Getty Images
Hawkstone swoops on a lot more high-grade gold-copper ground in Utah
Mining
share
Special Report: High-grade rock chip sampling at Hawkstone’s recently acquired Western Desert gold-copper project has given the explorer confidence to substantially increase its landholding in the US.
Rock chip sampling of outcropping mineralisation and old workings at the Western Desert project has returned very high grades of 6.92 grams per tonne (g/t) gold and 1495g/t silver, plus 5.09 per cent copper and over 20 per cent lead.
This prompted Hawkstone Mining (ASX:HWK) to snap up more ground, increasing its landholding in Utah by 950 per cent to 25.41sqkm.
The Western Desert project was prospected via adits, shafts and pits during the early 1900s, and by limited surface work in the late 1900s.
The project lies within the same geological terrain that hosts the Carlin and Cortez Trends further west which have a combined resource of almost 250 million ounces (moz) of gold.
This includes Newmont’s 4.5moz Long Canyon gold mine, 65km away. Western Desert is also 150km from Rio Tinto’s (ASX:RIO) mammoth 23-million-tonne copper, 38.5moz gold Bingham Canyon porphyry mine.
And Hawkstone was able to bolster its portfolio at minimal cost as a result of the company’s accurate geological targeting and ground follow-up.
Western Desert initially consisted of 30 lode mining claims covering 243 hectares.
But photogeological interpretation identified 11 targets within the project. That, combined with positive geochemical sampling and assay results led Hawkstone to stake a further 218 lode claims covering 1,764 hectares and apply for three state leases, adding an additional 77 hectares.
Managing director Paul Lloyd said the Western Desert gold-copper project was living up to initial expectations by demonstrating its significant potential to host “Carlin type” gold
mineralisation.
“From the initial targeting and acquisition of the project, the work to date has defined exciting targets that we will progress in a logical and timely manner,” he said.
Targets A1 and A3 are particularly high priority for Hawkstone given they exhibit features similar to Carlin-type gold mineralisation.
Stream sediment sampling has identified anomalous gold and Carlin-type pathfinder
elements that form four broad zones coincident with the mapped targets.
“We see the project as holding excellent potential in an underexplored geological terrain, that hosts some of the world’s largest gold deposits,” Lloyd said.
Hawkstone says the new targets will be the focus of further exploration, including the use of geophysical methods to define the source of the anomalism and help define drill targets.
