Florida Mountain Exploration Program At The DeLamar Project
VANCOUVER - Integra Resources Corp. reported further exploration results from the 2020 Florida Mountain exploration program at the DeLamar Project, situated in Owyhee County in southwest Idaho. The drill and geophysics results outlined today continue to underscore the strong exploration potential that exists in near-deposit targets at Florida Mountain.
“With three exploration drill rigs in operation at the DeLamar Project, today’s drill results continue to demonstrate the potential for a significant high-grade resource at Florida Mountain,” said, George Salamis, President and CEO. “In addition to today’s strong drill results, the first IP geophysics campaign at Florida Mountain has identified a large chargeability anomaly immediately west of the current NI 43-101 resource that coincides strongly with soil geochemistry. In addition to the aggressive 16,000 m exploration drill campaign underway, this year’s extensive IP geophysics work is progressing rapidly. The results to date have continued to correlate strongly with known mineralization, while simultaneously identifying new areas that are yet to be drill tested.”
The intercepts reported consist of mineralization with wide-spread low-grade gold-silver values, crosscut and underlain by narrower high-grade, steeply dipping low-sulphidation quartz-adularia veins. Widespread intercepts from shallow oxide and transitional resource definition drilling conducted by Integra over the previous two years has confirmed potentially mineable widths and grades for these high-grade structures.
Integra’s exploration team has modeled 7 high-grade vein structures that appear similar in size and orientation to the historically productive high-grade Trade Dollar – Black Jack vein system. Most historic underground production stemmed from the Trade Dollar – Black Jack vein, while the remaining 6 veins saw limited production up until mining operations ceased with the start of World War 1. Geometrically, the veins occur in the form of plunging shoots over an altitude difference of approximately 300 m below the apex of Florida Mountain. Strike lengths of the individual shoots tend to be 100 m to 200 m long and with widths of between 1 m and 8 m.
This recently improved model of high-grade veins at Florida Mountain provided much of the fundamental data that helped design the drill program currently underway. In today’s results, drill hole FME-20-084 intercepted several of the high-grade plunging shoots in a target area where Integra geologists have modeled the northern extension of the Trade Dollar – Black Jack vein. Deep intersects on drill hole FME-20-80 have intercepted the extension of the Alpine Vein, one of the six veins west of the Trade Dollar – Black Jack vein. Since 2018, Integra has drilled 13 drill holes at Florida Mountain that have intersected the targeted high-grade shoots. Of these 13 drill holes, 8 drill holes intersected sufficiently encouraging widths and grades to warrant further exploration for potentially underground mineable mineralization at Florida Mountain. To date, only a small percentage of these prospective vein structures have been drill tested.
The Company recently completed the first 4 lines of a 12-line IP geophysics program over Florida Mountain. IP has proven to be a very effective tool for target generation in the DeLamar District because of the association of disseminated sulfide alteration with gold and silver mineralization. The IP data released today delineates an anomaly 1,200 m in length to the west of the NI 43-101 Resource Estimate at Florida Mountain in an area known as Rich Gulch. This anomaly coincides with an arsenic (“As”) and Au soil geochemistry anomaly.
The 2020 metallurgical drill program has been designed to characterize recovery variability within the oxide and transitional mineralization at the DeLamar Project. The program seeks to further optimize processing options at DeLamar and Florida Mountain, and advance the Company’s metallurgical knowledge as Integra moves toward a pre-feasibility level on both Deposits in 2021.
Notable drill results from the program to date, in addition to the expected runs of mineralization in line with the current NI 43-101 resource, are provided in the table above. These results underscore the potential for high grade in historic structures that have not been the target of much modern exploration drilling, as well as the strong potential to increase the current resource as Integra aims to push all current drill holes beyond and below its boundary.
At present, two exploration drill rigs continue to target high-grade vein structures on Florida Mountain, while a third exploration drill rig is on War Eagle Mountain where it has recently moved to test the soil geochemical anomaly identified in 2019. Florida Mountain drilling continues to test the “proof-of-concept” for high-grade underground veins. A second phase of drilling at Florida Mountain will shift the focus to drill testing the north and south extensions to the near-surface oxide and transitional mineralization. Results to date of the Project-wide 2020 exploration drill program have been released for 3,050 m of the proposed 16,000 m program.
Following drilling at Florida Mountain and War Eagle, drill rigs will then move to the Blacksheep Area and the Deadwood Ridge Area that lie northwest of the DeLamar Deposit, where approximately 3,000 m of exploration drilling is planned to test several significant soil geochemical and IP anomalies. A recent rock chip sampling program was completed over the outcropping vein zone at Georgianna in the southern half of Black Sheep. In addition, a zone approximately 300 m x 100 m of intense stockwork vein mineralization was delineated at the Lucky Days target also in Blacksheep.