Bastion Minerals (ASX:BMO) has confirmed the presence of all the original drill core at a visit to the advanced ICE Copper Project in the Yukon Province, Western Canada.
This is a province with a strong history of VHMS deposit discovery and mining and BMO has commenced activities to validate the historical, foreign non-JORC resource.
A total of 121 diamond drill holes (10,584 metres – were drilled in the resource and completed on the ICE property, 87 of which were drilled in 1997. All but five of the drill holes were drilled in a 600m by 400m area.
The outlying drill holes tested a limited number of the soil geochemical anomalies defined on the project. Of equal importance, there are heli-EM geophysical targets along strike from the drilling that have not been tested.
Only a small area over the deposit was subject to a ground-based EM survey and no down hole EM was run in the historical drill holes. Evaluation of the EM geophysics shows equipment was low powered frequency domain equipment, with a maximum investigation depth of 50m. Use of more modern high-powered equipment is expected to be much more effective in defining geophysical targets.
The best assay results were obtained near the centre of the drill area in a 350m long, approximately 50m wide, zone consisting predominantly of primary massive sulphide mineralisation.
A preliminary open pit was designed for the deposit at the time of the 1998 estimate, based on only the copper value of the Project. The pit did not extend to the details of haul road location and benches, and is not considered to have been optimised.
A volume with 3.4 Mt @1.48% Cu within the resource was estimated to lie within that simple pit.
“Locating the original drill core at the ICE site is a tremendous positive for the Company and will be of great assistance in the attempt to update the historical resource to a JORC (2012) compliant Resource,” Executive Chairman, Ross Landles, said.
“On site, we are confirming the locations of the historical drill holes, as part of validating the historical, foreign, non-JORC resource. We are undertaking re-assay of core intervals, to validate the original assaying, and to obtain gold results which were not assayed in all original assays.
“The Project has untested drill targets on EM geophysics and geochemical targets, to discover new high-grade mineralised lenses to increase the project size.
“We look forward to providing shareholders with updates regarding the progress of activities on this exciting copper opportunity, which has the potential to be a game changer for Bastion.”
