Trek Metals (ASX: TKM) has kicked-off drilling at the 100%-owned Christmas Creek Gold and Rare Earth Element Project in the Kimberley region of Western Australia.
“We are really excited to have the drill rig on site and turning at Christmas Creek. This is a tremendous milestone for our shareholders and marks the beginning of what we hope will be an exciting journey for us at this large and highly prospective project. The first holes are targeted at the Martin prospect, a large and well-defined gold target where previous drilling by Newmont returned significant high-grade intercepts. The programme will then advance to systematically test the Coogan, Zahn and Willis gold targets and the Zahn South Rare Earth target," CEO, Derek Marshall, said.
“Coogan is a large, well-defined gold mineralised system with only wide-spaced drilling completed previously. This season we are drilling the untested core of the system and stepping out to look for potential parallel structures. This is an exciting prospect to be drilling, and we are itching to get in there to confirm the significance of what has been discovered to date. The fact the previous drilling intersected broad zones of low-grade gold is very significant and highlights the potential for a large system.
“Meanwhile, Willis has never seen a drill-hole, the new zone identified to the north of Zahn looks particularly exciting when you put it into context with the magnetic signature of the host rocks, and Martin has previously delivered significant results which remain open for follow-up drilling.”
The drilling at Christmas Creek builds on a strong base of information gathered by the previous project operator, Trek has moved quickly to generate robust targets and prepare a program of drill testing.
Since acquiring the project in late 2023, Trek has completed the acquisition and merging of all legacy exploration data, re-processing of geophysical data sets, heritage and environmental approvals, completed a targeted soil sampling campaign, and has now commenced drilling. The attributes that attracted Trek to the project initially have been reinforced as the company’s understanding of the data and the potential of the project has grown.
The previous project operator Newmont used Deep Sensing Geochemistry (DSG) technology – a highly sensitive geochemical low detection limit surface sample assay technique – which has allowed the Company to identify buried mineralisation that may prove to be economic with drilling.
Due to the ultrafine grainsize of the assayed sample, DSG results are low in absolute terms, so it is the relative strength of the elements and multiple-element associations that are critical. Trek’s objective for the current field season is to demonstrate continuity of the mineralisation, locate areas of increased grade, and expand the number of targets for future exploration.
The tenement package is a large area that is under-explored, mainly due to the geology being obscured by recent shallow sand cover.
