Nighthawk releases drilling results from North Inca
Nighthawk Gold Corp. [NHK-TSXV, OTC-MIMZF] on Tuesday June 26 announced drilling results from the North Inca gold deposit in the Northwest Territories.
North Inca is one of four gold deposits located within the company’s Leta Arm gold project. It straddles a well-mineralized deformation zone that is located 16 km southwest of the company’s flagship Colomac gold project.
The results announced on Tuesday are from 11 holes (2,513 metres that were recently completed on North Inca. Drilling on the other three Leta Arm deposits (known as Diversified, Number 3, and Lexindin) is now complete and results are forthcoming, the company said.
Highlights from North Inca drilling include:
Hole NI18-03B, which intersected 25.50 metres (13 metres true width) of 2.68 g/t gold, including 9.95 metres of 4.90 g/t gold, and 4.60 metres of 6.60 g/t gold
Investors reacted by sending Nighthawk shares down 1.15% or $0.005 to 43 cents. The stock is trading in a 52-week range of $1.06 and 41 cents.
Nighthawk Gold is focused on Colomac as it bids to show that former operator Royal Oak Mines may have misinterpreted the geology and therefore vastly underestimated the potential around a former open pit mine that produced 528,000 ounces of gold between 1990 and 1997.
The claims and leases that contain the former Colomac open pit gold mine are part of the much larger Indin Lake property, which covers 90,000 hectares and is thought to contain 20 gold deposits.
Five of those deposits are located on the Colomac leases, which were previously estimated to host a NI 43-101 compliant inferred resource of 2.1 million ounces of gold, grading 1.64 grams per tonne. However, the company recently released an updated inferred mineral resource estimate for Colomac. It said the inferred resource has increased by 24.4% to 2.61 million ounces (50.3 million tonnes) averaging 1.62 g/t gold.
The updated resource estimate incorporates 1,088 drill holes or 141,013 metres, including 913 historical holes or 85,178 metres, and 175 drill holes, or 55,835 metres, completed by Nighthawk between 2012 and 2017. Since the previous resource estimate in 2013, Nighthawk said it has drilled 145 holes or 44,600 metres. The results have been captured in the latest resource estimate.
The five separate gold deposits on the Colomac leases are open in all dimensions, including Colomac Main Sill, Goldcrest Sill, Grizzly Bear, 24 and 27. Only one of those deposits, the Colomac Deposit was historically mined.
Intermittent mining from 1990 to 1997 was limited to three shallow open pits developed on a steeply-dipping differentiated mafic intrusion (Colomac Main Sill).
The company says mining activities impacted only a small portion of the sill’s 7-km mineralized strike length
“Leta Arm is one of our principal projects, and a prime example of the type of emergent opportunity that exists in this juvenile camp,” said Nighthawk President and CEO Dr. Michael Byron.
Given the camp’s underexplored nature, we believe that many other prospects of similar magnitude remain to be discovered,” he said.
Byron said Leta Arm is also a strategic asset in terms of the company’s objective of delivering potential satellite gold ounces to augment any future Colomac production scenario.
Exploration shafts and limited underground development were completed on the North Inca and Diversified gold deposits in the late 1940s and early 1950s. They were designed to facilitate exploration on multi-stage quartz veins characterized by high-grade gold mineralization.
Nighthawk drilled 39 holes in 2011 on the four Leta Arm deposits. It followed that up with two more holes in 2017. Those holes targeted the eastern and western North Inca vein system. Results to date have exceeded expectations by establishing significant zone widths, confirming the potential for zone expansion and for new discoveries as nothing has been drilled below a depth of 100 metres. Leta Arm is a priority target for Nighthawk as the company believes the mineralized corridor is ripe for discovery.