An Impressive New Gold Discovery on the Reliance Project in the historic Bralorne-Pioneer gold camp.

Endurance Gold Corp. [EDG-TSXV] is a North American gold-focused discovery generator with exploration projects and joint ventures in British Columbia, Alaska, Yukon and Ontario

Its flagship, 100% controlled Reliance gold project is located in the Gold Bridge area of southern B.C., 10 kilometres north of the former producing Bralorne-Pioneer gold mine complex which ceased production in 1971. Bralorne is an Orogenic-type gold system similar to the Motherload District of California and remains the largest historic gold producer in British Columbia. The complex originally consisted of three contiguous mines – Bralorne, Pioneer, and King – which, starting in 1934, produced over 4.2 million ounces of gold at an average recovered grade of 17.7 g/t.

Endurance Gold’s President Robert Boyd said in a recent interview that they are focused on advancing Reliance because exploration has quickly delivered a new discovery with ore-grade drill intersections from near-surface intercepts in close proximity to the former Bralorne-Pioneer gold mine complex which clearly demonstrates that this district can host very large gold endowments.

“It’s a fantastic property in a good location,” said Boyd, who has 40 years of experience in exploration, executive-level management, corporate finance and corporate governance. His career includes a spell as vice-president, exploration for the Canadian subsidiary of Homestake Mining.

Boyd is one of the three directors who collectively own about 55% of the company. The other two large shareholders are his fellow directors Ross Arnold and Richard Gilliam. The other Endurance independent directors are well known industry veterans Rob Pease and Chris Mitchell.

On July 27, 2021, the Endurance shares were trading at 25 cents in a 52-week range between $0.44 and $0.07, with a market cap of about $31 million, based on 124.3 million shares outstanding.

Endurance secured an option to earn a 100% interest in the Reliance property in September 2019, from two private vendors who acquired the property by staking in 2018. Terms of the option require completion of $3 million in exploration expenditures, payment of 4 million Endurance shares, and $300,000 in cash by year-end 2025. The vendors retain a 2.5% NSR which can be bought down to 1.0%.

Previous exploration between 1985 and 2008 included diamond drilling and bulldozer prospecting. Most of the historic drilling focused over about a 100-metre trend around a 1986 drill discovery at the Imperial Zone. Highlight intersections from this period of drilling include 13.30 g/t gold over 4.30 metres at the Imperial Zone.

Endurance said that except for a few drill holes completed in 2004 and 2008, this historic exploration drilling was poorly georeferenced on surface and down-hole with sporadic geological control.  Furthermore, despite strong alteration, the extensive outcrop exposures from historic prospecting were never sampled.

In 2020, Endurance embarked on a systematic staged exploration program through 2020 that included airborne magnetics, geological mapping, soil sampling, biogeochemical sampling, and channel sampling of the alteration and previously unrecognized gold mineralization exposed in these old road cuts. New Zones discovered in the 2020 surface channel sampling returned values like 5.89 g/t gold over 31.5 metres and 4.88 g/t gold over 23.5 metres in outcrops of the Eagle Zone.

These were exciting surface results and thus the 2020 exploration program culminated in the completion of two reverse circulation drilling programs in December 2020, and May 2021, resulting in additional encouraging gold assays from new drill discoveries at the Eagle Zone, at the Diplomat Zone and at the Treasure Prospect, and further encouraging drill results at the historically explored Imperial Zone.

Drilling highlights from these new drill discoveries in 2020 and 2021 include 14.08 g/t gold over 15.24 metres, 10.50 g/t gold over 6.1 metres and 9.70 g/t gold over 12.2 metres in the Eagle Zone, and 16.39 g/t gold over 4.57 metres in the Diplomat Zone.

Reliance is an “Epizonal” Orogenic gold system. Gold mineralization is related to silicification as breccia, veins, stockwork, and sulphidized shear zones hosted within a wide ankerite alteration zone along a regional-scale structure called the Royal Shear. Gold mineralization, strong soil anomalies and alteration remain open for expansion along strike but have already been defined within a 1.2 kilometre strike length, about 420 metres horizontal distance and over a vertical elevation of 750 metres. A biogeochemical survey and geological mapping indicate a mineralized potential for a total 2.0 kilometres of trend.

Endurance’s property portfolio also includes the Elephant Mountain project in central Alaska, which is interpreted to be a reduced intrusion-related gold system. “Elephant has the potential to be a large tonnage, low grade system similar to Kinross Gold Corp.’s (K-TSX, KGC-NYSE) Fort Knox deposit and has a lot of geological similarities to Victoria Gold Corp.’s [VGCX-TSX] Eagle project in the Yukon, and needs lots of drilling” said Boyd. “For instance on one of the six kilometre-scale drill targets already defined at Elephant, we need to complete systematic grid-scale drilling of 200 to 300 metre deep holes to test this 1.5 k x 600 metre IP chargeability anomaly that also has coincident gold-in-soil and rock to discover the higher-grade feeder features.”