Infill drilling at Colosseum will seek to upgrade resources to the higher confidence indicated or measured categories. Pic via Getty Images
Gold hunter Dateline Resources sources second rig to pump more drill holes into its Colosseum project
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- Dateline Resources expands drill program at Colosseum with 10 more holes and mobilisation of additional RC rig
- New focus on infill drilling to upgrade mineral resource confidence
- Geochemical work has demonstrated correlation between the abundance of gold with a number of trace elements and alteration intensity
Special Report: Dateline Resources has expanded its ongoing drill program at the Colosseum gold mine in California with the mobilisation of a second rig to follow up on recent high-grade hits.
Colosseum sits within the southern section of the Walker Lane trend in East San Bernardino Country which hosts several substantial discoveries, including Corvus Gold’s 1.7Moz Mother Lode deposit and the 6.5Moz Castle Mountain gold mine owned by Equinox Gold.
The project itself already has a resource of 20.9Mt @ 1.2g/t for 813,000oz of contained gold.
Recent drilling by Dateline Resources (ASX:DTR) returned significant high-grade hits such as the monster 76.2m @ 8.62g/t gold in CM23-08 and the more recent 70.1m @ 6.53g/t gold in CM23-14.
These consistent assay results suggest stability in the geologic structure, which in turn support the understanding of the deposit’s composition.
Expanded drill program
To follow up on these high-grade gold hits, DTR has expanded its drill program by 10 holes and mobilised a reverse circulation (RC) rig to carry out infill drilling of the high-grade zones with a view towards upgrading mineral resources to the higher confidence indicated or measured categories.
This upgraded mineral resource will be used for underground mine planning studies.
DTR says the diamond drill rig mobilised to site in December 2023 will continue to test deeper and wider sections of the breccia pipe, with the aim of expanding the known mineralised zone.
Additionally, recent geochemical analysis of hole CM23-14 has demonstrated a correlation between the abundance of gold with a number of trace elements and alteration intensity.
“By correlating the relationship between gold and a range of trace elements and alteration, we can start to measure each drill hole’s proximity to the higher-grade gold zones and continuity in that zone,” DTR managing director Stephen Baghdadi said.
“The RC rig will get to the mineralised zone faster than the core rig and will focus on better defining the high-grade zone. The pace at which the RC rig can drill means we now expect more results to be available within a shorter time frame.”
Other activities
DTR has tasked ALS laboratory with conducting the same geochemical analysis used on CM23-14 on 10% of all samples from the 2023 and 2024 drill program.
Results from this work will be used to create a 3D model of metal zoning and thus allow better targeting of future drillholes.
The same geochemistry results have also prompted the company to carry out a claim-wide auger soil geochemistry sampling program, including the unpatented claims, in a bid to identify additional gold drill targets that may occur outside of the breccia pipes.
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.
