Terrain Minerals has roared past a key milestone at its Smokebush gold and silver project in WA’s Murchison region, delivering a maiden inferred mineral resource of 54,000 ounces of gold at its Lightning deposit and laying the groundwork for a potentially much larger system.
The new JORC-compliant resource totals 677,000 tonnes grading 2.5 grams per tonne (g/t) gold for 54,000 ounces of the sunlit yellow metal, alongside an estimated 156,500 ounces of contained silver.
Notably, the resource begins at surface and currently remains open along strike and at depth, leaving plenty of room for further growth through additional drilling.
The estimate comprises 157,000 tonnes at 3.5g/t gold for 17,500 ounces in an optimised open pit shell and a further 520,000 tonnes at 2.2g/t gold for 36,500 ounces assessed under underground mining assumptions.
Independent consultancy Apex Geoscience completed the resource estimate using data from 98 drill holes, including 94 reverse circulation (RC) holes and four diamond holes completed across the prospect.
Terrain says a significant amount of known mineralisation currently sits outside the resource envelope. With upcoming drilling planned to infill areas and test extensions, it is looking towards upgrading the resource from its present inferred status and increasing the overall inventory.
The company is now proposing a new drilling campaign from September, while expecting its first-pass metallurgical results in the third quarter of the year.
Terrain Minerals executive director Justin Virgin said: "The Maiden 'Starter' Mineral Resource Estimate at Lightning represents another major milestone for Terrain and provides an exciting foundation for the Company's future growth. Importantly, a significant amount of known mineralisation remains outside the current MRE, highlighting the strong potential to expand the resource through further drilling."
Management believes the combination of shallow, high-grade mineralisation and underground potential provides a strong platform for future development studies.
The Lightning deposit is part of Terrain's 100 per cent-owned Smokebush project, 350 kilometres north of Perth in the highly prospective Yalgoo-Murchison gold belt in WA’s Mid West. The project sits near a number of established gold operations, including Vault Mining's Rothsay mine and Capricorn Metals' burgeoning Mt Gibson gold project.
Today's resource milestone follows Terrain's May update which outlined the final technical and permitting work required to complete the maiden estimate, including DGPS surveys, drone-based digital terrain mapping (DTM) and metallurgical sampling.
DTM has proven valuable in providing highly-accurate models of the land surface, meaning that accuracy of surface point locations is greatly enhanced. Typical three-dimensional accuracy for professional drone-borne digital terrain mapping using DGPS-determined ground control points ranges from 2 to 3 centimetres horizontally and 3 to 5cm vertically.
The maps produced by DTM, which feeds highly accurate topographical information into the modelling, more precisely position drill hole collar locations both vertically and horizontally and enable far more exact resource calculations.
The result builds on the company's June investor presentation, which highlighted Lightning as its principle asset and flagged plans for ongoing drilling, metallurgical studies and mining assessments following the maiden resource announcement.
With a granted mining lease already in hand, a growing geological database and mineralisation still open in multiple directions, Terrain appears to have moved Lightning from an exploration success story into the initial stages of resource growth and ongoing development.
For a junior explorer, getting a maiden resource on the board is a real red letter event. With drilling set to resume and plenty of mineralisation still outside the current model, especially likely along the untested northward trend of the present deposit, Terrain now has strong encouragement and a solid footing from which to pursue chase a greatly expanded search.
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By Doug Bright
