Gold explorer Ardiden Limited (ASX: ADV) announced the completion of the first drill hole at the Kasagiminnis Deposit at its 100%-owned Kasagiminnis Deposit at Pickle Lake, Ontario, and reported the intersection of a wide mineralised zone from 166.5m including the presence of visible gold.
ADV said that the drill core is yet to be geotechnically logged, cut, and sent off site for analysis.
Pickle Lake gold project
The Pickle Lake gold project is located in north-western Ontario, Canada. The project is 100% owned by Ardiden and consists of three major gold deposit covering an area of 90km x 25km, offering significant upside exploration potential and resource-growth opportunities along 120km of prospective strike-length.
The three advanced Gold Deposits located within the Pickle Lake Gold Project are Kasagiminnis (Kas), Dobie, and Dorothy. Ardiden has also identified 19 Gold Deposit and Prospect areas that will be systematically explored.
Kasagiminnis Gold Deposit is just one of multiple deposit-scale targets and advanced gold Prospects within Ardiden’s 120km of under-explored strike.
Ardiden has a maiden high-grade JORC Resource of 790,000 tonnes @ 4.3 g/t for 110,000oz gold for the Kasagiminnis Deposit and at a premium grade of 4.3 g/t gold.
The Maiden Inferred Resource marks the first step towards the Company’s objective of building a significant high-grade resource base at Pickle Lake and in May 2020 defined an exploration target of 500,000oz to 1.2Moz @ 3.9 – 6.6g/t Au.
This Exploration Target was estimated over 2km of the structural dilational zone that extends over at least 4km of strike. The zone includes a historical drill intercept of 4.24m @ 21.0g/t about 700m south of the main JORC resource area.
The company noted that this drill intercept was never followed-up and may represent a parallel mineralisation trend along the southern shear zone boundary. Hence, drillholes to test this high-grade location was added to the summer programme.
Drilling at Kasagiminnis
Ardiden had commenced a 3000m summer programme in July 2020 at the Kasagiminnis Gold Deposit with the object of building on the current JORC estimate by defining additional gold mineralisation along strike and at depth.
ADV reported that it has now announced an update on the first drill hole, KAS20-001.
Visible gold logged
The company has now announced the completion of its first drillhole, KAS20-001, at the Kasagiminnis Deposit, and intersection of a wide mineralised zone from 166.5m including the presence of visible gold.
ADV said that the samples from the Kasagiminnis Deposit were derived from NQ diamond drill core. The company said that the core has been logged, by qualified personnel to industry best practice.
Ardiden said that the core has not yet been cut or sampled or submitted to laboratory for analysis. The holes were completed by Major Drilling Group International.
Next steps
Ardiden said that KAS20-001 represents the first hole of a 3000m drill programme comprising 8-12 planned angled diamond drill holes at Kasagiminnis.
Management comments
Ardiden’s Exploration Manager Dan Grabiec said: “This intersection of a wide mineralised zone early in our programme, almost exactly where we predicted it should be, confirms our modelling and drill strategy.
It is the first time that coarse, visible gold has been noted at Kasagiminnis. We have a highly experienced drill and support crew here and we are all really excited about this first hit and the potential for mineralisation to improve at depth, as seen elsewhere in other Gold mines and Deposits in the Region.”