Tower Resources drills 3.28 g/t gold over 13.25 metres at Rabbit North, British Columbia
Tower Resources Ltd. [TWR-TSXV] has received drill results from hole 41 on the new Thunder zone gold discovery at the company’s Rabbit North property near Kamloops, southern British Columbia, between New Gold’s New Afton underground copper-gold mine and Teck’s Highland Valley open-pit copper-molybdenum mine. The drilling revealed two closely spaced, 13.25- and 10.12-metre intercepts containing 3.28 and 2.19 g/t gold, respectively.
Hole 41 also intersected a new and potentially robust zone of porphyry-style Cu-Au plus or minus Mo mineralization – the Rainbow zone – beneath the cover basalt flows immediately southwest of the Thunder zone.
The Thunder zone intersections in hole 041 are approximately 200 metres southeast along strike from the initial 25.7-metre intersection of 2.04 g/t in hole 039. Both holes were drilled at a flat, -45 degree dip and intersected the Thunder zone at a depth of approximately 100 metres below surface. Both were collared on cover basalts 20 to 30 metres thick but the gold zone must surface somewhere between the holes in order to have produced the till-hosted gold grain dispersal train (Central Train) that led to its discovery.
The two high-grade, 3.28 and 2.19 g/t gold intercepts in hole 041 occur between 124.75 and 157 metres down hole. They are separated by 10 metres of weaker mineralization grading 0.35 g/t gold.
The Rainbow zone was intersected over a distance of 36 metres between 72.5 and 108.5 metres down hole and thus is only 16.25 metres from the Thunder zone. It appears to have originally extended to surface but is capped by 13 metres (vertical thickness) of brick red to rusty orange saprolite and saprock from which most of the primary mineralization was leached by post-Jurassic subtropical weathering.
The preserved 36-metre section of the Rainbow zone averages 0.19% copper and 0.33 g/t gold – grades that are only marginally below those of some of the open-pit porphyry mines in British Columbia. Moreover, hole 41 appears to have only clipped the eastern edge of the zone because hole 042 which was drilled beneath it from the same pad but at a steeper -65 degree dip appears to have intersected the zone over a longer interval with visibly more chalcopyrite.
Stu Averill, PGeo and a director of the company, commented: “Hole 41 has enhanced the Thunder zone considerably. In addition to extending the gold zone 200 m southeast along strike from hole 39, where it remains wide open, and obtaining significantly higher gold grades over a similar width, it intersected a complementary, near-surface porphyry Cu-Au plus or minus Mo zone right beside the gold zone.”
The central 16.5 metres of the 36.5-metre intersection of the Rainbow zone contains 0.004% Mo in addition to Cu and Au. Molybdenum is not present in any of the historical porphyry Cu-Au occurrences on the property but occurs at economic concentrations (0.008%) in the large Highland Valley Cu deposit to the west. The presence of Mo tends be a vector to higher-grade mineralization because it occurs centrally in porphyry systems.
The company’s key exploration assets, both in B.C., are the Rabbit North copper-gold porphyry project, located between the New Afton copper-gold and Highland Valley copper mines in the Kamloops mining district, and the Nechako gold-silver project near Artemis’s Blackwater project.