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NV Gold (TSX-V:NVX, US-NVGLF) has big plans for 2019 having just
doubled the claims on its flagship Frazier Dome Gold Project in the famed
Tonopah Gold District of Nevada.
On Tuesday, NV Gold released its summer exploration agenda, in conjunction
with announcing
it has staked an additional 71 claims, thereby doubling its land position
at the Frazier Dome Gold Project to 143 claims.
NV Gold has been evaluating the 1,195-hectare property since it completed
a relatively small drill program in the second half of 2018, which
potentially may have identified the possibility of a mineralized gold system
at depth - something relatively unusual for Nevada, which
has built a gold-mining reputation on a foundation of low-grade,
but high-tonnage mines, where disseminated (microscopic) gold is mined close
to surface and heap-leached at reasonably low cost.
President and COO Peter Ball indicated management has been taking a closer
look at the project since an initial evaluation last year and the 8-hole
drill program:
3 high-grade zones
Frazier Dome is about 13 km north of the Tonopah Gold District - which
historically produced 174 million ounces of silver and 1.9 million ounces of
gold - on the border of Nye County and Esmeralda County.
The project is a low-sulfidation, volcanic-hosted epithermal gold system
with high-grade mineralization in three settings, explained in detail below.
Drilling between 1980 and 1991 intersected significant gold
mineralization, but it was shallow – under 150m, and never followed up on.
Not all the outcroppings or mineralized areas under ground cover were tested.
NV Gold’s primary target is the gold mineralization adjacent to and at depth
to an intrusive rhyolite dome, especially at the basement contact, known to
be a setting conducive to the development of high-grade epithermal
mineralization elsewhere in Nevada.
That gives a decent picture, to the trained eye, but let’s unpack this
information.
First, what is epithermal
gold? A clue is in the name. In Greek “epi” means shallow and “thermal”
refers of course to heat, in this case, heated fluid necessary for the
deposit’s formation. Millions of years ago, volcanic activity deep in the
Earth’s crust thrust boiling hot liquid to surface, containing minerals like
gold and silver that precipitated into cracks in the rock. Epithermal veins
can stretch hundreds of meters deep and are usually narrow and high-grade. In
conjunction with these veins, are large alteration “haloes” of mineralization
made by circulating hydrothermal fluids.
While usually high-grade and close to surface, epithermal gold deposits
are generally low tonnage, unlike Nevada’s three northwest trending belts:
the Carlin, Cortez and Walker Lane trends, which are three of the world’s top
mining districts.
Epithermal deposits are divided into low-sulfidation and high-sulfidation.
Low sulfide deposits are formed when groundwater comes into contact
with molten rock deep underneath volcanoes. The water dissolves silicate
minerals along with gold, silver, arsenic, cadmium, lead, zinc, antimony and
mercury. As the super-heated groundwater moves up towards surface, the
minerals are deposited in cracks and faults in the rock, mainly within
quartz. High-sulfide epithermal deposits are richer in sulfide minerals like
pyrite, enargite, gold and silver. They are often linked to porphyry
copper-gold deposits.
Frazier Dome is characterized as “a low- to intermediate-sulfidation,
volcanic-hosted epithermal gold system with high-grade mineralization.”
That’s in line with two types of mineralization often seen around Tonopah:
- High-grade, intermediate-sulfidation silver-rich veins
and
- Younger, low-sulfidation, gold-rich mineralization
related to intrusive rhyolite domes, which have been the focus of West
Kirkland Mining’s Hasbrouck, Hill of Gold and Three Hills mines to the
south (total combined production of 1,063,000 ounces gold and 16,345,000
oz silver; and Allegiant Gold’s Eastside project 32 km to the
west, which has shored up an inferred resource estimate of 654,000
ounces gold and 3.9 million ounces silver.
A rhyolite dome is a mound of rock containing rhyolite, a type of igneous
rock formed when lava exudes from a volcano, creating a dome-like structure
around the vent. The presence of a rhyolite dome at Frazier Dome is
significant, because all of the other domes (cited above) around it
have unearthed significant gold mineralization. Frazier is one of the last
unexplored rhyolite domes in Tonopah.
To NV Gold, Frazier Dome became an immediate focus based on reported
widespread alteration and gold-silver mineralization across the property,
with high-grade (10 g/t) or greater gold values found in three separate settings.
One of the high-grade areas is associated with quartz-filled fractures at
the surface, with samples from a collapsed adit (entrance to an
underground mine) running as high as 11.25 g/t gold.
The second high-grade zone occurs a few hundred meters to the north as an
historic drilling intercept, at the contact between overlying volcanic rocks
and basement rocks, with 3 meters of 7.5 g/t gold, including 1.5m of 10.39
g/t gold.
Hematitic silicified breccia
adjacent to rhyolite dome
NV Gold 3m channel sample JM-FW8 (6.1 g/t Au, 22 g/t Ag over
3 m)
The third high-grade area is associated with a shaft and decline, referred
to as the Dalton shaft in earlier historical reports. The partially collapsed
shaft is shallow at around 6m deep and is associated with silicified breccia
stockpiles at the surface, and a thin (2.5-cm wide) quartz vein that
contained masses of visible gold up to an estimated 0.75 ounces (23.3 grams)
in individual samples. Work here dates back to at least the 1970s,
with samples containing as much as 14.7g/t gold.
The question for Peter Ball and NV Gold’s geologists is, what is the
relationship between the high-grade, gold-silver anomalies found throughout
the property, and the rhyolite dome that started off as a sort of slurry
pipe, carrying mineralized fluids through the volcano to surface, where the
lava cooled to form a dome-like protrusion? The answer is tantalizing.
