Exploration: Tonkin - Gold Bar
The Tonkin and Gold Bar properties are located in the heart of the prolific Cortez Trend. The properties encompasses 170 square miles and are situated immediately south of Barrick Gold and Rio Tinto’s Cortez Joint Venture Area, which has past production, current reserves and mineralized material of 33 million ounces of gold.
We believe that the Cortez Trend has become one of the most exciting areas in the world for gold exploration. In addition to Barrick and Rio Tinto’s, Barrick has just put the Ruby Hill mine into production south of US Gold which is expected to produce approximately 120,000 ounces of gold annually. Other companies in the trend include Newmont Mining which has put together an enormous land package in the northern region of the trend. There is also a scattering of junior exploration companies in the area.
In 2003, Placer Dome announced the discovery of Cortez Hills. This discovery altered the thinking for many surrounding the Cortez Trend because previous exploration programs had targeted near surface deposits without looking for deeper Carlin style mineralization. The Cortez Hills discovery demonstrated that Carlin deposits do exist within the Cortez Trend and that the true potential of the Trend lays at depth, contrary to previous thinking.
Exploration
US Gold’s properties along the Cortez Trend have been known to host gold mineralization for approximately 40 years. Despite this understanding, exploration has typically been very shallow compared to the drilling that discovered the Cortez Hills deposit or subsequent gold strikes along the Carlin Trend. In addition to the limited drilling at depth, exploration has focused on areas that were previously mined, which represents a relatively small portion of the properties. The remainder of US Gold’s land position along the Cortez Trend has only received a small amount of exploration.
Exploration has uncovered several small gold deposits along our properties. The deposits tend to occur in clusters with a northeast trend, but the clusters themselves are aligned northwest, parallel to the Cortez Trend.
Exploration drilling has discovered a new zone of gold mineralization near the northern end of the property at a location known as Twin Peaks. This new zone is also located immediately to the south of Barrick's Joint Venture Area.
The majority of gold mineralization on US Gold’s Cortez properties is hosted in what is known as Upper Plate rocks. These rock formations are known to host small to medium size gold deposits, typically of lower grade along the Cortez Trend. However, the large ore-bodies are usually found in the more lime-rich rocks of the Lower Plate. Renewed exploration by US Gold has been very successful locating the Lower Plate Rock where it was previously thought it did not exist.
US Gold is aggressively exploring this exciting land package with a renewed focus of discovering a Carlin style deposit at depth rather than low-grade mineralization near surface. Besides drilling deeper on the property we will look at new possible targets in previously unexplored areas.
More US Gold Exploration Info >>
