Balmoral drills 308 g/t gold over 2.97 metres at Fenelon
Balmoral Resources Ltd. [BAR-TSX; BALM-OTCQX] has made a new, very high-grade gold discovery on its Fenelon property 75 km west-northwest of Matagami, Quebec. The Reaper gold discovery returned an intercept of 858.00 g/t over 1.06 metres, as part of a broader 2.97-metre-wide mineralized zone grading 307.89 g/t gold. The Reaper discovery occurs along the western margin of the Area 51 intrusion on the southern part of the company’s Fenelon property.
Wallbridge Mining Company’s high-grade Tabasco Zone occurs along the eastern margin of the same intrusion on the adjacent Fenelon mine property. Balmoral’s Fenelon property forms part of the company’s district-scale Detour gold trend project in Quebec.
Balmoral and Wallbridge Mining Company Ltd. [WM-TSX; WC7-FSE] announced on March 2, 2020 that they had entered into a definitive arrangement agreement whereby Wallbridge will acquire Balmoral by way of a merger. The proposed transaction would consolidate the Area 51 gold system and create one of the best financed gold exploration companies in Canada. The transaction would combine Wallbridge’s development-stage Fenelon gold mine and recent high-grade Tabasco Zone gold discovery with Balmoral’s dominant land position along the Detour gold trend, which includes the Fenelon property and nearby gold and nickel resource-stage assets at Martiniere and Grasset.
The Reaper gold discovery was intersected at a shallow depth – approximately 70 vertical metres below surface – in hole A52-20-18. A52-20-18 was the westernmost hole of the winter 2020 drill program and is the westernmost hole drilled to date in Area 52 by the company.
The discovery intercept is characterized by the occurrence of moderate to very fine-grained visible gold mineralization located within quartz-chlorite-filled microfractures and veinlets. The gold mineralization is hosted by sericite-altered, weakly pyritic, moderately deformed fine-grained siltstone. Four separate assay results from the interval between 100.90 and 101.96 metres in hole A52-20-18 returned assays ranging from 136 g/t gold to the reported 858 g/t gold, the wide range anticipated due to the abundance of free gold in that interval. Drill hole A52-20-18 also returned, in a separate intersection, the broadest, continuous zone of gold mineralization – 164.11 metres averaging 0.38 g/t gold – intersected to date within the expanding Ripley gold zone. The Ripley gold zone, which was discovered by Balmoral in 2019, has now been traced along strike in an east-west direction for approximately 550 metres and remains open in all directions. Hole A52-20-18 commenced on March 8 and was completed to a depth of 587 metres on March 12, 2020. Refer to company’s Area 52 assay table for more details.
Drilling of a follow-up hole was set to commence when the Quebec government announced the closing of all non-essential operations in late March as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak in the province. Exploration activities in Quebec remain suspended at this time.
The winter 2020 drill program successfully intersected the Ripley gold zone in multiple holes. This east-west-trending zone of gold mineralization undergoes a marked change in character as it transitions from sedimentary host rocks to the east, into the dioritic Area 51 intrusion to the west.
Anomalous gold mineralization was observed over intervals of 41.85, 53.97, 66.67, 100.05 and 164.11 metres within that portion of the Ripley gold zone that is hosted by the Area 51 intrusion. Gold grades over these broad widths more than double from east to west, as they head into a large, untested portion of the Fenelon property.
“The very high-grade, near-surface Reaper gold discovery and the dramatic broadening of the Ripley zone observed as we follow it west into the Area 51 intrusion further demonstrate the additional growth and near-term discovery potential within the Area 51 gold system,” said Darin Wagner, President and CEO. “Our team has put two more gold discoveries on the board, and in doing so have provided a third clear area of focus for the soon to be combined companies within this large gold system. We very much look forward to watching the evolution of these new gold discoveries and the combined property portfolio.”
Balmoral’s flagship, 1,000 km2 Detour gold trend project hosts the recently discovered Ripley and Reaper gold zones, the resource-stage Bug and Martiniere West gold deposits, and the Grasset nickel-copper-cobalt-platinum-group-element deposit.