Ashley Gold (ASHL.C) CEO Darcy Christian was out in the mountains again this past month, and when he wasn’t fighting off bears and mosquitoes, he was taking gold samples.
His company recently attached itself to a uranium play that can quickly advance if all goes well, but while that’s coming together, the geo-ceo decided to turn over some rocks at his gold project.
Christian took a sample adjacent to the Sakoose Mine vein, positioned 7kms from Highway 19, and when the sample came back from the labs, it notched 0.99 g/t, which is a bit meh.
The vein had previously been a producer in the early 20th century, that at the time averaged 11.9 g/t, so the feeling was there was likely better gold nearby.
And so, it turned out, there was.
Christian sampled the Sakoose vein directly and managed a gold grade of 82.3 g/t, a super high concentration of the shiny.
He said in a news release, “Initial scouting of the historic Sakoose area was performed to GPS locate historical shafts and workings. As part of this our team has sampled the north-east end of a 90m open cut with excellent gold assays. We are excited to continue to explore the area in a busy 2024 exploration season.”
Christian would love to be plunging drills into the ground, but right now is focused on low cost moves to advance the play.
- Initial Exploration: The 2024 prospecting season began with the sampling of the main Sakoose vein. Samples were taken from the northeast end of a historical 90-meter cut across the vein, where it trends underground, and the samples were sent to Actlabs for fire assay testing. The high-grade quartz vein sample also underwent metallic screen analysis due to its “nuggety” nature (meaning the gold is unevenly distributed).
- Historical Production: The mine operated from 1897 to 1902, producing 8,828 tons of ore with an average gold grade of 11.9 g/t.
- Recent Drilling: In 1988, drilling indicated that gold mineralization extends down to 200 meters below the surface, suggesting further exploration potential.
UPDATE: Ashley Gold signs LOI with Western Uranium and Vanadiu for uranium processing:
Ashley Gold Corp. has signed a letter of intent (LOI) for the processing of Sahara uranium-vanadium ore at the future Green River Utah processing facility being constructed by Western Uranium & Vanadium Corp. The LOI highlights the intent for Ashley to produce 100,000 tons of Uranium-Vanadium ore per year approximating 500,000 lbs of Uranium* and 750,000 lbs of Vanadium*.
Highlights
- — Initial tolling or sale of 100,000 tons per year of ore with potential to increase
- — Represents ~500,000 lbs of U and ~750,000 lbs of V per year*
- — Initial processing expected 2026
— Chris Parry
FULL DISCLOSURE: Ashley Gold was an Equity.Guru marketing client earlier in the year. We continue to cover the company post-contract out of respect to the management team and shareholders, but have no commercial arrangement with ASHL.
