Colosseum resource growth is no California dream for Dateline as drilling returns thick, high-grade gold hit

Want evidence that there’s plenty of room to grow resources at Dateline’s Colosseum gold mine in California? Try this fulsome 63.2m intercept grading 10.28g/t gold from just 91.15m.

Impressive when one considers that this assay, which has a grade significantly higher than the mine’s overall resource grade of 1.2 grams per tonne (g/t) gold, comes just from the upper part of the first diamond hole that the company drilled to increase the overall gold resource in terms of both tonnage and grade.

And just to prove that it can, the intercept in hole CM23-08 includes a higher-grade section of 23.5m at 21.8g/t

Needless to say, the ongoing eight hole program is looking like it might be a worthy follow-up of Dateline Resources’ (ASX:DTR) drilling in 2022, which also returned grades higher than the resource grade and topped up at 100.6m at 4.16g/t gold from 79.24m in hole CM22-05.

“The results from the first hole have yielded a materially higher gold grade than the resource average and bodes well for when the resource is recalculated at the conclusion of the program,” managing director Stephen Baghdadi said.

“We recently announced the sale of Gold Links Mine to focus on the Colosseum Mine, and drill intercepts such as this validate the strategy.

“A resource upgrade could significantly increase the value of the Colosseum Mine.”

Colosseum mineralisation and resource drilling

Mineralisation at Colosseum is hosted within two near vertical breccia pipes, with historical drilling intersecting the West pipe at about 1,000m vertical depth below the starting surface.

The existing open pit extends to a depth of 208m from surface while the current resource of 813,000oz of gold extends to a depth of 128m below the pit.

Dateline’s drill program will see the drilling of eight holes to test targets within areas of the resource model that have low drill density and down to 75m below the base of the current resource.

The second hole, CM23-11a, is currently underway with results expected in 2-3 weeks and has already intersected over 36m of the same rock type with favourable looking mineralisation encountered in CM22-05 and sections of CM23-08.

Separately, the company has developed a drill plan for an initial test of the rare earths targets developed by its expert advisors in 2022.

Depending on the rate of drilling of the gold targets, these may be drilled either with diamond or reverse circulation holes in the September quarter.

This article was developed in collaboration with Dateline Resources, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.