White Rock Minerals Ltd (ASX:WRM, OTCQX:WRMCF)'s underground diamond drilling at the Gap Zone of Morning Star Gold Mine, part of the Wood’s Point Project in Victoria, Australia, has intersected a new unnamed quartz reef.
The company’s analysis of historic mining and exploration identified the Gap Zone as a priority high-grade gold target for drill testing.
Abundant coarse visible gold
Abundant coarse visible gold can be seen within a single band contained in a 0.4-metre interval of quartz reef.
The Gap Zone represents an area with 200 metres of vertical extent between areas of historic mining that occurred above 10-level (greater than 500,000 ounces) and below 14-level (greater than 300,000 ounces), with historic production of 883,000 ounces of gold at 26.5 g/t.
Target area historically overlooked
The target area has seldom been drilled and offers potential to identify new high-grade quartz reef structures along the 600-metre strike length of the host dyke, extending across its full 60 to 80-metre width.
Diamond drilling of the Gap Zone recently recommenced after the earlier drilling focus on the near-term potential of new mining areas at Dickenson, Stacpoole and Whitelaw North.
The drill program has been modified to provide a broad first pass assessment at nominal 40-metre centres to better understand the potential for the target to host significant unknown quartz reefs.
Drill hole 22GZL9013 is the first in the program to intersect significant visible gold.
The unnamed reef can be found at the 13 Level where no quartz reefs have previously been interpreted from the limited historic data.
Identifying areas with high-grade gold hosting potential
White Rock’s primary objective at the Morning Star Mine is to identify and drill areas of the dyke that have the potential to host multiple high-grade gold quartz reefs, using existing development infrastructure to support a low capital restart of production from multiple reef locations.
The Gap Zone is one such primary target in the mine due to its size, multiple high-grade gold-bearing reef potential and proximity to existing infrastructure including the Morning Star shaft.
About White Rock Minerals
White Rock Minerals is an ASX-listed explorer and near-stage gold producer with three key assets:
- Woods Point – new Victorian asset: Bringing new strategy and capital to a large 660-square-kilometre exploration land package and high-grade gold mine with past production of greater than 800,000 ounces at 26 g/t.
- Red Mountain/Last Chance: Globally significant zinc-silver VMS polymetallic and IRGS gold project in Alaska, a Tier 1 jurisdiction.
- Mt Carrington – near-term production asset: JORC resources for gold and silver, on a mineral lease in New South Wales with a pre-feasibility study and existing infrastructure, with the environmental impact statement and definitive feasibility study being advanced by JV partner.