....sharring the baslt
posted on
Feb 17, 2011 04:33PM
Focused on the Rice Lake Gold Belt
Drilling between 500 and 1,000 metres to the west along strike of San Gold's Cartwright Zone at the Rice Lake Mine (see San Gold Corporation Press Release December 13, 2006) intersected intensely sheared chlorite and locally pervasively sericite altered massive basalt and andesitic volcaniclastic rocks within drill holes 10SP-02, 10SP-03, 10SP-04 and 10SP-11. . Orientation drilling by StrikePoint has defined a west-northwest trending zone of intensely sheared potassic-silica-ankerite altered andesitic volcaniclastic rocks within the hanging-wall over a strike length of 2,000 metres. The prominent lithological features are interpreted as basalt and/or gabbro units possibly similar to the main gabbro unit that hosts the Rice Lake ore deposit or minor mafic units with altered contacts such as those hosting one of the near surface high-grade hanging wall deposits on the adjacent San Gold mine lease. One of these features is a 1.5 km long, roughly east-west trending magnetic high that is cut at three places by northeasterly, Type-16 oriented cross-fractures. Magnetic lows associated with these intersections are interesting since the injection of sulphides by gold-bearing fluids often converts magnetite, a magnetic oxide mineral, to pyrite, a non-magnetic sulphide mineral, resulting in patches of low magnetic intensity.
In the southern part of the survey area, another mafic unit is tentatively interpreted as a distal northwestern extension of the subvolcanically injected gabbro that hosts the Rice Lake and adjacent Cartwright deposits. Importantly, this southernmost mafic unit is also cut by the same regional Type-16 structures that are caused by the late stage deformation event that appears to have mineralized the entire central part of the Rice Lake greenstone belt.
Both of these strong magnetic zones are located in topographic valleys that have not been well prospected due to a lack of outcrops in these areas. This is evident when the magnetic data is overlain on high resolution LiDar topographic data.
The objective of the initial Strike Point property drill program is to investigate the extension of structures that contain gold mineralization on the adjoining San Gold mine lease, specifically, as noted above, the Type-16 vein orientations that cut rock units with high magnetic intensities and exhibiting magnetite destruction where the two features intersect. belt.