Marathon Gold (MOZ.TO) continues to find wide intercepts of gold mineralization at the Valentine Lake Gold camp, with for instance 75 meters of almost 4 g/t gold and 3.84 g/t gold over a total distance of 60 meters.
The 2017 winter drill program has now extended the Marathon deposit over a strike length of 550 meters and has confirmed the mineralization to a depth of (at least) 500 meters. This is still just the start as the deposit remains open along strike and at depth. That’s great, but it’s unfortunate the width of the mineralized zones remains relatively limited to 50-100 meters which means the strip ratio could be quite high later on in the mine life.
Marathon Gold has also released a resource update, and the Valentine Lake project now contains 2.15 million ounces, of which 2/3rd are located in the measured and indicated categories. This measured and indicated resource has an average grade of 1.84 g/t (using the pit-constrained resource) with an additional 600,000 ounces at an average grade of 1.98 g/t gold. The resource estimate also contains an underground resource which contains just short of 200,000 ounces at an average grade of in excess of 3.5 g/t, which is lower than the average of close to 5 g/t in the 2015 resource update.
Taking everything into consideration, Marathon Gold added a substantial amount of ounces to its inventory, but the average grade is quite a bit lower due to the use of a lower cut-off grade (0.4 g/t versus 0.5 g/t).
We do have the impression the Valentine Lake gold camp could be an opportunity similar to Carlisle Goldfields’ Lynn Lake gold camp, before the company was acquired by Alamos Gold (AGI, AGI.TO).
Go to Marathon’s website
The author has a small long position in Marathon Gold. Please read the disclaimer
