Zahn and Coogan the new gold contenders at Trek’s Christmas Creek

Trek Metals’ detailed assaying adds Zahn and Coogan to its list of Christmas Creek drill targets
Results indicate Zahn has classic characteristics of major Orogenic gold camp
High-grade Martin prospect to be tested further by May 2025 drilling

Special Report: Detailed individual metre assays of recent drilling has upgraded the Zahn and Coogan prospects as potentially significant, large-scale targets within Trek Metals’ flagship Christmas Creek gold project in WA.

This finding is all the more impressive given that Zahn – the largest and highest amplitude gold-in-soil anomaly at the project – was effectively unexplained prior to its drilling in 2024.

Drilling at Zahn returned several encouraging, low-level but highly significant intersections topping out at 28m grading 0.18g/t gold from a down-hole depth of 20m, including 7m at 0.35g/t from 26m (24XCRC074).

Along with a reinterpretation of magnetic data, Trek Metals (ASX:TKM) says the results indicate that Zahn has the classic geological characteristics of a major orogenic gold camp, with antiformal structures sitting adjacent to a large-scale shear.

Importantly, the most significant intersections to date are interpreted to be associated with the contact of magnetic dolerite units, with extensive untested strike extents. These structures define high-priority targets for the upcoming drilling.

It also lends credence to the company’s belief that Christmas Creek in the state’s Kimberley region – which first piqued investor interest late last year with standout hits of 10m at 12.66g/t gold from 59m and 10m at 7.34g/t gold from 94m at the Martin prospect – is a significant greenfields gold discovery.

The results also bolster Coogan, another large-scale soil anomaly that has seen notable, low-grade anomalism in drilling to date.

Plan view of the Zahn prospect area, showing target zones, drilling with significant intercept callouts and selected
soil samples above 5ppb gold. Pic: Trek Metals

Large-scale system

“In addition to the top-priority high-grade gold drill targets at the Martin prospect, where we believe we are close to a significant greenfields discovery, the newly refined targets at Zahn represent large, high-priority, undercover drill targets for the upcoming field program,” chief executive Derek Marshall said.

“The Zahn Prospect has always stood out in the surface geochemistry when looking at the Christmas Creek Project as a whole and these recent results, put into geological context, are a significant step in the right direction to home in on the source to the significant gold-in-soil surface expression.

“Interpretation of project wide soil geochemical data has demonstrated that two multi-kilometre scale targets exist at Christmas Creek and are likely related to large-scale mineral systems. These are the types of systems that can provide sufficient fluid flow to produce a meaningful accumulation of metal.

“We are looking forward to getting the rig spinning at Christmas Creek as soon as practicable, targeting our large, high-priority targets in this largely undercover location in Western Australia. This is an exciting greenfields exploration opportunity and we can’t wait to get back into the field.”

Next steps

TKM notes that the Martin prospect remains the priority focus for drilling, which is expected to start in May.

However, its next phase of exploration will also evaluate Zahn and Coogan, with the company noting that the new interpretation has defined a series of obvious structures for follow-up at the former prospect.

These structures are the interpreted mineralised dolerite contacts adjacent to the major regional structure with the intersection in 24XCRC074 being associated with an interpreted dolerite contact that is open and completely untested for about 800m towards this major structure.

Soil sampling had also returned several areas of multi-point anomalism that could represent halos indicating undetected gold-copper mineralisation.

This article was developed in collaboration with Trek Metals, 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.