The junior recently completed a 30-hole, 1,600-metre program of shallow diamond drilling on the Cerro Tablon prospect, a 600-by-200-metre target area defined by chip and soil sampling. The first 15 holes were confined to a 50-metre-wide section of the main showing, where 122 chip samples taken from outcrop and near-in-situ slabs averaged 5.6 grams gold per tonne in an area measuring 350 by 100 metres.
Intercepts in holes 11 and 13 have confirmed earlier sampling numbers, IMA Chairman Gerald Carlson tells The Northern Miner. The holes were part of a fan of six holes drilled from one site. Hole 11 intersected 17.1 metres averaging 5.32 grams, including 2.7 metres of 14.2 metres. It was undercut by hole 12, which intercepted 4.3 metres of 4.71 grams before hitting a filled stope across 6.4 metres.
Hole 13 was swung 30 to the west and intersected 8.78 grams across 25.4 metres, including 2.9 metres of 19.81 grams. Hole 14 was steepened, hitting 1.7 metres of 5.47 grams.
Hole 15 was swung 34 east of hole 11 and drilled through 1.8 metres of filled stope before cutting 6.4 metres of 5.85 grams, including 1.5 metres of 18.76 grams.
“We are pleased to see that the gold was not only in the massive sulphides but also in some of the adjacent volcanic tuffs,” says Carlson. “It looks like we’ve got a bit of a feeder zone underneath, which has narrow-vein, stockwork-style mineralization.”
The first three holes were drilled below the massive sulphide showing from setups 20-30 metres apart. These holes failed to intercept the sulphides but instead intersected a stockwork zone, yielding values of 11.55 grams across 1.5 metres, 44.05 grams over 0.44 metre and 50 grams across 0.67 metre.
IMA moved its next setup overtop the massive sulphide zone, where it drilled holes 4-7. The best sulphide intercepts included 21.4 metres of 3.1 grams in hole 6 and 19.9 metres of 2.41 grams in hole 7.
IMA’s geologists are unsure of true widths and are still attempting to unravel the geometry of the system, which Carlson describes as “lensey.”
“The next set of results will give us a little bit better handle on the continuity,” he says.
Results are still pending from additional holes in the main Tablon area and in the another zone a couple of hundred metres to the west.
“Our sense is that maybe the massive sulphides were in there first,” says Carlson, “and there might have been a subsequent gold hydrothermal event that enriched things.”
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