Royal Road drills 1.1 g/t gold over 207.45 metres at Caribe, Nicaragua
Royal Road Minerals Ltd. [RYR-TSXV; RRDMF-OTC] provided a drilling update from its Caribe gold discovery in northeastern Nicaragua.
The Caribe project forms a part of the company’s Strategic-Alliance agreement with Hemco Mineros Nicaragua, a subsidiary of Mineros S.A. [MSA-TSX], and is located in the highly prospective “Golden Triangle” of northeastern Nicaragua. Royal Road Minerals is operator of the Strategic Alliance.
Royal Road’s exploration team discovered the Caribe project during reconnaissance exploration in February of 2018. Outcrop at Caribe is concealed under soil and saprolite cover and there is no previous record of mining or mineralization in the area. In 2019, Royal Road and Hemco completed an initial 4-hole, exploratory drilling program at Caribe which returned promising results for gold.
A follow-up diamond drilling program commenced at the project during August of 2020 and has returned encouraging results including CB-DDH-025, 207.45 metres at 1.1 g/t gold, CB-DDH-016, 100.45 metres at 1.0 g/t; CB-DDH-017, 90 metres at 1.0 g/t and CB-DDH-015, 63 metres at 1.0 g/t gold.
Diamond drilling has advanced as a combination of infill and step-out exploratory drilling in order to resolve geometry within the known breccia body (carbonate-sericite zone) and test for a possible intrusive source to later-stage, pyrite, chalcopyrite and molybdenite mineralized hydrothermal breccia bodies.
Significant new results from infill diamond drilling include drill hole CB-DDH-039 that returned 68 metres at 0.9 g/t gold. CB-DDH-040 returned 104 metres at 0.8 g/t gold and 66 metres at 1.3 g/t gold.
CB-DDH-044 returned 114 metres at 1.0 g/t gold (not true width and the company does not have sufficient information to make a determination of the true widths of the drill hole intersections).
Drill hole CB-DDH-040 in particular has identified significant further gold mineralization within the carbonate-sericite zone at-depth and interestingly beyond this zone and within mafic lavas that were previously interpreted as basement to the mineralizing system at Caribe. Step-out exploratory drill holes have intersected native copper, copper oxides and anomalous gold but have not, as yet, identified a possible copper and gold mineralized intrusive source.
In September 2021, the company commenced a program of grid-based scout reverse-circulation drilling at the project. The program utilizes a small, low-impact, man-portable reverse-circulation (RC) drilling rig which drills through soil and saprolite cover down to the first 2-3 metres of weathered rock where a sample is taken for analysis. Results have now been returned for 312 vertical scout-RC drill holes averaging approximately 18 metres in depth.
Results received to-date imply that the gold mineralized system remains open for a further approximately 300 metres towards the west and southwest and suggests a broad and significant copper anomaly towards the east. Interestingly, the newly identified gold mineralization located to the west of the project area, is hosted in the footwall to a major crustal scale fault-zone, which was previously assumed to be barren. 25-metre-spaced infill scout-RC drilling is planned in this newly identified area in order to better constrain geometry prior to diamond drilling.
“Infill drilling in the main breccia body at Caribe is further extending gold mineralization to depth and the Scout-RC program is fully functioning and identifying some interesting new targets for further potential gold and possibly copper mineralization at the project,” said Tim Coughlin, President and CEO. “New discoveries are full of new surprises, Caribe is reminding us of the power of observation and the value of an open mind.”