VANCOUVER (miningweekly.com) – Explorer Canadian Gold Miner (CGM) has reported a head grade of 240 g/t gold from a 1.23 t sample of vein material taken from the 100%-owned West Matachewan project, in Northern Ontario, located 25 km along the Cadillac-Larder break west from Alamos Gold's Young-Davidson mine.
CGM is held 65% by TSX-V-listed project generator Transition Metals, whose award-winning team has a record of finding significant mineral deposits.
Previous assays of surface grab samples collected from the vein returned values up to 12 700 g/t and chip sampling completed across the vein in several locations returned results ranging from 0.2 g/t gold over 0.9 m, up to 2 060 g/t gold over 0.8 m, the company said in a statement on Wednesday.
"We are pleased that a larger and more representative sample than had been previously collected returned such excellent grades at an occurrence situated so close to the Cadillac Larder Break,” CGM CEO Greg Collins stated.
He cautioned, however, that the economic significance of the results remains poorly understood, saying further work is required to outline the full extent of mineralisation associated with this showing and to determine if there is more widespread mineralisation or other similar bonanza-style occurrences elsewhere on the property.
The sample was collected in July 2016, as part of a programme to further investigate the gold occurrence and to collect a more representative sample of vein material to assess overall grade. A mechanical excavator exposed a zone of veining over a strike length of 35 m, with an average true thickness of 1 m.
The zone comprises quartz-carbonate veining and silicification developed along a faulted contact between serpentinised ultramafic intrusive rocks and dacite, striking north-west and dipping about 55° north-east. The quartz-carbonate veining is crosscut by a set of narrower secondary fractures that control a clay and quartz epidote alteration assemblage spatially associated with native gold. Electron microprobe studies of the gold have identified two alloy species; electrum (average content of 60.8% gold, 38% silver), and tetra-auricupride (average content of 77% gold, 22.8% copper), the company reported.