Artemis Resources Limited (ASX:ARV) has intersected high- grade shoots in the Eastern Zone of the Carlow Castle Gold and Copper Project in the west Pilbara region of Western Australia.
Executive Director, Alastair Clayton, said the new hits were identified in recently received assay results from the diamond drill programmes at its 100%-owned Carlow Castle Project.
“These diamond holes, drilled back in May, have helped confirm structure and grades at the Eastern Zone. Importantly the results from the diamond drilling at Crosscut confirm that mineralisation actually strikes to the northwest and dips to southwest.
“This information has already been used to design the current RC drill programme, much of which is targeting the emerging mineralised trend at the Crosscut Zone.
“We very much look forward to the final assays from the remainder of the May RC drill programme as well as the first assays from the current ~11,000m RC programme which is already over halfway finished.”
The five diamond holes (holes 21CCDD001 to 005) in the Carlow Castle Eastern Zone were designed by CSA to test the orientation of the ore-zone, confirm mineralisation’s widths and gather structural information to build confidence for the next round of drilling.
ARV designed the two holes (21CCDD006 and 21CCDD007) in Crosscut for structural information and twinning an existing RC hole to confirm orientations on mineralisation direction and grade comparisons.
Carlow Castle East Zone Drilling
Previous drilling at Carlow Castle East had several holes drilled in the north and south orientation to determine the dip and plunge of the mineralisation along with the orientation of the main mineralising zone. The series of diamond holes in the eastern zone had given ARV enough information to determine the orientation of the mineralising zone and capture the information to assist in drill targeting for future programs.
Holes 21CCDD002, 21CCDD003 and 21CCDD003 intersected intervals of native copper along with significant iron oxide and brecciation. This metallic occurrence is coincident with what appear to be a fault zone and may mark out the location of the bounding faults that occur to the east and west of the Carlow Castle main mineralised zones.
Drill core observations indicated that there were at least two types of basalt occurrence. One being a more massive style, while the other revealed pillow basalt textures. These pillow basalts are recognised by remanent vesicles (product of de-gassing), rounded margins and hyaloclastite fragments. These are primary textures and are not directly related to mineralisation.
It was noted in drill core that mineralisation was associated with breccias that commonly coincided with pillow basalts. Higher grade zones were associated with breccias with semi- massive sulphides, with peripheral fracturing to the main zones, hosting lower grades.
More massive competent basalt tended to fracture as stockworks, creating a finer veining that hosted moderate to lower grade mineralisation.
Alteration was also notably stronger in areas of pillow basalts, comprising of sericite-quartz. A later chlorite alteration is also noted, coincident with a later phase of mineralisation.
Further work is in progress to understand the relationships between textures, timing and the paragenetic sequence of the mineralisation at Carlow Castle.
Results at Crosscut
Previous drilling was completed at Crosscut to try and understand the structural setting of the mineralisation. Two diamond drill holes were targeted in Crosscut for the purposes of twinning an RC hole and obtain structural readings.
These diamond holes both confirmed that mineralisation dipped to the southwest, with the holes drilling down dip. Reinterpretation of the Crosscut Zone is in progress.