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

Nova Minerals Ltd. June 8 reported strong gold mineralization encountered during infill drilling at the Korbel Main deposit at the company's Estelle gold property in Southcentral Alaska.

Situated about 100 miles (160 kilometers) northwest of Anchorage, Alaska's largest city, Estelle blankets 85 square miles (220 square kilometers) of gold-rich geology.

While more than a dozen targets have been identified across the 18-mile- (29 kilometers) length of Estelle, Nova is currently focused on upgrading and expanding Korbel in preparation for feasibility level studies for this deposit at the north end of the property.

According to a calculation published in April, Korbel Main hosts 518 million metric tons of Australian Joint Ore Reserves Committee- (JORC) compliant inferred resource averaging 0.3 grams per metric ton (4.7 million ounces) gold.

The latest batch of assay results is from infill drilling toward the southeast end of this roughly 1,500-meter-long deposit.

One such hole, KBDH-066, cut 314 meters averaging 0.4 g/t gold from a depth of 15 meters. This includes a 67-meter subsection averaging 1 g/t gold from 249 meters and 13 meters of 3.9 g/t gold from 273 meters.

Another hole in this area, KBDH-068, cut 27 meters of 0.6 g/t gold from 81 meters, including three meters of 2.3 g/t gold from 102 meters.

"The significance of these grades obtained this early in the infill program further confirms a higher-grade feeder zone within the SE Block B area of the Korbel Main deposit," said Nova Minerals CEO Christopher Gerteisen. "Our expectation is that we will start to consistently intersect internal high-grade 'blow-out' zones, and that is exactly what these results show."

The company is currently working on a scoping level study for developing a mine at Korbel but expects to expand and potentially increase the gold grades of the deposit ahead of a prefeasibility study.

"We are starting to get a clearer structure of the deposit, which bodes for our move into PFS after this interim scoping study, where we will continue to hone and improve our capital expenditure (CAPEX) and operating expenditure (OPEX) estimates," said Gerteisen.

The Korbel deposit will become more in focus, with another resource update planned for later this year.

In addition to two drills turning at Korbel, the company is deploying a third rig to RPM, an intriguing gold exploration target about 16 miles (25 kilometers) to the south.

One hole drilled by a previous operator in 2012 cut 177.4 meters averaging 0.79 g/t gold at RPM, including 50.2 meters of 1.75 g/t gold.

Surface exploration by Nova includes the collection of one rock sample about 50 meters southeast of the 2012 RPM discovery hole that contained 291 g/t gold and a second sample from about 50 meters further southeast that averaged about 5 g/t gold.

In an area about 750 meters to the southeast, 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.

"The third diamond drill rig will be mobilized to the RPM prospect within days, commencing a drilling program which has the potential to add significant ounces to the Estelle Project resource inventory," said the Nova Minerals CEO.

The company plans to publish a maiden resource estimate for RPM following the 2021 drilling there.

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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