Nevada King Gold expands Atlanta drilling to 30,000 metres, Nevada
Nevada King Gold Corp. [TSXV: NKG; OTCQB: NKGFF] provided an update on its regional drill program at its 100%-owned Atlanta gold mine project along the prolific Battle Mountain trend, 264 km northeast of Las Vegas, Nevada.
To date, the company has completed 88 widely spaced reverse circulation (RC) holes, totalling 21,300 metres, focused along the margins of the Atlanta caldera over an 18 km2 area. Drilling occurred at the 12 preliminary targets which were largely based on geophysical anomalies. Through drilling, these targets have evolved into three major exploration areas – Atlanta South (including the South Quartzite Ridge target), Atlanta North and Silver Park.
Two RC drills are currently operating on site, with one dedicated to testing early-stage targets at Atlanta North and Silver Park while the other rig concentrates on testing prospective host rocks beneath the quartzite cap at Atlanta South. The company is waiting on assays for several key holes and expects to provide an initial release on phase 3 drill results in the coming weeks.
Drilling at Atlanta North and Silver Park has progressed faster than expected, while drilling at Atlanta South has been slower than expected due to challenges drilling through the Eureka quartzite. As a result of initial findings of the continuing drilling, the company has increased its phase 3 drill program from 20,000 metres to 30,000 metres.
Target areas: Atlanta South, formerly known as the South Quartzite Ridge target, starts at the southern end of the Atlanta resource area at highlight hole AT24HG-41 (6.28 g/t gold over 54.9 metres and trends southward for 2.5 km. This large target area coincides with a prominent north-south ridge capped by Eureka quartzite that is underlain by Pogonip limestone.
Numerous dikes and sills intrude the Pogonip and Eureka quartzite along the ridge crest, which coincides with the southern extension of the West Atlanta fault and other faults associated with gold mineralization within the resource area. Geophysical signatures that led to the discovery of AT24HG-41 show similar patterns of a low-resistivity horizon beneath the highly resistive quartzite. This low-resistivity horizon constitutes the company’s primary target at Atlanta South, where potential is seen for mineralization hosted within intrusions and the surrounding Pogonip. The Lower Ordovician Pogonip formation is an important gold host in Nevada, including at Nevada Gold Mines’ Long Canyon mine (1.98 million oz gold endowment) and at I-80 Gold’s Archimedes and Ruby Hill deposits (combined 5.39 million oz gold endowment) in the Eureka district.
Drilling at Atlanta South has progressed slower than expected initially due to constraints accessing the most prospective areas atop the ridge, followed by challenges drilling through the Eureka quartzite. These hurdles have been overcome, and the company recently completed the first hole ever drilled from the crest of Atlanta Peak.
The Silver Park target is an arcuate-shaped zone that follows the margin between the northern boundary of the Ryan Springs caldera and the southern boundary of the Atlanta caldera. It is centred on the high-grade, historical Silver Park mine that operated from the late 1800s until the turn of the century.
Atlanta North extends 4.5 km northward from the Atlanta resource area along the northerly trending West Atlanta fault, which controls much of the gold mineralization within the Atlanta resource area. Prospective targets along Atlanta North are dolomite hosted and form a prominent ridge immediately north of the Atlanta resource.
Nevada King is focused on advancing and growing its 100%-owned, past-producing, 120 km2 Atlanta gold mine project in southeastern Nevada. The project hosts an NI 43-101-compliant, pit-constrained oxide resource of 460,000 oz gold in the Measured and Indicated category (11 million tonnes at 1.3 g/t plus an inferred resource of 142,000 oz Au (5.3 million tonnes at 0.83 g/t) based on historical drilling and does not include any of the greater than 100,000 metres of drilling completed by Nevada King.