Nevada King Gold Corp, has officially announced results from 12 different vertical, reverse circulation holes, eight of which were drilled into a new discovery area called the Wild West Zone (“WWZ”) at its 5,166 hectares (51.6km2), 100% owned Atlanta Gold Mine Project, located in the prolific Battle Mountain Trend 264km northeast of Las Vegas, Nevada. According to certain reports, the WWZ target area has been deemed to have a width of 150m to 200m over a minimum 500m north-south strike length. Markedly enough, this emerging new zone is further seemed to be located in an area which was previously documented to be unmineralized on the west side of West Atlanta Fault #2. Anyway, talk about the Wild West Zone on a slightly deeper level, we begin from how drilling till date in the area has focused on targeting gold mineralization primarily within the Atlanta Mine Fault Zone. More recent drilling, however, has identified mineralization well beyond the boundaries of Atlanta resource zone, returning thick intersections of high-grade gold mineralization in a new target area. Another detail worth a mention here is rooted in the fact that, bounded by the recent drilling and two historical holes (DHRI-11-11C and KR98-13), WWZ also remains open to the west and south. On top of that, there are in place several intervals that exhibit high-grade intercepts, such as AT24WS-83 that returned 4.67 g/t Au over 42.7m, including 7.94 g/t Au over 18.3m.
Next up, we must get into how mineralization within the WWZ remains heavily oxidized and concentrated along the same near-horizontal unconformity observed in the neighboring Atlanta Mine Fault Zone (“AMFZ”), as well as West Atlanta Graben Zone (“WAGZ”). To expand upon that, mineralization is hosted within the silica breccia horizon, along the unconformity and within a rhyolitic sill and tuffaceous volcanics directly above the silica breccia. Coming back to its location dynamics, WWZ is centered on discovery hole AT24WS-69 (1.48 g/t Au over 73.2m, including 4.97 g/t Au over 4.6m) that was sited approximately 80m west of the WAF2. Now, we also referred to how the WWZ mineralization remains open to the west, but we didn’t mention was that hole AT24WS-81 was collared 111m northwest of AT24WS-69 and just entered mineralization when it was lost at a TD depth of 436m. Building upon that is similar geochemistry and alteration which was encountered at the bottom of the hole, confirming that WWZ mineralization remains open to the west, where deeper drilling is required. Beyond the same, hole AT24WS-82, drilled 200m NNW of AT24WS-69 was weakly mineralized, indicating a northern cutoff somewhere between AT24WS-82 and AT24NS-194 for the WWZ.
“With these higher-grade deeper zones of mineralization developing the Company is now conceptually pursuing the potential for a combination of open pit and underground accessible resources at Atlanta. The Wild West Zone is a new discovery based in large part on drilling a strong geophysical anomaly, and it provides us with new targets to chase southward, southwestward, and to depth — all into untested territory. As a geophysical success story, it bodes well for our current regional reconnaissance drilling program designed to test geophysical targets in previously untested areas,” said Cal Herron, Exploration Manager of Nevada King Gold Corp.
Quite similar to its outlook on west, WWZ mineralization also remains open to the south. You see, holes drilled within the WWZ tested an area measuring 250 meters north-south and 200 meters east-west. Having said so, identical geochemical/geophysical signatures were identified from previous drilling in holes DHRI-11-11C and KR98-13, 198m and 248m south of AT24WS-83, respectively. Making this all the more important is how DHRI-11-11C included a high-grade interval of 6.89 g/t Au over 3.0m, while KR98-13 encountered mineralization in the last 1.5m of the hole.
“With three new discoveries under our belt – the East Ridge Target, the South Quartzite Ridge Target, and now the Wild West Zone, Nevada King continues to push gold mineralization further north, east, south, and west of the historically-explored Atlanta deposit,” said Herron.
