White Cliff advances WA gold and lithium hunt

ASX-listed explorer White Cliff Minerals has wrapped up a first pass seven-hole RC drilling program at the company’s Cracker Jack prospect, part of its larger Reedy South gold project in WA’s Murchison Goldfields. The milestone earmarks the opening play of an expansive 74-hole probe totalling 4,440 metres that also takes in the nearby McCaskill Hill prospect.

The company is also continuing its lithium and rare earths hunt across the state.

The Cracker Jack audit is aimed at following up on a previously completed rock chip sampling program that delivered a slew of encouraging results including gold hits running over 1 ounce per tonne. The rock chips also unveiled strongly elevated responses for several pathfinder minerals including bismuth, molybdenum and tungsten.

After concluding the shallow hole campaign at Cracker Jack, the Perth-based company says it is now dispatching its recently bagged samples for assay analysis and is mobilising its RC rig to McCaskill Hill where the precious metal hunt will continue.

The impending McCaskill Hill RC campaign is designed to follow up on a string of promising soil samples taken early last year. The company says it expects mineralisation at the prospect to be similar to Cracker Jack and anticipates it to be controlled by quartz veining between a set of banded Iron Formations, or “BIFs”, mafics and ultramafics contacts.

Management says it is planning on building a suite of mineable ore bodies across its Reedy South gold tenements that could collectively turbocharge the economics of the project.

The Reedy South project sits some 80 kilometres south of Meekatharra and covers a mining lease across the historic Pegasus and King Cole mine workings, an approved exploration and prospecting license along with a handful of exploration license applications.

White Cliff says its Reedy South gold project boasts a mineral resource estimate of 779,000 tonnes at 1.7 g/t Au for 42,400 ounces of the precious metal.

Outside of its gold escapade, White Cliff is also advancing its budding lithium and rare earth element project portfolio after kicking off a geochemical survey at its Hines Hill REE project and evaluating a series of remote sensing techniques and datasets complementary to its ongoing exploration.

White Cliff Minerals Technical Director, Ed Mead said:“I am pleased to say the RC rig has now moved into McCaskill Hill, where we are introducing modern interpretation and exploration, and I look forward to the assay results from ALS.”

“At the same time, we are pressing forward with exploration for Lithium and Rare Earth Elements and have started a geochemical survey at the Hines Hill REE project.”

The market will likely be casting a keen eye over White Cliff’s ongoing gold and lithium pursuit and a sniff of either could trigger a frantic start to the year for the company.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au