On the third and final day of my site visits with Royal Road Minerals Ltd (CVE:RYR), we went to visit the Luna Roja Gold Project. Luna Roja is located around 30 minutes’ drive, on unsealed roads northeast of the town of Rosita (Figure 1).
Figure 1: Location of the Luna Roja Gold Project
Source: Royal Road Minerals
Luna Roja is a gold-bearing skarn system with extensive open-pit (Figure 2) and underground (Figure 3) artisanal mining operations that cover a strike of around two kilometres (2km). Within Royal Roads tenements there are around 30 of these workings, with around 170 informal miners operating in the area.
Figure 2: Open pit workings at Luna Roja
Source: Proactive
Figure 3: Underground workings at Luna Roja
Source: Proactive
Gold mineralisation is associated with retrograde skarn mineralisation, which is surrounded by hematite skarns contained within Cretaceous limestones and shallow marine sediments (Figure 4). The mineralised skarns have an orientation that runs northwest to southeast.
Figure 4: Geological map of Luna Roja
Source: Royal Road Minerals
In mid-2019 Royal Road drilled a 17-hole scout drilling programme that defined large near-surface intercepts of moderate-grade gold mineralisation and smaller intercepts of high-grade gold mineralisation.
Significant results from this programme, include: 49 metres (m) at a grade of 2.80 grams per tonne (g/t) gold (Au) from 36.05m (LR-DDH-003); 49m at a grade of 2.39 g/t Au from 24m (LR-DDH-012); 23m at a grade of 2.11 g/t Au from 145.05m (LR-DDH-005); 18m at a grade of 2.65 g/t Au from 65m (LR-DDH-008); and 3m at a grade of 7.38 g/t Au from 10. 05m (LR-DDH-004).
The success of the scout drilling programme has led the partnership to undertake a follow-up geophysical programme to identify further drill targets to the south as well as under the surface cover. Once completed an expansion drilling programme is expected to be undertaken.