VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 04, 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.
The drill results featured in this news release were focused on the high-grade South Austin Zone, which currently contains an Indicated mineral resource of 474,600 ounces (“oz”) grading 8.7 grams per tonne (“g/t”) gold (“Au”), with an additional Inferred resource of 31,800 oz grading 8.7 g/t Au.
The purpose of this drilling was definition within South Austin to continue building an inventory of high-confidence ounces for eventual restart of the Madsen mill. Notably, visible gold (“VG”) was observed in holes MM24D-12-4640-008 and -012 (Figure 1). Based on these observations, additional holes were added to the drill station to further define these high-grade zones up and down plunge.
HIGHLIGHTS:
- Hole MM24D-12-4640-012 Intersected 5.5m @ 25.12 g/t Au, from 24.0m to 29.5m, Including 1.0m @ 134.90 g/t Au, from 25.0m to 26.0m.
- Hole MM24D-12-4640-008 Intersected 3.0m @ 12.58 g/t Au, from 45.0m to 48.0m, Including 1m @ 37.40 g/t Au, from 45.0m to 46.0m; And 2.0m @ 39.46 g/t Au, from 64.0m to 66.0m, Including 1.0m @ 76.18 g/t Au, from 64.0m to 65.0m.
- Hole MM24D-12-4640-018 Intersected 4.0m @ 18.60 g/t Au, from 41.0m to 45.0m, Including 1.0m @ 55.69 g/t Au, from 43.0m to 44.0m.
- Hole MM24D-12-4640-003 Intersected 11.0m @ 6.75 g/t Au, from 47.0m to 58.0m, Including 1.0m @ 17.01 g/t Au, from 47.0m to 48.0m, Also including 1.0m @ 10.52 g/t Au, from 51.0m to 52.0m; Also Including 0.5m @ 18.68 g/t Au, from 54.0m to 54.5m, Also including 0.5m @ 14.37 g/t Au, from 56.5m to 57.0m.
- Hole MM24D-12-4640-021 Intersected 6.45m @ 10.43 g/t Au, from 36.0m to 42.45m, Including 0.75m @ 49.68 g/t Au, from 39.25m to 40.0m.
- Hole MM24D-12-4640-019 Intersected 3.0m @ 7.75 g/t Au, from 35.0m to 38.0m, Including 1.0m @ 17.73 g/t Au, from 35.0m to 36.0m.
Shane Williams, President & CEO, stated, “The team has been making great progress de-risking the Madsen deposit with definition drilling as we continue to build up an inventory of high-grade and high-confidence ounces that will prove invaluable during the initial ramping up of mine production. The Mine Operations team is working in tandem with Geology to ensure the underground drills get to the highest priority areas of the deposit. The excellent results highlighted in this release are indicative of the upside that still exists at Madsen even within the current life-of-mine resource inventory.”
Plan maps and section for the South Austin drilling outlined in this release are provided in Figures 2 through 6.
Since underground drilling resumed in early January 2024 the Company has completed 1,996m of Expansion drilling and 2,716m of Definition drilling. In total, 56 diamond drill holes for 4,367m have been completed so far in 2024 at the Madsen Mine. Fire and metallic screen assays have been returned for 56 out of 56 holes completed, with 1 Expansion hole currently drilling.
TABLE 1. Significant intercepts (>3 g/t Au) from drilling at South 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.
TABLE 2: Drill collar summary for holes reported in this News Release.
DISCUSSION
Accessed through the Madsen Mine West Portal, the South Austin Zone sits south in the hanging wall of the main Austin Zone. Like the other mineralized domains in that comprise the Madsen Mine, the South Austin structure 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 2024.
High resolution versions of all the figures contained in this press release can be found at the following web address: https://westredlakegold.com/march-news-release-maps/
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