NevGold Corp. (TSXV:NAU) (OTCQX:NAUFF) (Frankfurt:5E50) has found high-grade silver mineralization at its Ptarmigan project located in southeast British Columbia.
On Tuesday, the Vancouver-based company announced results from the company’s 2022 surface exploration program which was focused on advancing the project to a “drill ready” stage.
New high-grade silver mineralization has been discovered 140 meters south of the previous drilling location. Samples collected from the surface show silver grades of up to 3,188 g/t (along with 0.2 per cent copper, 4.6 per cent lead, and 1.4 per cent zinc) over a distance of 140 meters.
Another sample collected 250 meters away from the historical drill collars showed silver grades of 492 g/t (with 0.22 per cent copper and 29.4 per cent lead). Figure 2 shows the exact locations of these samples.
These findings indicate the presence of additional surface mineralization and define a mineralization trend of over 2 kilometers in a southerly direction from the historical mine workings.
Historical drilling occurred in a tightly constrained area of less than 1 km2 with results including:
- 3.65 meters of 2,455 g/t Ag, 1.00 g/t Au, 0.91 per cent Cu
-
- Includes 0.33 meters of 22,945 g/t Ag, 5.75 g/t Au, 8.24 per cent Cu
- 1.16 meters of 2,315 g/t Ag, 1.64 g/t Au, 1.10 per cent Cu
- 6.80 meters of 452 g/t Ag, 0.52 g/t Au, 0.26 per cent Cu
- 3.69 meters of 635 g/t Ag, 0.82 g/t Au, 0.33 per cent Cu
- 6.41 meters of 96 g/t Ag, 0.36 g/t Au, 0.20 per cent Cu, 3.70 per cent Pb
Calibre’s Ptarmigan property is a 9,900-hectare land package located 50 kilometres west of Radium and 300 kilometers west of Calgary, Alberta.
Company stock went up by 1.57 per cent on Tuesday to $1.29 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Read more: Gold is still the best hedge against inflation: NevGold CEO
Read more: NevGold CEO inks open letter reassuring shareholders despite recent upheavals
Copper surface anomaly found to extend over 9 kilometers
The company also announced that the copper surface anomaly has been found to extend over 9 kilometres, covering almost the entire length of the property. Additional surface sampling has revealed anomalous copper values in an area not previously sampled, extending over 2.3 kilometres to the northwest of historical drilling.
Furthermore, the 2022 fieldwork has identified several promising high-grade drill targets both on trend from previous drilling and in new areas marked by geochemical and geophysical anomalies.
Future drill programs will target both copper mineralization and polymetallic (silver, lead, zinc) deposits.
NevGold is currently conducting a strategic review of Ptarmigan, as the company has received numerous expressions of interest from external parties over the past year.
The review comes in light of NevGold’s increasing portfolio of high-grade, oxide, heap-leach gold in the Western USA, which highlights Ptarmigan’s unrecognized value. The company welcomes further expressions of interest from external parties interested in extracting value for NevGold shareholders.
“It is exciting to identify additional surface expressions of high-grade mineralization at Ptarmigan,” Nevgold’s Vice President of Exploration Derick Unger said.
Unger noted that the mineralizing system is strong and active, as evidenced by the consistently high-grade silver values found on the surface and in past drilling. The exploration program conducted over the last 18 months has been dedicated to identifying new drilling targets that have the potential to yield high-grade deposits.
Additionally, the recent discovery of anomalous copper in surface samples, combined with the presence of high-grade silver, lead, and zinc mineralization, is an encouraging development that the team plans to investigate further.
Property wide map showing the newly defined 9-kilometer copper trend in rock chip samples collected by NevGold and prior operators. Graph via NevGold.
Read more: NevGold Corp. gets exploration notice approval from Bureau of Land Management
Read more: NevGold should be trading at a premium to peers: Analysis
NevGold to advance Ptarmigan to ‘drill-ready’ stage
NevGold CEO Brandon Bonifacio said in a statement that although the company has been laser-focused on establishing itself as a “go-to” oxide, heap-leach gold resource development company in the Western U.S., the company has applied its technical skillset to advance Ptarmigan to the drill-ready stage.
“Ptarmigan is an extremely high-grade, polymetallic district-scale project in southeast British Columbia, and when we inherited the project as part of the public listing of the company back in 2021, it was clear the project had material value to unlock,” Bonifacio said, adding that Ptarmigan has over 14,000 meters of historical drilling, robust geochemical and geophysical analysis, and other critical data layers completed.
“We have supplemented the initial geological database with our 2022 field program and the project is now ‘drill-ready’ with a number of high-quality drill targets,” he said.
“We are also four holes into our highly anticipated inaugural drill program at Nutmeg Mountain in Idaho, and first assays are expected shortly.”
Read more: NevGold to hit the ground running at Limousine Butte in 2023: Caesars Report
Read more: NevGold submits exploration and expansion plans for gold project in Nevada
B.C. has a history of hosting high-grade mines
British Columbia has a rich mineral endowment with several successful high-grade mines.
Newcrest Mining Limited (ASX: NCM) operates the Brucejack Gold Mine which is a high-grade gold mine located in northwestern British Columbia. In March 2022, Newcrest acquired Pretium Resources Inc., including 100 per cent of the Brucejack operation.
Newcrest also owns 70 per cent of the high-grade gold and copper mine Red Chris which is located in the Golden Triangle of B.C.
Centerra Gold Inc. (TSX: CG) (NYSE: CGAU) operates the Mount Milligan Mine which is a high-grade copper-gold mine located in central British Columbia. There are 736 million pounds of copper and 1.838 million ounces of contained gold in proven and probable reserves at the mine. It is located in central British Columbia, Canada, about 155 kilometers northwest of Prince George. It operates as a conventional truck-shovel open-pit copper and gold mine with a 60,000 tons per day capacity copper flotation processing plant.
Coeur Mining, Inc. (NYSE: CDE) owns the Silvertip silver-zinc-lead project which is located in northern British Columbia just south of the Yukon border. Silvertip is one of the highest-grade silver-zinc-lead operations in the world. In February, the company reported year-end 2022 proven and probable reserves of 3.4 million ounces of gold and 245.7 million ounces of silver.
Nevgold is a sponsor of Mugglehead news coverage
