VANCOUVER, British Columbia, July 09, 2024 – West Red Lake Gold Mines Ltd. (“West Red Lake Gold” or “WRLG” or the “Company”) (TSXV:WRLG) (OTCQB:WRLGF) is pleased to report drill results from its 100% owned Madsen Mine located in the Red Lake Gold District of Northwestern Ontario, Canada.
This round of drill results from the Madsen Mine were all drilled from underground on the North Austin Zone, which represents a new area of high-grade mineralization extending the current Madsen resource to the northeast. This program was designed to expand the North Austin zone down-plunge and to the northeast.
The North Austin drilling update provided in this news release builds on the positive drill results previously announced on May 21, 2024 and Feb 7, 2024.
The North Austin Zone sits adjacent to existing underground development marking it as a high caliber, near-surface target that could potentially be developed early during future mine restart and production. The North Austin Zone remains open down-plunge and along strike to the northeast and will continue to be a priority expansion target as underground drilling continues.
HIGHLIGHTS:
- Hole MM24X-03-5195-018 Intersected 10m @ 13.40 grams per tonne gold (“g/t Au”), from 82m to 92m, Including 1.0m @ 17.75 g/t Au, from 82m to 83m, also Including 1.0m @ 85.61 g/t Au, from 88.31m to 89.31m, also Including 1.0m @ 14.05 g/t Au, from 89.31m to 90.31m.
- Hole MM24X-03-5127-012 Intersected 3m @ 12.21 g/t Au, from 58m to 61m, Including 1m @ 32.84 g/t Au, from 60m to 61m.
- Hole MM24X-03-5195-015 Intersected 16.98m @ 3.12 g/t Au, from 82m to 92m, Including 0.98m @ 11.78 g/t Au, from 72.52m to 73.50m, also Including 1.0m @ 14.69 g/t Au, from 74.45m to 75.45m, also Including 0.79m @ 15.60 g/t Au, from 87.21m to 88.00m.
Shane Williams, President & CEO, stated, “The North Austin drilling continues to deliver meaningful results which is a testament not only to the quality of this resource area, but also to our technical team’s understanding of the structural controls and ore shoot geometries in this emerging part of the Madsen deposit. With the team now working towards a planned mine restart in the second half of 2025, the drills at Madsen will continue to delineate and define the high-value mineral inventory needed to support that objective.”
Plan maps and section for the South Austin drilling outlined in this release are provided in Figures 2 through 7.
TABLE 1. Significant intercepts (>3 g/t Au) from drilling at North Austin Zone.
*The “From-To” intervals in Table 1 are denoting overall downhole length of the intercept. True thickness has not been calculated for these intercepts but is expected to be ≥ 70% of downhole thickness based on intercept angles observed in the drill core.
FIGURE 1. Deposit-scale plan map of Madsen Mine highlighting North Austin Zone and drill traces included in this news release.
TABLE 2: Drill collar summary for holes reported in this News Release.
DISCUSSION
Accessed through the Madsen Mine East Portal, the North Austin Zone sits northeast in the footwall of the main Austin Zone. Like the main Austin and South Austin Structures, the North Austin domain is hosted within broad, kilometer-scale planar alteration and deformation corridors that have been repeatedly reactivated during gold mineralization and subsequent deformation and metamorphism.
At the deposit-scale the Austin, South Austin, North Austin, and McVeigh Zones are locally folded and structurally dismembered by transposition and rotation into the penetrative S2 Foliation. In addition to this intense deformation overprint, the mineralized veins and alteration have been subjected to the relatively high temperatures of amphibolite facies metamorphism, which led to extensive recrystallization and growth of the skarn-like replacement mineral assemblage of diopside-amphibole-quartz-biotite.
All significant gold mineralization on the mine property is demonstrably early relative to the most significant, penetrative deformation (D2) and metamorphic events. The North Austin Zone displays ‘mine-style’ alteration and mineralization and consists of multiple mineralized domains defined over a strike length of 0.5km. Mineralization remains open at depth and along strike to the northeast.
In drill core, or at underground face exposures, gold-bearing zones at the Madsen Mine are best identified visually by fine (sub-millimetre) grains of free gold within strong alteration and veining. All high-grade intervals generally contain visible gold on drill core exteriors, although numerous examples exist of high-grade assays where visible gold was only identified within the interior (cut surface) of the core samples. Apart from the presence of free gold, pervasive silicification (locally accompanied by discrete quartz veining) and quartz-carbonate or diopside veining are the best indicators that a given interval is within a high-grade zone along/within the mineralized structure.
The current underground drilling program at the Madsen Mine is focused on further definition of near-term mining inventory, as well as growth of the current mineral resource. Drilling has been focused on the more continuous and higher-grade portions of the Austin, South Austin, and North Austin Zones. This will continue to be the strategy moving into 2025.
High resolution versions of all the figures contained in this press release can be found at the following web address: https://westredlakegold.com/july-release-maps/
FIGURE 2. Madsen Mine long section showing location of 03-5127 and 03-5195 Drill Bays in North Austin Zone.[1]
FIGURE 3. North Austin plan view showing distribution of drilling and reference lines for drill sections in Figures 4 through 7.
FIGURE 4. North Austin section view showing assay highlights for Holes MM24X-03-5127-012 through -017.[1]
FIGURE 5. North Austin section view showing assay highlights for Holes MM24X-03-5195-011 through -013.[1]
FIGURE 6. North Austin section view showing assay highlights for Holes MM24X-03-5195-014 through -016 and -018.[1]