Kin Mining NL (ASX:KIN) has commenced an initial reverse circulation (RC) drill program at its Pegasus discovery as part of its 2022 field season at its 100%-owned Cardinia Gold Project near Leonora in Western Australia.
The gold exploration company has kicked off its Phase 5 drilling program at Pegasus to follow up the strong aircore results generated in late 2021 and early 2022.
Further assays from recent RC drilling at the Mt Flora prospect, 20 kilometres east of the Cardinia Project, are expected in the next week to support previous high-grade results.
RC drilling results from the Rangoon prospect are currently at the assay laboratory.
Pegasus drill program
Kin Mining managing director Andrew Munckton said: “Work has now commenced in earnest as part of our 2022 field season at Cardinia with an initial RC drilling program at the exciting Pegasus discovery.
“The new phase of drilling is designed to test below near-surface high-grade intercepts returned from aircore drilling completed in 2021.
“Once complete, the RC rig will then progress to the extensional program at Cardinia Hill."
A 2,000-metre RC drilling program commenced this week at the Pegasus prospect, 1 kilometre south of the cornerstone 374,000 ounces Bruno-Lewis deposit at Cardinia.
The program is designed to confirm the presence of a high-grade primary gold system beneath the aircore drilling, which produced a number of significant near-surface intersections in 200-metre spaced lines, providing further confidence in the potential of the emerging discovery.
The target corresponds with the northern and southern edges of the Pegasus Gravity low, which has been shown to be a strong indicator of gold mineralisation at several locations at Cardinia.
Mt Flora drilling
Munchkton added: “Further assays are also awaited for the Mt Flora project, where the initial eight RC holes and the deeper diamond hole drilled in 2021 revealed a high-grade zone beneath earlier outstanding AC results.
“In addition, further results from a 4,000-metre program of RC drilling at the high-grade Rangoon prospect are also awaited.
“The results received to date support our view that the Mt Flora Eastern Zone contains several mineralised lodes and, given that exploration at the project remains at an early stage, suggests that Mt Flora has outstanding potential to emerge as a significant new satellite gold discovery just 20 kilometres east of the main Cardinia Gold Project.
“Assays are now eagerly awaited for the remainder of the 3,169 metres of RC drilling completed recently at Mt Flora to confirm the extent of the high-grade mineralisation in the near-surface and primary environment to the north, south and up-dip of the diamond drill-hole section.
“Visual inspection of the RC drill chips shows that the drilling has successfully intersected the interpreted zones of high-grade mineralisation seen in both the air-core and diamond drill programs.
“Once assay results have been received for the first phase of RC drilling, we plan to systematically assess the strike length and depth extent of the Mt Flora Eastern Zone, before moving onto the north-western and southwestern zones later in 2022.”
Kin Mining completed a program of initial RC drilling at the Eastern Zone at Mount Flora in late 2021, comprising of 25 drill-holes for 3,169 metres to test to around 100 metres below surface.
Results have been returned for the first eight holes including several strong initial intersections such as 18 metres at 1.57 g/t gold, 22 metres at 0.86 g/t and 3 metres at 1.48 g/t.
Results from the remaining 17 drill holes are expected next week.
Further RC drilling is planned to test the north-western and south-western targets at Mt Flora once all initial RC drilling results have been returned.
Multi-element assay results for bottom-of-hole samples used to characterise the mineralisation, alteration and rock types have confirmed that the gold mineralisation is associated with anomalous silver, tellurium and tungsten in sulphide-rich quartz carbonate vein structures within mafic rocks.
A single diamond drill hole, MF21DD001, was completed to test potential depth extensions of near-surface mineralisation intersected in aircore drilling at the Eastern Zone and to understand the stratigraphy of the rock package.
The diamond drill hole intersected two zones of high-grade gold mineralisation at around 54 metres to 62 metres down-hole and 188 metres to 194 metres down-hole.
Rangoon drilling
RC drilling (4,070 metres in 31 holes) at the Rangoon prospect, about 3 kilometres north-east from the centre of the Cardinia Project, was completed in November and December 2021 and assay results are awaited.
The drilling was focused on down-dip extensions of previous high-grade RC drilling results.
Regional target generation
Work to generate early-stage targets has been ongoing.
In late 2021, more than 4,000 auger samples were collected from the Randwick, Murrin Murrin and Gambier Lass projects. Further auger sampling had also been completed for the broader Cardinia area.
The multi-element assay results are starting to be returned from this phase of surface sampling.
The drill program targeting will commence in parallel with the G88 Project assessment.
G88 Project data integration
All data from the Golden Mile Resource (G88), which covers around 120 square kilometres of tenure adjacent to Kin’s Cardinia holding, has been received, field checked and integrated into its overall exploration database and geological understanding of the Leonora area.
The initial programs of work to follow up clear targets defined in the integration process will be initiated in the June quarter.
In January 2022, Kin entered into a joint venture farm-in agreement with G88, which includes $750,000 of exploration expenditure over three years for 60% and an ability to proceed to 80% ownership with further exploration expenditure.