Dateline Resources flying high on significant gold hit at Colosseum mine in California

Dateline Resources (ASX: DTR) has seen its share price jump by as much as 45% after it reported the drilling of a wide, high-grade gold hit at the Colosseum gold project in California.

New assays from an ongoing diamond drilling program at Colosseum featured an intersection of 70.1 metres at 6.53 grams per tonne gold in hole CM23-14, which included a higher-grade section of 25.9m at 15.31g/t and a number of other high-grade results.

The highlight hole was the eighth exploratory hole the company has completed to date at the Colosseum project.

Managing director Stephen Baghdadi said the wide intersections in highlight hole CM23-14 are consistent with other drill holes that have been completed.

“[This] intersection […] is very encouraging and when added to the data from previous drill holes reinforces our confidence in the stability of the geologic structure,” Mr Baghdadi said.

“The results from drill hole CM23-14 have increased the size of the sedimentary breccia unit and the higher-grade mineralised envelope within that unit.”

“It has also increased our confidence in the current geologic model for the Colosseum deposit.”

Confirmed mineralisation

Mr Baghdadi said the results of the drill hole have confirmed the continuation of the primary lithology – sedimentary breccia – with an elongated orientation to the southeast.

He said there is a notable volume of high-grade mineralisation within these breccia that has been intersected in a number of drill holes and is further substantiated by the CM23-14 samples.

“This high-grade mineralisation is an encouraging sign for the potential economic value of the deposit and additional drill holes are planned to test the lateral and down-dip extents of the high-grade zones.”

Dateline says test work from the next hole in this program is almost complete, with sections of the drill core already sent to the lab for priority processing.

The hole is intended to test below CM23-14 for continuation of the high-grade gold mineralisation while also testing for any southeast extension of the sedimentary breccia body at depth.

Colosseum approval

In late February 2023, Dateline received official approval to access and extract mineral resources at the Colosseum mine.

At the time, the Colosseum deposit was estimated to contain mineral resources of 20.9Mt at 1.2g/t for 813,000 ounces of gold.

The company’s immediate intention after gaining approval was to fill in a large drilling gap between the base of the mineral resource model and the deepest breccia intersection, which it believed offered significant potential for additions to the mineral resource.