“Evidence so far leads us to belive that we may be sitting
on top of a higher grade system at depth. Not often do
you drill a hole from surface to 500 ft+, and nearly every 5ft section
carries anomalous gold. We may be a few feet above something very
interesting, and we plan on going deeper this summer,” says Ball,
noting the many vein sets and quartz-filled fracture systems showing up amid
the widespread alteration across the property give a clue as to what lies
beneath. “It is always a good sign to have multiple high
grade samples such as seven and a half-grammers ,10-grammers, and
14-grammers all sitting in and around this dome, and these domes [in the
Tonopah district] have delivered a lot of gold.”
2018 drilling
To gather more information about the project, a short 8-hole drill program
(1,408m) was set up for three weeks in the fall of 2018. Nine targets were
identified.
All 8 holes encountered long runs of altered and mineralized rock,
with “the most intense alteration associated with silica and pyrite
in breccia zones”. The strongest intervals were 12.2 meters
0.53 g/t in Hole FD-8, and 7.6m of 0.38 g/t in Hole FD-1.
Despite relatively low grades ranging from 0.005 to 0.020 g/t gold,
assaying long continual runs of detectable gold occurred in FD-1 (~105
meters), FD-2 (~150 meters), and FD-5 (135 meters) is an excellent sign.
Ball explained that the plan was to drill an at angle under the rhyolite
dome, aiming for what NV Gold thought was the feeder zone that transported
fluids through the volcano, but “the drill hole deviated to near
vertical, thereby missing the feeder zone”. This summer, a
drill crew will follow up that hole.
The most interesting thing about the 2018 drill program though, which left
five target areas left to test, is the possibility of “an interpreted
model of a potential robust gold system at depth”. A strong
indication is that 5 of the 9 widely-spaced holes delivered gold
intersections greater than 0.10 g/t, and up to 1.035 g/t. In three of the
holes, anomalous gold was found in every 1.5m section, all the way from
surface to the bottom of the hole, to a depth of 150m.
VP Exploration Marcus Johnston remarked on how the similarities between
the Frazier rhyolite dome, to the rhyolite domes at the Eastside,
Hasbrouck and Three Hills gold deposits, make the project highly prospective:
“The 8 reverse- circulation holes NVX drilled in 2018 all encountered
significant runs of alteration and gold and silver mineralization. The
lengths and widths of the mapped fracture/vein sets, combined with the
long-runs of alteration and mineralization in drilling, and the shallow
nature of the exposed system all point toward a potentially bonanza-grade
deeper deposit(s), and the possibility of bulk-tonnage ore to be found on the
property.”
Note: Dr. Marcus Johnston recently joined NV Gold, after 25+ years working
in Nevada for such companies as Newmont Gold, Renaissance Gold and Victoria
Gold, and has evaluated more than 500 projects across the state.
2019 exploration plans
Simply put, NV Gold plans to go deep. The Company will set up
reverse-circulation drills and test the four targets it drilled last year, to
a depth greater than 150 meters. The idea is to try and find the source of
the high-grade mineralization at surface. Here’s Peter Ball:
“There’s just too big of an alteration field, combined with
multiple high grade samples sitting at surface that had to come
from somewhere. We’re chasing high-grade mineralization not low-grade, and
even though 0.4 to 0.6 g/t in Nevada is excellent, we’re looking for these
10+ grammers sitting beneath, which we test this summer to see what
is beneath and feeding this intense alteration across Frazier.”
Before the drills start turning, however, Ball and his team want to glean
more information about known targets and to identify new targets buried
elsewhere on the property. This will include mapping, a sampling program and
structural analysis, combined with a geophysical program comprising gravity
and magnetic surveys.
Ball commented, “We are excited, and to ensure we get things
rolling, Dr. Odin Christensen and Dr. Marcus Johnston arrived on site this
morning (April 2, 2019).”
Drilling is planned for late June or July.
Conclusion
Junior gold investors sometimes overlook Nevada, thinking that all the
precious metal has been found. While the western state certainly has been
well-explored and mined, there are pockets of undeveloped ground. NV Gold’s
Frazier Dome project is an example of a gold mineralized area that has yet to
be tapped.
The property has closeology in its favor, with a number
of rhyolite domes around it that have been successfully mined or wrapped
into resource estimates. Location is also key, being within an established
mining district with infrastructure - power, water and a work force - close
by. And as detailed in our last
article on NV Gold; a) NV Gold’s management team is superb and Nevada
Veterans (Dr. Quinton Hennigh, Dr. Odin Christense, Dr. Marcus Johnston,
John Watson M.Sc.), with 125 years of combined experience in Nevada, and b)
They have an incredible data set to help guide their claim staking and
exploration efforts.
For all of these reasons I have NVX on my radar screen.
Legal Notice / Disclaimer
This document is not and should not be construed as an offer to sell or
the solicitation of an offer to purchase or subscribe for any investment.
Richard Mills has based this document on information obtained from sources he
believes to be reliable but which has not been independently
verified. Richard Mills makes no guarantee, representation or warranty and
accepts no responsibility or liability as
to its accuracy or completeness. Expressions of opinion are those of
Richard Mills only and are subject to change without notice. Richard Mills
assumes no warranty, liability or guarantee for the current relevance,
correctness or completeness of any information provided within this Report
and will not be held liable for the consequence of reliance upon any opinion
or statement contained herein or any omission. Furthermore, I, Richard Mills,
assume no liability for any direct or indirect loss or damage or, in
particular, for lost profit, which you may incur as a result of the use
and existence of the information provided within this Report.
NV Gold Corp (TSX.V:NVX), is an advertiser on Richard’s site
aheadoftheherd.com. Richard owns shares of NVX
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