Exploration at Gold Mountain’s Mt Wipi is still in its early stages but if results from trenching is anything to go by, there is significant potential for discovery of an economic gold and copper resource.
Gold Mountain (ASX:GMN) announced that a 306m long trench (MWTR003) located along one of the Company’s copper soil anomalies has returned wide zones of mineralisation at surface including 37m grading 0.24 grams per tonne (g/t) gold, 0.25% copper and 5.4g/t silver and 62m at 0.20g/t gold, 0.18% copper and 4.65g/t silver. These results include higher grade zones of 22m at 0.38g/t gold, 0.32% copper and 7.7g/t silver and 24m at 0.30g/t gold, 0.28% copper and 6.8g/t silver.
It is worth noting that large porphyry deposits have been commercialised at these sorts of grades and the objective now is for GMN to drill and prove up the size of the deposit and potentially prove up even higher grades.
Operations such as the giant Cadia mine in New South Wales, which has a resource of roughly 2.9 BILLION tonnes of resource grading 0.36g/t gold and 0.26% copper at its Cadia East Underground deposit, are hugely profitable thanks to their large volumes.
A five-hole diamond drilling program is currently underway at Mt Wipi in Papua New Guinea to test this anomaly. Drilling commenced last month at the first hole, located just to the South of the trench, which will test to a depth of 250-300m in an East-West direction. The remaining four holes are planned to further test this anomaly.
Phil Jones, GMN’s Porphyry expert said “The GMN team are feeling optimistic about the Mt Wipi prospect, and are keen to see core from the first hole now that diamond drilling has commenced in the vicinity of MWTR003. Significant skarn hosted Cu-Au-Ag mineralised intervals were intersected within the trench which are associated with elevated levels of porphyry pathfinder elements, such as tungsten, tellurium, bismuth, tin, and selenium, which in turn are associated with major structures.
These trace elements indicate the presence of a potential copper-gold porphyry system, possibly located laterally or at a shallow to moderate depth in the northwest anomaly area.”
He added that further trench and soil results are pending that will test the continuity of mineralisation to the northwest and west of the anomaly.
Mt Wipi Trenching
The 306m long trench was excavated where areas of +500 parts per million (ppm) copper and spots highs of +50 parts per billion gold were identified in a soil sampling program earlier in the year.
It intersected hornfels altered siliceous, carbonaceous and calcareous sediments, which have been intruded by late stage intrusives along major northwest structures, resulting in skarn style alteration and copper and gold mineralisation.
This is further supported by the presence of high levels of iron and calcium in the rock geochemistry.
This article was developed in collaboration with Gold Mountain, 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.