Monarques Gold announced the start of drilling on its Simkar Gold property, located approximately 20km east of Val-d'Or, Quebec, and less than 3km from the Company's Beacon Gold mill.
The 3,000-metre program will take place over the spring.
Within the next few days, one drill will be mobilized on the property. The drilling program will test a diorite-hosted gold-bearing zone that returned grades of up to 38.7 g/t Au over 3.8 metres in historical drilling.
In the fall of 2016, all the data for the property was reinterpreted, including the data from the Texsol property, which was merged with the Simkar property to form the Simkar Gold property. This work identified several sections of gold mineralization from drilling in a diorite that represented the western extension of "Diorite A", which hosts mineralization of the Louvicourt Goldfields mine, located at the heart of the Simkar Gold property and operated from 1945 to 1949 and 1987 to 1993. The current program will test the east and west extensions of the "Diorite A"-hosted gold zone.
"This 3,000-metre drilling program on Simkar Gold, which will be conducted in parallel with the program on Croinor Gold and Gold Bug, will provide a better understanding of the Simkar Gold geology and gold potential," said Jean-Marc Lacoste, President and Chief Executive Officer of Monarques. "The reinterpretation we did enabled us to identify several targets that we will test over the coming months. The ultimate goal is to increase the resources of our gold properties in the vicinity of the Beacon mill, with a view to eventually putting the mill into operation at full capacity."