Chalice Gold Mines uncovers more gold zones at Pyramid Hill
Aircore drilling has identified several high-grade gold zones within the main Karri gold trend at Chalice Gold Mine’s Victorian project.
Chalice Gold Mines (ASX: CHN) has unearthed new gold zones at the large Karri target within its wholly-owned Pyramid Hill gold project in Victoria’s Bendigo region.
The gold explorer today revealed significant new results from an ongoing aircore (AC) drilling program at the project.
This included the re-split and fire assay of the previous best AC drill intercept to return an even better intercept of 30m at 1.12 grams per tonne of gold, including 1m at 15.85 grams per tonne of gold within 2m at 11.54g/t gold.
Highlights from the 62 new AC holes included: 23m at 0.67g/t gold including 3m at 3.86g/t gold to end-of-hole associated with a zone of laminated quartz veining; and 20m at 0.39g/t gold including 4m at 1.35g/t gold.
According to Chalice, the main Karri gold trend defined by the drilling remains continuous over about 4km of strike and is open along strike to the north and at depth.
Chalice managing director Alex Dorsch said the company “expected the likelihood of intersecting primary gold zones to increase as our aircore hole spacing progressively tightened up, given that primary gold zones in the Bendigo zone are typically less than 15m wide.”
“Drilling has indeed now identified several higher-grade primary gold zones within the widened main gold trend, providing immediate targets and justification for an extension of our maiden diamond drill program,” he said.
Vertical infill and step-out AC drilling is continuing on a tightened 250m by 50m grid with assays currently pending for an additional 42 drill holes.
Diamond drilling
Geological diamond drilling is also ongoing at the Karri target, with Chalice reporting an initial hole intersecting a favourable tightly folded anticline-syncline structure – a feature of the large gold systems in the Bendigo zone including the 22-million-ounce Bendigo mine and the 9Moz Fosterville mine.
“The presence of this structural setting at Karri further upgrades the target and gives us confidence that the gold trends identified by shallow AC drilling may be caused by a gold system below,” Mr Dorsch said.
Chalice’s maiden diamond drilling program has now been extended to total 11 holes for 4,000m.
A second diamond drill rig is expected to arrive on site in mid-March.