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

Nova Minerals Ltd. Oct. 22 reported impressive high-grade gold in rock samples collected from the RPM target on its 85-square-mile (220 square kilometers) Estelle gold property in Alaska.

Located about 16 miles (25 kilometers) south of the 3.3-million-ounce resource in the Korbel deposit, RPM is an earlier staged gold target that show the potential for higher grade gold mineralization.

One hole drilled by a previous operator in 2012 cut 177.4 meters averaging 0.79 grams per metric ton gold from a depth of 4.3 meters at RPM, including 50.2 meters of 1.75 g/t gold.

One rock sample collected about 50 meters southeast of the 2012 discovery hole contained 291 g/t gold and a second sample from about 50 meters further southeast averaged about 5 g/t gold.

In an area about 750 meters southeast of hole SE12-008, Nova collected multiple rock samples with high-grade gold. The highest grade samples from this area contained 103 g/t, 13.1 g/t, 9.3 g/t, 9 g/t, and 8.8 g/t gold.

"These spectacular grades obtained from RPM, alongside the encouraging drill result that was re-sampled from the 2012 diamond drill hole SE12-008 (ASX 17 September 2019), opens up another Estelle target which we anticipate to drill in 2021, in line with our plans to unlock a district containing multiple, large-scale gold deposits," said Nova Minerals Christopher Gerteisen. "RPM is presenting surface features indicative of a much larger footprint for resource delineation than first thought. The commencement of drilling at RPM is scheduled for 2021 and marks the start of Nova's next growth phase for the benefit of all stakeholders."

In the meantime, the Australia-based explorer continues to grow the resource at Korbel, where drills are expanding the footprint of Korbel Main, which represents the merging of Korbel resource blocks A and B; Korbel Blocks C and D; Isabella; and Cathedral.

This resource expansion drilling is expected to be incorporated into an updated resource and a preliminary economic assessment that provides a first look of a mine at Korbel.

"In time, we expect to define multiple new shallow gold resources that will further support our goal of building a centralized mill and heap leach facility as we continue on our path towards gold production," said Gerteisen.

Author Bio

Shane Lasley, Publisher

Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.

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