Red Mountain Mining heralds potentially transformational quarter with exploration underway at key projects
Red Mountain Mining is drilling for gold and base metals at Mt Maitland, while field work has begun at Mt Mansbridge which is prospective for HREE, nickel-copper-cobalt and PGE.
Red Mountain Mining (ASX: RMX) is heading for a potentially transformational quarter with exploration underway at its key Mt Maitland and Mt Mansbridge projects in Western Australia.
The company is drilling the Mt Maitland gold and copper project, where it has identified 19km of highly prospective strike with historic gold production along the Archean greenstone belt in the Murchison region.
Two diamond core holes of about 400m each will be completed at Mt Maitland where they are targeting induced polarisation chargeability anomalies.
The first hole is at the Jacia volcanogenic massive sulphide prospect, with the second to be completed at the Maitland South gold target.
Red Mountain anticipates the program will be finished within a month, with assays expected about four-to-six weeks after that.
Previous rock chip sampling at Jacia uncovered up to 1.94 grams per tonne gold, 7.4% copper, 0.96% zinc and 58.6g/t silver.
At Maitland South, shallow reverse circulation drilling has hit 7m at 3.3g/t gold from 34m; and 13m at 2.53g/t gold from 9m, including 6m at 6.6g/t gold from 13m.
Red Mountain noted that Mt Maitland was within 50km of major mining operations in the region including Sandfire Resources’ (ASX: SFR) DeGrussa copper-gold mine.
Mt Mansbridge
Over at Mt Mansbridge Red Mountain has identified potential for several minerals including heavy rare earth elements (HREE), copper, nickel, cobalt and platinum group elements.
This project is in WA’s East Kimberley region.
Red Mountain has firmed up its priority targets for initial exploration this month.
At Killi-Killi, Vader and Kyloe, the company is completing geochemical surveys, mapping and rock chip sampling in an attempt to evaluate HREE potential.
HREE prospectivity is also being assessed across the wider Mt Mansbridge project through a regional geochemical survey.
At the Déjà vu prospect, a moving loop electromagnetic survey will be carried out to test for possible nickel-copper-cobalt-PGE mineralisation.
Later in the field season drilling has been planned with Red Mountain also securing $150,000 in co-funded drilling assistance from the WA Government.
The company pointed out that BHP (ASX: BHP) explored the project in the 1980s and uncovered xenotime and dysprosium.
Mt Mansbridge is about 40km from Northern Minerals’ (ASX: NTU) Browns Range HREE operation.
Koonenberry gold project
Across the country in New South Wales, Red Mountain has pegged up about 657 square kilometres in exploration licence applications
The licences, which are collectively known as the Koonenberry gold project, have had little modern exploration.
However, Red Mountain noted there was a “high number” of historic gold workings.
Reviews of previous data has led to Red Mountain firming up a number of targets, with the company saying there was potential for a major discovery.