Gold-bearing conglomerate layers or "reefs" at Pardo are horizontal and typically 1-3 metres (m) in thickness. Reefs are laterally extensive and occur on or very near surface. Higher gold grades occur concentrated in fluvial channels or "pay streaks", and valleys in the footwall upon which the conglomerate was deposited.
Discovering higher-grade zones is the primary objective of our current 50 x 50 m spaced drill program. Results so far have been successful in identifying a higher-grade area approximately 400 m in length that remain open for expansion.
Hole PD-17-14 is a 50 m step-out to the East of hole PD-17-13 that intercepted 3.92 gpt gold over 1.85 m. This hole contained a thick (2.28 m) boulder conglomerate (primary gold-bearing reef) with some detrital pyrite over 1.65 m.
Hole PD-17-15 was drilled 50 m due South of hole PD-17-13. This hole did not encounter any visible boulder conglomerate, however, the sample in the basal conglomerate returned positive gold values. The boulder conglomerate unit, although absent at this location, is encountered again 50 m to the West and 50 m to the South in holes PD-17-16 and PD-17-17.
Holes PD-17-16 and PD-17-17 encountered a well-mineralized boulder conglomerate, extending the zone up to 100 m south of previous drilling. In both of these holes the gold-bearing reef is approximately 1 m in thickness. Visible gold was noted in both holes. Additional drilling is planned to test the extension of this zone further to the South.
Holes PD-17-18 and PD-17-19 continued the grid of holes in another fault block 100 m to the East of hole PD-17-17 and encountered boulder conglomerate in both holes. Visible gold was noted in hole PD-17-18. Additional drilling is planned to twin two holes previously drilled in 2010 located between PD-17-18 and PD-17-17. These 2010 holes are considered unrepresentative of the area based on observations in the new 2017 holes. Additional drilling is also planned to the East and South.
Assay results reported in this release are the average of two fire assay values on a 2 kg subsample generated from each selected core interval. Our observation is that cyanide bottle rolls on 1-2 kg subsamples combined with a fire assay on the residue returns higher gold values. However, in order to build the dataset to support this observation we have been using both methods of analysis on our samples. For the holes reported above the cyanide bottle roll results are still pending. We will update the attached Table 1 on an ongoing basis when all the analytical results are available.
