ASX-listed Canada gold explorer, Ardiden, is gearing up for a very detailed airborne geophysical survey of the New Patricia prospect at its high-grade Pickle Lake gold project in north-western Ontario, as the historic mining area gets its first taste of aerial survey work in 45 years.
The Perth-based company has an initial high-grade resource at Pickle Lake of 110,000 ounces of gold from ore going a decent 4.3 grams per tonne gold at its flagship Kasagiminnis deposit.
The company says the project may also be harbouring at least another 100,000 ounces across the nearby Dorothy and Dobie deposits, however, this is only an historical non-JORC estimate that will need to be scrubbed up to full JORC compliance before it can be counted in the official project resource numbers.
Whilst Ardiden is currently dealing with the Coronavirus pandemic-related delays to its drilling plans for Kasagiminnis, it is nonetheless still optimistic about being able to undertake drilling there in the northern summer.
In the meantime, the company is preparing to conduct an aero-magnetic survey over the entire New Patricia prospect, which lies along strike of Barrick Gold’s Golden Patricia mine and Ardiden’s Dorothy-Dobie deposits.
The company says the gold mineralisation trend running through New Patricia is a south-easterly extension of the same structure that hosts the Dorothy-Dobie deposits, which boast 5.7-gram dirt in the historical non-JORC estimate.
The old Golden Patricia underground mine, where 619,796oz was produced from ore averaging a whopping 15.2 g/t gold is also on the same structure, according to management.
Ardiden plans to fly more than 3000 line-kilometres to generate ultra-detailed coverage of the highly prospective, yet largely underexplored gold property where modern exploration applications have been few and far between. The new survey will be flown on close, 50m line spacings, with some infill to 25m in areas of particular interest at a flight height of only 40m-50m.
As part of the ultra-detailed survey, the company will also take in the Esker gold prospect, which is just one of several gold mineralised zones identified across the New Patricia ground where historical drilling returned significant intersections including 5.35m grading 3.1 g/t gold from 80.65m and 12.03m at 3.2 g/t from 29.90m over a 1km-long anomalous trend.
Rock outcrop is sparse and access across the New Patricia ground in general is challenging and according to Ardiden, quality airborne surveys using modern instrumentation and processing techniques are a cost-effective approach prior to embarking on a drilling campaign.
The company says New Patricia contains numerous large structural target settings for gold deposits in favourable greenstones and the resultant survey data will help provide a modern analysis of the geology and pave the way for follow-up test work and drilling.
Is your ASX listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
By Matt Birney
