Iceni Gold Limited (ASX: ICL)(Iceni or the Company) is pleased to provide an exploration update on the recent work conducted on the 14 Mile Well Gold Project.
Highlights
Additional fieldwork at the Christmas Gift prospect in the Everleigh Well area has exposed multiple spectacular gold bearing quartz veinlets within a narrow, sheared basalt-interflow sediment contact.Previous high-grade rock chip assay results returned from the outcropping gold bearing veinlets included: 18,207g/t Au,18,179g/t Au,16,776g/t Au,16,659g/t Au,14,780g/t AuThe structure has now been exposed over an approximately 20m strike length that is open and has advanced the geological model to provide a priority drill target, in addition to providing a focus for the greater Everleigh area.Gold collected by prospectors from a crushed bulk sample of ore bearing rock, including the quartz veinlets from the sample trench, has produced a 9.5oz gold doré bar.A multi-hole diamond drill program to evaluate the down dip position of the Christmas Gift shear is well advanced, with site prep completed and drilling to commence in the June Quarter.
Commenting on the sampling results, Managing Director Wade Johnson said:
“The shallow excavation and sampling activities at Christmas Gift exposing the rich gold bearing quartz veinlets within the shear zone is an exciting development for the Company. The additional fieldwork has improved our knowledge of the host structure, that has advanced our understanding to further explore the Christmas Gift structure, but also provides a geological model that we can apply elsewhere in the Everleigh Well area. The strike length of the structure is open, drill sites have been prepared and we are looking forward to commencing drilling shortly to evaluate the down dip extent of the structure and rapidly advance this priority target”.
Christmas Gift Prospect
Christmas Gift is located within the Everleigh Well Target area (“Everleigh”), that is central to the 14 Mile Well Project. The Everleigh area formed part of the historic Redcastle gold mining centre, renowned for its prolific gold nugget finds, which was discovered in 1894. Everleigh also contains a number of historical prospecting pits, shafts and shallow workings in additional numerous alluvial gold workings distributed over a wide area.
The Christmas Gift Prospect is located at one of the historical workings and where sampling by the Company during 2023 confirmed the presence of the narrow high-grade quartz vein with abundant visible gold (ASX release 8 June 2023).
Recent exploration work by the Company to better expose the gold bearing lithological unit has resulted in the discovery of further spectacular narrow quartz veinlets containing visible gold, and that has greatly enhanced the understanding of controls on the gold bearing structure. This work involved the excavation of a small sampling trench (approximately 10 metres long by 1 metre deep) along the trend, which improved the visibility of the Christmas Gift structure (Figure 2) which trends approximately northwest and dips 55 degrees to the northeast.
This work has exposed the true nature and width of the gold bearing shear zone and has confirmed the prospectivity of the target. The Christmas Gift shear zone within the trench has an average width of between 0.8 metre and 1.0 metre, bounded by massive basalt.
The sheared zone is centred over the contact between basalt and a thin (<0.25m) altered sedimentary interflow. Importantly, reconnaissance mapping by the Company has highlighted small subcropping highly oxidised sedimentary rocks along strike ~75m to the northwest that provides support that the shear structure has a greater extent than previously thought.
The exposed slightly weathered basalt unit is strongly deformed (sheared) and contains the narrow (<5cm) gold bearing quartz veinlets and selvages of the pyrite altered interflow sediment. This structure contains the previous and newly discovered quartz veinlets which have had abundant gold observed within them (Figures 4, 5 & 7). The veinlets are conformable with the shear zone and are semi discontinuous along strike.
Several rock chip samples were collected from the excavated structure to test the different lithologies, including the quartz veinlets within the main Christmas Gift shear zone and the surrounding massive basalt host. The results from these samples are still pending.
Sampling work completed by prospectors over the mineralised shear zone produced approximately 9.5 oz of gold doré from ~101.3 kg of material collected from the sampling trench. This bulk sample comprised a selection of gold bearing quartz veinlets (~1.3kg) and a mixture of sheared basalt and altered interflow sediments (~100kg) that contain thin quartz gold veinlets. This bulk sample is considered a good representation of the grade of the structure.
The material was collected from along the 10m sample trench and is an estimation* (~2,912.4g/t) of the potential grade of the mineralisation. The ore bearing material from the shear zone was crushed, dollied and panned to recover gold to produce the ~9.5oz gold doré bar (Figure 6).
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