Nov 29 2011
Glass Earth Gold Limited has announced the commencement of drilling at its 100% owned Muirs Reef prospect in New Zealand. The drilling will consist of 17 diamond holes for a total of approximately 2,500m designed to identify gold resources in an area known as Massey Reef.
This drilling programme follows completion of the trenching programme that included additional significant surface trenching results being:
- MSTR 16 10m @ 3.1 g/t gold and 1.7 g/t silver.
Earlier trenching results yielded 24 m of 5.7 g/t Au, with results up to 33 g/t Au in the broadest intersection (reported July 2011).
Massey Reef is part of the historical Muirs Reef gold mining area. Recent significant surface trenching results in outcropping and sub-cropping quartz veins are shown in Table 1 Trenching has demonstrated a 650m strike length of the surface mineralization, ample dimension to potentially host a significant gold resource.
The drilling is designed to identify the depth and strike extent of near surface gold mineralization and identify any further mineralization adjacent to known veins.
If successful the program is expected produce data of sufficient density to model a gold resource to NI 43-101 standard.
Samples were collected using an excavator to strip overburden and hand sampled at continuous 1m intervals along trench walls. All assays were undertaken at the SGS laboratory by 50gram fire assay in Waihi, New Zealand.
Surface channel sampling has discovered significant quartz veining, exhibiting multiple phases of gold deposition, across over 650 m of the prospect's southwest extension. Petrology and mineralogy of samples from surface and drill-core indicate gold deposition at high levels of an epithermal system, with depth potential of several hundreds of metres.
The Muirs gold prospect lies 65 km southeast of the Martha Mine (Newmont Mining, 10 million ounces gold deposit) at the southern end of the Hauraki Goldfield. Two quartz reefs were mined within this epithermal system until the 1930s, with over 43,000 oz of gold extracted from shallow surface and underground workings.
Glass Earth is one of the largest New Zealand-based gold exploration companies exploring a land position of approximately 10,800 square kilometres in the North and South Islands.
In the North Island, exploration efforts are focused on large epithermal gold systems in the Hauraki/Central Volcanic Region. This Region is host to the 10 million ounce Martha Gold Mine (Newmont Mining).
Hauraki Region - Glass Earth occupies a significant ground position adjacent to the Waihi/Martha Gold Mine; The Newmont-Glass Earth Waihi West JV (Newmont earning 65%) and Hauraki JV (North and Central Areas - 65/35) are currently being explored and managed by Newmont.
Central Volcanic Region - Glass Earth has defined several significant epithermal gold targets in this region including the Muirs Reef project (Mamaku district).
In the South Island, exploration efforts are focused on the Otago Region for mesothermal "Macraes-style" gold targets and placer/alluvial gold.
Source: www.glassearthgold.com