Royal Road Minerals Ltd (CVE:RYR) released results from the first three diamond drill holes of its four-hole exploration scout drilling program at the La Golondrina gold project, Narino province, Colombia on Monday.
All reported intersections are downhole widths as true widths cannot be determined from the currently available information.
This was the first exploration scout drilling program ever to be completed at La Golondrina and in the immediate region which includes the Company's nearby La Redencion gold project and many other high-grade, small-scale gold mines.
Drill holes targeted sub-horizontal stacked quartz-carbonate veins and veinlet systems hosted in very strongly altered (biotite, amphibole, silica) tonalite and hornfelsed sediments with corresponding ground magnetic and induced polarization anomalies.
Higher grade gold intersections (e.g. GOL-16-02; 47.8 grams per tonne gold over 0.25m), with elevated bismuth and copper are associated with quartz-carbonate pyrrhotite veins up to 30cm wide and lower grade, broad intercepts (e.g. GOL-16-02; 24.9 meters at 1.0 grams per tonne, 14.3 meters at 1.0 grams per tonne and entire drill hole, 195.2 meters at 0.4 grams per tonne gold) are generally related with stacked sub-horizontal zones of decimeter-scale veins and shallow-dipping interconnecting veinlets and stringer zones.
Evidence from previous underground saw-cut channel sampling indicates that gold mineralization at La Golondrina is very coarse-grained and irregular such that assay results are consequently highly variable. In some cases, gravimetric repeat assays of drill samples returned up to ten-times more gold than the corresponding fire assay. However, gold mineralization was notably continuous and pervasive in both tonalite and hornfels rock-types along the entire length of each drill hole with no results returning below laboratory detection limit (Entire drill hole results for GOL-16-02 were 195.2 meters at 0.4 grams per tonne gold) and in all cases with gold mineralization and indicative alteration remaining open at depth.
La Golondrina is located some 700m structurally and topographically above other active mines and known occurrences of similar style veining such as at the Company's nearby La Redencion project. The Company believes that these results indicate potential for a significant vertically and laterally extensive bulk tonnage intrusion-related gold system.
"This is the first drilling ever conducted at La Golondrina and in the immediate region and although relatively shallow and limited in its extent, it has so-far revealed a lot in terms of the nature and potential of intrusion-related gold mineralization in this highly prospective region" said Dr. Tim Coughlin, Royal Road's President and CEO.