The gold hits continue to roll out of Horizon Minerals’ Golden Ridge project near Kalgoorlie in the heart of Western Australia’s Goldfields. Results from the latest round of RC drilling have included 2 metres returning a tantalising 26.11 grams per tonne gold from 69m.
Other significant drill results include 2m returning a stellar 20.77 g/t gold from 80m, 5m grading 8.06 g/t gold from 57m and 5m returning 3.98 g/t gold from 62m downhole.
The latest results cap off a string of eye-catching intercepts reported from a recent RC drilling program that saw 42 holes for a total of 5,308m plumb the extents of mineralisation at the Golden Ridge mine.
Horizon says the excellent widths and grades demonstrates the continuation of the historic Golden Ridge mineralisation to the north that remains open along strike and at depth with results due to be plugged into an updated mineral resource estimate due out in the June quarter of 2022.
The company also reported two channel samples taken across the porphyry-hosted mineralisation in the Golden Ridge southern ramp that returned a suite of significant results including an encouraging 4m at 10.49 g/t gold and a further 3m going at 5.56 g/t gold.
According to Horizon, the results confirm the presence of steeply dipping, shallow, high-grade lodes in the southern pit and it intends on drill testing the southern extents of the deposit.
Horizon’s program at Golden Ridge formed part of its lofty 50,000m drilling blitz during the 2021 calendar year as the company looked to sure up a pipeline of projects within a 75km radius of Kalgoorlie. Drilling has been aimed at delineating high priority resources and seeking new discoveries across its vast 1,100 square kilometres of goldfields tenure.
In addition to receiving the final RC drill hole results, the company says all air core results have also been returned from a 43-hole first pass campaign at Golden Ridge South.
Whilst no further significant assays were returned with the aircore rig failing to penetrate deep enough to properly test previous intercepts, Horizon reported the 4m pulps from the program were resubmitted for multi-element analysis in particular nickel and cobalt.
Intriguingly, the company appears to have tapped into a nickel-rich ultramafic sequence reporting anomalous mineralisation up to 0.62 per cent nickel, 460 parts per million copper and 0.13 per cent cobalt within an ultramafic horizon identified to the west and south of Golden Ridge.
Additionally, anomalous silver grades up to 48 g/t have also been returned within the weathered sequence.
The focus of Horizon’s aircore program, the Golden Ridge South prospect, lies just 8km north of the historical Blair nickel mine that churned out some 1.26 million tonnes at 2.62 per cent nickel for nearly 33,000 tonnes of contained metal between 1989 and mine closure in 2008.
Despite its proximity to the Blair nickel mine, Horizon says very little exploration for nickel sulphides has been undertaken.
Management says historical data has thrown up an interesting untested transient electromagnetic conductor close to the basal footwall contact of the ultramafic about 200m from surface. The company intends to test the conductor with further drilling and a down-hole electromagnetic survey with results anticipated in the next four to six weeks.
Horizon Minerals Managing Director, Jon Price said: “Golden Ridge is continuing to demonstrate the potential for large scale extensions and the continuity to the northwest and the south is very encouraging. This highly mineralised system is now being tested for base metals with immediate initial success. We now look forward to the deeper drilling and EM survey data in our search for nickel sulphides and further gold extensions to the north and south.”
As Horizon sharpens its pencil in preparation for calculating a new Mineral Resource Estimate at its Golden Ridge deposit in the coming months, the market meerkat’s ears will have pricked up over the mention of nickel given the metal’s current position as commodity du jour.
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By Matt Birney
