Axiom Mining is poised to begin a highly anticipated 2,500 metre scout drilling program targeting the Taho and Polo prospect areas of its West Guadalcanal Project in the Solomon Islands.
This follows more highly encouraging trenching results that have defined a gold mineralisation occurrence along 1.5 kilometres of strike including:
- 26 metres at 0.88g/t gold and 64g/t silver including 2 metres at 4g/t gold
- 25 metres at 0.59g/t gold and 52g/t silver
- 43 metres at 0.70g/t gold open
A base camp has been constructed, drill pads are prepared and drilling will begin next week.
The company has also completed a high definition 2000 line kilometre airborne magnetic survey that contributed to subsurface drill targeting at both Taho and Polo.
“The West Guadalcanal Project has now progressed from a grassroots project to a drill-ready project,” chief executive officer Ryan Mount said.
“Our approach of detailed project generation and synthesising historical data, then applying a systematic and predictive exploration strategy, has enabled the Project to advance rapidly.”
He added that surface evaluation at Taho and Polo was complete and all remaining samples had been submitted for assay.
“The recently acquired airborne magnetic data has provided an additional subsurface targeting tool that has produced some exciting drill targets,” Mount said.
Further trenching at the Taho and Polo prospect areas have returned additional encouraging results, including the definition of a 1.5 kilometre long gold mineralised zone at surface.
Other results included:
- 49 metres at 0.32g/t gold - HVTC047;
- 72 metres at 0.34g/t gold open - HVTC049/049a;
- 1 metre at 11.3g/t gold and 1.3% copper - HVTC050; and
These results continue to underpin the prospectivity of the West Guadalcanal Project.
Best results from previous trenching were 30 metres at 1.82 g/t gold including 3 metres at 14.76 g/t gold which is still open.
The completed high resolution 2000 line kilometre airborne magnetic survey over the Hoilava epithermal corridor has highlighted deep tapping regional structures intersecting both the Taho and Polo prospect areas.
Importantly, at the target scale the quality of data has contributed considerably to subsurface drill targeting at both Taho and Polo prospect areas.
West Guadalcanal covers 485 square kilometres and is considered under-explored and highly prospective for Southwest Pacific style mineralisation, namely gold-silver-basemetal epithermal and copper-gold porphyry including skarn mineralisation.
With previous exploration highlighting the potential of West Guadalcanal to host gold mineralisation, Axiom Mining’s 2,500 metre drilling program will be closely watched.
This will provide a clearer picture of mineralisation at the project, where trenching has returned broad zones of gold mineralisation.