Great Western Mining Corporation [AIM:GWMO], the AIM-listed mining company focused upon gold, silver and copper assets primarily in Nevada, has published the final results of the assays from its drilling programme on the OMCO mine in the Olympic Gold Project in Nevada.
The company drilled 10 holes in the OMCO Mine area during the summer mining programme. Great Western said that the areas where it was drilling was: “associated with logged quartz vein surrounded by clay alteration and is at a depth consistent with both the old workings and mapped, unmined portions of the vein.”
OMCO is an historic minework that forms part of the Olympic Gold Project, originally opened up in 1915 and lies within the Walker Lane Fault Belt, a major metallogenic belt host to world class gold, silver and copper deposits. The OMCO Mine produced gold at 25-30 grams/tonne (g/t) recovered and silver at 30g/t recovered between 1918 and 1939 from 900 metres of underground workings.
The Olympic claims are situated at the intersection of two major gold trends; the north-south Rawhide – Paradise Peak – Tonopah trend and the east-west Aurora – Borealis – Santa Fe – Round Mountain trend. Field work has also located a very large tailings heap dating from the abandoned OMCO Mine, together with a significant stockpile of material which was never processed when the mine was in production. An initial survey of the tailings heap shows it to cover a surface area of approximately 11,000m².
The results found gold at Hole 15, recorded over 6.1 metre intervals including a best intercept of 8.1g/t over 1.5 metres. And although: “Other holes targeting the unmined OMCO vein positioned to the southwest intersected the target structure […] did not identify appreciable grade – most likely due to being too far from the centre of mineralization” – the exploration gave Great Western the opportunity to continue exploration work in the southwest segment of the deposit in the new season.
Great Western Mining to exploit tailings and spoil heaps
As previously reported, Great Western Mining is in the process of developing its own milling and refining facilities to exploit the historic tailings and spoil heaps that it has on its properties. A previously-mined stockpile of material at the Olympic Gold Project has been selected for processing through the Great Western’s planned joint venture milling operation, in addition to tailings at OMCO and spoil heaps at Mineral Jackpot, another tenement that the company owns, already identified. An independent UK-based consultancy has been contracted to prepare a report on these volumes of coarse material together with the substantial tailings at the OMCO Mine.
The miner also published results from its tailing drills, which included four short, vertical holes which drilled into the mineralised coarse stockpile at the mine site this summer. The target were materials produced when the OMCO Mine was still active, but never processed.
One bulk sample was taken from each of these holes to provide one sample per hole. Results from these four samples fell in the range 0.219 – 1.113g/t and overall OMCO in situ gold intercepts were greater than 0.10g/t across the range.
Brian Hall, Great Western’s chairman said in a statement published this morning: “During the summer work seasons of 2021 and 2022, we drilled a number of holes in the vicinity of the abandoned OMCO Mine that yielded high grades of gold for several decades until the 1940s. At Hole 15, drilled this summer, assay results tell us that we have now intercepted an extension of the OMCO vein itself, one of our key objectives, encountering vein material beyond the known limits of the old workings.”
He continued: “Significantly, the trend is open to the southeast in unexplored acreage adjacent to the old workings. This is a very exciting result which will enable us to home in on the potential of the asset. In parallel we have drilled and are evaluating tailings and previously mined material for our processing joint venture and have commissioned an independent UK firm of consultants to report on these.”
Great Western has been on AIM since August 2011 and opened trading this morning (22nd September) at 0.14p, has offered a one-year return of 3.9% and its shares have ranged between 0.1p and 0.17p over a 52-week period giving the company a market capitalisation of GBP5m.
