Nova Minerals Ltd (ASX:NVA, OTCQB:NVAAF) is on a winning streak at its flagship Estelle Gold Project in Alaska’s prolific Tintina Gold Belt, this time unearthing not one, but two, surface gold anomalies during ongoing field work at the Muddy Creek and Discovery prospects.
The ASX-lister hit a more than 1.5-kilometre gold anomaly of up to 127 g/t gold at Muddy Creek where 18 rock samples graded in excess of 10 g/t gold and more than 80% of soil samples returned greater than 1 g/t gold.
Summing up the latest gold streak, numerous multi-gram gold rock samples were also found at the nearby Discovery, adding another 800 metres of strike to the anomaly identified at Muddy Creek.
Discovery and Muddy Creek gold anomalies.
Lighting up
“The Train area continues to light up, this time at Muddy Creek and Discovery, which lie just east of Train and Trumpet and north of the Shoeshine and Shadow prospects,” Nova chief executive officer Christopher Gerteisen said.
“These prospects combined represent an approximately 4.5 kilometre-long and 2.5 kilometre-wide anomaly and the potential for continuity between them certainly exists in what appears to be another massive intrusive related gold system.
“In addition to high-grade gold, which we have once again encountered at Muddy Creek, there is also widespread multi-element potential with anomalous antimony, copper and silver throughout.
“These results further confirm the Train area, and Muddy Creek prospect in particular, as one of our highest ranked drill targets to potentially establish a third resource deposit as we continue to advance the Estelle project on our path towards production.”
Extensive work done
The gold hits at Muddy Creek and Discovery follows an extensive surface mapping and sampling program undertaken by Nova across the entire Estelle Gold Project this year.
The program comprised more than 45 traverses, covering 100-line kilometres, 674 soil, 446 rock and 21 stream sediment samples.
Nova head of Exploration Hans Hoffman said: “Nova geologists identified an impressive gold-in-soil anomaly along a tributary of Muddy Creek in 2022.
“Following up on that anomaly in 2023, our geos conducted infill soil sampling and detailed rock sampling, which has now revealed one of the most continuous high-grade gold anomalies on the Estelle claim block.”
Most impressive gold anomaly
At Muddy Creek, 21 soil samples were collected over a 1.5-kilometre traverse and all but two of these samples were greater than 1 g/t gold.
These soils averaged 2.5 g/t gold, with a high of 6.1 g/t.
A total of 46 rock samples were collected, averaging a grade of 18.0 g/t gold, including more than 10 samples greater than 25 g/t gold with a high of 127.5 g/t.
“In typical Estelle fashion, gold mineralisation is coincident with sheeted, northwest-trending, quartz-arsenopyrite veins,” Hoffman said.
“This prospect warrants subsurface exploration to test the extent of the mineralisation.”
Sample E404601 grading 90.5 g/t gold at Muddy Creek.
Not to be overshadowed
The exploration team collected 12 rocks, five soils and seven stream sediment samples at the Discovery prospect.
Rock samples averaged 7.9 g/t gold, with 10 samples greater than 1 g/t, three were greater than 10 g/t gold, with a high of 43.6 g/t.
Soil samples, meanwhile, averaged 0.5 g/t gold with a high of 0.6 g/t and are well worth noting because cut-off grades typical of intrusion-related gold systems are often below 0.5 g/t.
Lastly, seven stream sediment samples averaged 0.19 g/t gold with a high of 0.38 g/t.
Sample E399851 grading 43.6 g/t gold at Discovery.
Also in the mix were copper values averaging 0.6% with a high of 3.8% in rock samples, although gold remains the primary value driver at this prospect.
Crews will return next year to conduct channel sampling.