for mineralisation in the Chisholm Formation at the top of the hole.

Alderan’s second hole uncovered 3.2m at 2g/t gold from surface, and traversed oxidised and argillic altered Chisholm Formation shales and siltstones from surface to a depth of 18.8m, before entering primarily fresh, unaltered Howell Formation Limestone to a final depth of 134.74m.

This hole did not traverse the major structural zone, which is now interpreted to dip sub-vertically; however, it did verify a shallow dip for the mineralised unit approximately 30o to the southwest.

Remnant mineralisation

Alderan managing director Scott Caithness said the results confirm that remnant high-grade Chisholm Formation oxide gold mineralisation remains below the West Pit.

“It is particularly encouraging that all the drill intersections grade more than 1g/t gold and include greater than 5m thicknesses of more than 2g/t,” he said.

“This provides further confidence in our modelling of historical drilling data and there is a likelihood that assays for the remaining holes will also contain significant gold grades.”

Assays for the remaining holes at Drum are expected this month and planning is already underway for the next phase of drilling to commence in August.