North of 60 Mining News - The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North

Ascot Resources Ltd. July 17 reported another set of results from the roughly 20,000 meters of drilling carried out this year at the Big Missouri Ridge area of its Premier gold project near Stewart in northwestern British Columbia.

Ascot's landholdings in the Stewart area include Premier, a 100-square-kilometer (39 square miles) land package that hosts the past producing Premier and Big Missouri mines; Silver Coin, an adjacent property that also provided ore to the mill at Premier; and Red Mountain, another gold-silver asset gained through the acquisition of IDM Mining.

Premier, which still hosts the mill and other infrastructure from past mining, is central to Ascot's plans to resume and start mining at all of these properties around Stewart. As such, this property is a primary focus of the company's activities this year.

These activities include drilling aimed at upgrading and expanding the high-grade gold resources across three deposit areas on the expanded Premier property – Northern Lights, Big Missouri Ridge and Silver Coin.

This latest batch of results are from 15 holes (2,667 meters) drilled to the west and north of S1, a historically mined pit at the Big Missouri Ridge.

Highlights from this drilling include: one meter averaging 11.7 grams per metric ton gold in hole P19-1906; 1.65 meters of 56.8 g/t gold in P19-1911; and 1.5 meters of 18.1 g/t gold in P19-1921.

The intercepts are generally at the depth that was expected from existing modeling and only minimal corrections will be required for the outlines of the existing shapes. The distribution of very high-grade samples is not predictable by hole but these intercepts are well distributed within the modeled zones. Oriented core is extracted from the drill holes to enable collection of structural data and more accurate modeling and estimating of high-grade shoots within the resource solids.

The infill program at the southern portion of Big Missouri is completed with assays still pending from about 15,000 meters of drilling completed there.

Three drill rigs have been moved to the Silver Coin area in order to conduct roughly 10,000 meters of drilling.

One drill rig is operating at the 602 zone at Premier, where a gap in the existing resource is addressed with additional drill holes. When the 602 drilling is completed, the rig will be focused with drilling at the Prew zone at Premier.

Derek White

"There is a lot of activity at site with a number of drill rigs operating. The drilling is now focused on the Silver Coin deposit, the 602 zone at Premier and several high priority exploration targets identified by induced polarization outside the known resource areas," said Ascot Resources President and CEO Derek White. "Assay turn-around time has been a bit slow but should improve with the on-site prep lab now fully operational."

Ascot plans to update the resource estimates for the three areas – Premier, Big Missouri and Silver Coin – in a staggered fashion feeding into advanced engineering studies towards the end of the year and into the first quarter of 2020.

–SHANE LASLEY