Ridgeline/NGM Drill High-Grade Carlin Style Gold At Swift, Buying The Correction In Gold Miners
Ridgeline delivered a news release from its Swift Gold Project in Nevada, currently being operated under an exploration earn-in agreement with Nevada Gold Mines
This morning, Ridgeline Minerals (TSX-V:RDG, OTC: RDGMF) announced that hole SW24-006 from its Swift Gold Project (operated under an exploration earn-in agreement with Nevada Gold Mines) returned a highlight intercept of 1.1 meters grading 10.4 grams per tonne gold within 2.7 meters grading 7.0 g/t Au starting at 676.3 meters downhole. Not a wide interval of high-grade, but a good start in the first hole of this year’s drill program at Swift.
Delving into the news release, we learn that a portion of the Hanson Creek and all of the Slope Facies Limestone host rock section was offset by a higher than anticipated projection of the Mill Creek Thrust. As a result, hole SW24-006 did not fully test the prospective host rock section as it was modeled. The target host rocks are the Roberts Mountain Formation, Hanson Creek Formation, and Slope Facies Limestone - in the longitudinal section in today’s news release you can see the sub-optimal orientation of hole SW24-006:
Future drillholes in the area (including hole SW24-007) will be designed to test down-dip of the Mill Creek Thrust, towards a north-south mineralizing structure that carried grade in hole SW22-003 (52.1m grading 0.42 g/t Au). This will ensure that the entire host rock section is fully tested on the hanging wall of the structure.
I have drawn my interpretation of the hole SW24-007 drill trace in blue:
This morning’s news release from Ridgeline is notable for the following reasons:
Swift has already been proven to host wide intervals of lower-grade gold mineralization (proven in the first five holes drilled to date).
The high-grade Carlin-Type gold mineralization was the missing ingredient - today’s news release confirms that it exists at Swift.
The high-grade zone intersected in hole SW24-006 is hosted within a discrete fault structure with strong alteration, mineralization, and Carlin Type geochemical signature within the Roberts Mountains Formation.
The key will now be vectoring to the core of the high-grade mineralization in favorable host rocks (Roberts Mountain and Slope Facies Limestone)
Barrick felt the recent results at Swift were important enough to include Swift in their latest Q3 corporate presentation: “first indications of high grade within the broad alteration cell”
NGM has incurred a total of US$8,185,317 in qualifying work expenditures on the Project through September 30, 2024, and must spend a minimum of US $20,000,000 in qualifying work expenditures by December 31, 2026, to earn an initial 60% interest in the Project.
Hole SW24-007 is currently in progress. 24-007 was RC pre-collared with the core rig now completing the hole to target depth (900+ meters).
Commenting on CEO.ca in response to a comment that today’s intercept was narrow, Ridgeline CEO Chad Peters stated:
“The important point of this PR…is that NGM previously drilled multiple intercepts of low-grade gold over 30-50 meters which shows the host rocks are mineralizing over a large area (i.e. scale). The results from SW24-006 show that the system can produce high-grades in the same host rocks that are comparable grades to operating mines in the district (i.e. grade). If/when NGM hits both scale and grade you’ll have a potential world-class gold deposit. These things take time and coming from a geo who’s been lucky enough to be apart of over 10,000,000+ ounces of gold discoveries in my career, I can assure you this isn’t a nothing burger, this is how discoveries start.”
I am pleased with today’s results, although 10+ meters of 10+ g/t gold would have been even better ;). Swift offers Ridgeline a valuable call option on a new gold discovery in what is essentially the best place on the planet that one could possibly make a gold discovery; in the heart of elephant country for gold deposits in tier-1 Nevada. Barrick (NGM) is committed to Swift or else they wouldn’t be featuring it on slide 10 in the presentation they are showing to the global investing public.
Finally, I’d like to draw your attention to my conversation from Wednesday afternoon with Trevor Hall from Mining Stock Daily. We touched on a number of key topics, including why I view $2660 as an important technical level for gold, and why I was buying Kinross and Newmont at the market open yesterday.
KGC (Daily)
Disclosure: Author owns shares of RDG.V at the time of publishing and may choose to buy or sell at any time without notice.
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