Allegiant Gold (AUAU.V) is kicking its Eastside exploration program in a higher gear after meeting the expectations on the western portion of the gold deposit. As you might remember, pretty much the entire western zone of Eastside was classified as ‘waste’ within the pit shell. Not because the rock didn’t carry any gold, but because virtually no exploration or drilling was conducted on that part of the deposit.
We explained in the site visit report this was some obvious low-hanging fruit, and the drill bit has now confirmed our expectations. Five holes were drilled up to 300 meters west of the Original Zone deposit, and all five holes have encountered mineralization with 42.7 meters of 2.49 g/t gold as most exciting interval. Although this interval contained a shorter intercept of 9.1 meters at 9.03 g/t gol, the remaining 33.6 meters still contained approximately 0.72 g/t gold. A good result, but unfortunately the mineralization starts just 302 meters down-hole. Hole 151 returned 79.2 meters of 1.03 g/t gold, located just below the planned pit outline.
Whilst these drill results aren’t shocking (the gold grades in hole 147 and 151 are excellent, the grades in 152, 154 and 155 did contain gold, but some parts might nog make the cutoff grade in a resource estimate), it’s clear Allegiant Gold is indeed able to convert waste into ore, and the company is now pushing forward to double the current resource estimate which, as a reminder, contains 654,000 ounces of gold (and some silver as well, which we would like to leave out of the equation given the low recovery rates for this metal). A bigger resource at a (much) lower strip ratio (below 2.5 would be idea), that’s all we are asking and hoping for!
Go to Allegiant’s website
The author has a long position in Allegiant Gold. Please read the disclaimer
