Thesis Gold Inc (TSX-V:TAU) has told investors that confirmation and expansion drilling at the Thesis III zone at its Ranch gold project in British Columbia’s Golden Horseshoe has returned better-than-expected results, with the recent discovery of the West Zone increasing its belief in the robust prospectivity of the Ranch property.
Announcing the balance of drilling results from the Thesis III zone, completed during the inaugural drill program at the Ranch project, Thesis said drill hole 21TH3DD005 returned 33.13 metres (m) core length of 17.49 grams per tonne (g/t) gold at the prospect, including 4.80m of 110.90 g/t gold. Drill hole 21TH3DD009 returned 28.22m of 2.61 g/t gold, including 14m of 4.79 g/t gold.
"We are very pleased with the results of the 2021 drill program at the Thesis III zone,” the company’s president and CEO Ewan Webster said in a statement.
“We believe that significant upside remains across much of the project area, both for new discoveries and for the expansion of historically drilled zones with insufficient sampling," he added.
READ: Thesis Gold says Ridge zone at Ranch project continues to deliver 'strong' results
The company noted that historical sampling of drill core was incomplete, and areas of identified high-grade gold mineralization in contemporary core samples line up with some of the unsampled historical drilling.
“This suggests an incomplete understanding of mineralization controls in historical logging and sampling, and represents strong upside in some historically drilled areas,” Thesis said.
The company said it plans to continue drilling at and around the Thesis III occurrence in its imminent spring drill program to expand areas of known mineralization and to further understand controls on high-grade gold at Thesis III and elsewhere within the 1.5 kilometres (km) strike-length.
Its technical team also continues to leverage all available datasets to locate additional zones of mineralization proximal to known zones, such as the recently discovered West Zone at Thesis III that returned 28m of 6.07 g/t gold in hole 21TH3DD012.
It said the spring drilling campaign will focus on targets within the Thesis Structural Corridor, including the Bingo, Thesis II, and Thesis III zones.
The Bingo zone has not seen contemporary drilling and Thesis said the technical team has identified several prospective geophysical anomalies proximal to historical gold mineralization.
Further drilling at Thesis III will expand on the recently discovered West Zone, and continue to test for additional mineralized zones. Drilling at the prospects will also focus on obtaining important lithological information, which has largely been ignored in historical drilling in favour of structurally-controlled mineralization.
“The Thesis team believes that understanding stratigraphic control proximal to known gold-bearing structures is imperative moving forward to identify larger mineralized zones,” the company concluded.
Thesis Gold’s Ranch project lies around 300 km north of Smithers, BC and is home to 21 known near-surface epithermal gold deposits and prospects and the company reckons there is a 2 million ounce exploration target there.
Notably, 10,000 ounces of gold have already been produced from Ranch from three small open pits, while 35,500m of core drilling has been undertaken in 433 holes.
Contact the author at stephen.gunnion@proactiveinvestors.com