Special Report: Grades of up to 8.8g/t gold from the ‘Kashmir’ target are “extraordinary” for early stage greenfields exploration and reinforce the Gidgee project’s potential to host a major gold system. 

Gateway’s (ASX:GML) main asset is the 1000sqkm Gidgee gold project, an emerging large-scale gold system in the heart of WA’s mineral-rich Murchison and Northern Goldfields.

Five shallow open pits were mined here between 1988 and 1992, producing about 150,000oz back when the gold price languished at around $500/oz.

But over the past 25 years exploration has been sporadic, at best.

The 1.8km-long Kashmir gold-in-soil anomaly at Gidgee was recently tested with first pass, very wide spaced reverse circulation (RC) drilling.

Significant drilling results include 2m at 7.9 grams per tonne (g/t) gold from 3m, 1m at 8.8g/t gold from 59m, and 2m at 1.6g/t gold from 105m.

This is the first-time effective drilling has been carried out in this southeastern contact area, Gateway says.

It confirms the presence of high-grade gold bearing structures directly along strike from the 200,000oz Howards deposit, owned by Horizon Gold (ASX:HRN).

These wide-spaced intersections are open along strike to the north and south. The presence of a group of old workings to the north indicates that high-grade mineralisation is persistent along this south-eastern contact zone for up to 2km further to the north, Gateway says.

Managing director Peter Langworthy says hitting grades like this 1km apart in the company’s very first drill program is an extraordinary result.

“This shows the scale of the opportunity at Gidgee and highlights the vast range of targets we have across the project – from resource-growth opportunities at Whistler and Montague to vast new gold anomalies, such as Kashmir, which are wide open for new discoveries,” he says.

“These important drilling results confirm our modelling of how prospective the Eastern Margin of the Montague Dome may be, effectively opening up a new 8-10km long gold trend that has basically never been explored before.

“Significantly, we are seeing the same type of gold mineralisation, in the same rock-types, at Kashmir as we are seeing across our key resource areas on the western side of the Dome.

“This is an important development which supports our view that we are looking at a major gold system at Gidgee.”

 

Drilling blitz continues

Gateway will now embark on ground-based geophysical surveys and surface mapping to help dial in on some optimal targets for further drilling.

“The next step at Kashmir is to develop follow-up programs of exploration for this area that will help us to vector into zones where the mineralising system is thicker and therefore the potential to delineate a major new deposit is increased,” Langworthy says.

The drilling at Kashmir was completed as part of a larger 4,500m program testing several targets.

Initial results from this program have now been reported from Whistler West and Kashmir, with assays still awaited from a further three prospects.

“Further results are expected in the next one to two weeks from the balance of the recently completed 4,500m RC program on the western side of the Dome,” Langworthy says.

“RC drilling is scheduled to resume shortly with the 10,000m air-core program now in its final stages, and this will ensure a continued strong flow of results through to the end of the year.”

 

This story was developed in collaboration with Gateway Mining, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.
This story does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.