The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
First sampling identifies prospects similar to Estelle property North of 60 Mining News - May 22, 2023
Ragusa Minerals collected samples from both outcrops and talus accumulated at the base of steep rock faces during its first phase of exploration at the Monte Cristo gold project.
Click on image for larger Monte Cristo property map.
Ragusa Minerals Ltd. May 22 announced that sampling carried out toward the end of the 2022 exploration season has identified and confirmed two gold targets on the Monte Cristo project about 100 miles (160 kilometers) northwest of Anchorage, Alaska.
Located just east and south of U.S. GoldMining Inc.'s Whistler copper-gold project and Nova Minerals Ltd.'s Estelle property, Monte Cristo is a 125-square-mile (323.7 square kilometers) land package that hosts several gold profits that were explored briefly about 15 years ago but fell by the wayside due to tough market conditions in 2011.
Australia-based Ragusa Minerals Ltd. picked up the Monte Cristo property in 2021 and carried out initial sampling on the project last year, focused on targets similar to the deposits found at Whistler and Estelle.
According to the most recent calculation, Whistler hosts 118.2 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 0.51 grams per metric ton (1.94 million ounces) gold, 2.19 g/t (8.3 million oz) silver, and 0.16% (422 million pounds) copper; plus 317 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.46 g/t (4.67 million oz) gold, 1.58 g/t (16.1 million oz) silver; and 0.1% (711.4 million lb) copper.
Estelle hosts 9.9 million oz of gold in 1.1 billion metric tons of global resource averaging 0.3 g/t gold.
Ragusa's 2022 exploration included sampling of the Old Man Diorite and Old Man Breccia prospects at the north end of the Monte Cristo property and the Emerald prospect at the southwest end of the land package.
Channel sampling of three trenches cut across Old Man Breccia in 2009 cut 16 meters averaging 0.74 g/t gold, 24 meters of 1.94 g/t gold, 28 meters of 3.34 g/t gold, and 10 meters of 7.12 g/t gold.
The 2022 investigation of the Old Man prospect area included the collection of 54 samples from talus, rocks accumulated at the base of a very steep rock face, with grades as high as 17.1 g/t gold; 41 outcrop or subcrop samples with grades of up to 0.69 g/t gold; and 130 soil samples collected from slopes and beneath inaccessible areas on ridge lines, with a peak grade of 3.19 g/t gold.
Ragusa said the initial sample results show a strong, relatively confined anomaly covering a roughly 3,000- by 4,000-meter area at Old Man Diorite and another 2,000-meter-long anomaly at Old Man Breccia.
Sampling at the Emerald prospect targeted similar intrusion-related quartz sulfide veins, although in a strongly oxidized host similar to Nova Minerals' high-grade RPM gold deposit about seven miles (11 kilometers) to the north.
The 2022 exploration at Emerald included the collection of 14 float samples with grades as high as 0.19 g/t gold; 31 outcrop or subcrop samples with grades of up to 3.13 g/t gold; and 88 soil samples with peak grades of 2.33 g/t gold.
"This is an exciting first step for our Monte Cristo gold project with sampling results confirming anomalous gold grades at multiple prospect areas," said Ragusa Minerals Chair Jerko Zuvela. "We look forward to determining the mineral prospectivity of our project area, especially with the exciting multi-million-ounce gold discoveries nearby."
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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