Kinsley
To download a Kinsley Mountain presentation, please click here.
Kinsley is a sediment-hosted, past producing gold system with the same stratigraphy, structure, and mineralization style as Long Canyon, where members of Pilot Gold's geologic team defined a significant gold resource in what is now recognized as an emerging gold district.
The Kinsley Mountain property is located in southeast Elko County, Nevada, approximately 90 kilometers from Long Canyon. In September 2011, Pilot Gold purchased the option to earn a controlling interest in the Kinsley Mountain property, after our geologic team assessed the potential to add resources to the project. The property hosts a past producing mine, historic resources* and numerous untested targets within mineralization that appears similar in nature to Long Canyon.
Pilot Gold has a 51% interest in Kinsley Mountain. Intor Resources, a subsidiary of Nevada Sunrise Gold Corporation, owns the remaining 49%. Pilot Gold has elected to increase its interest to 65% by incurring an additional $3-million in exploration expenditures within 5 years.
View looking west of the mined and reclaimed pits on the Main Shear Zone.
The Kinsley property consists of 269 claims and 5,426 acres (2,196 hectares) on BLM land. Gold mineralization was discovered on Kinsley Mountain in 1984, and subsequent exploration defined sediment-hosted gold mineralization concentrated in the Kinsley Trend, including at least five distinct deposits hosted in strata ranging from Middle to Late Cambrian in age. The stratigraphic intervals hosting mineralization at Kinsley are the same horizons that host mineralization at Long Canyon.
Between 1994 and 1999, Alta Gold Co. produced approximately 138,000 ounces of gold at 1.4 g/t gold from oxide ore in a heap leach operation. Alta Gold abandoned the mine and left an undetermined amount of ore in the ground during a period of low gold prices. At that time, gold discoveries were still being made and existing historic resources had not been exhausted. In addition to the shallow oxide ore, several deeper zones of sulfide ore that were encountered in drilling were not followed up.
We plan to deploy the same team and exploration strategy at Kinsley as we did at the Long Canyon Project, with a focus on detailed geologic analysis, aggressive drilling and deposit modeling.
*Pilot Gold is not treating the historical estimate as current mineral resources or mineral reserves, as defined in sections 1.2 and 1.3 of NI43-101. A qualified person has not done sufficient work to classify the historical resource estimate as current mineral resources or mineral reserves, and thus the historical estimate should not be relied on.
Click on the thumbnails below to view maps of the Kinsley Project.
Regional and property geology
The Kinsley Property is located in eastern Nevada near the Utah border, in the eastern portion of the Basin and Range physiographic province. The region is primarily underlain by carbonate and siliciclastic strata ranging from Late Proterozoic to Late Paleozoic in age, reflecting rifting and subsequent passive margin sedimentation with episodic shallowing over time. Strata were thrust imbricated, folded and metamorphosed during the Jurassic Elko Orogeny, during which felsic to intermediate plutonic rocks were emplaced. The Tertiary is dominated by extensional tectonics, manifested as low-angle normal faulting, felsic volcanism and gold mineralization during the Early to middle Tertiary and high-angle, basin-and-range style normal faulting ranging from Miocene to Recent.
Sedimentary rocks on the Kinsley Property range primarily from Middle Cambrian to Late Ordovician in age, and reflect episodic shallowing of the continental shelf from shelf margin through middle shelf/sabkha environments. Important units include the Upper Cambrian Lamb Dolomite, Candland Shale and Notch Peak Formation, and the Lower Ordovician Pogonip Group silty limestone and Eureka Quartzite. By analogy with the Long Canyon area 75 km to the north, competent units such as the Lamb Dolomite and Eureka Quartzite might be expected to behave as structural and hydrologic buttresses for less competent and more favourable host rocks such as the Candland Shale and lower Pogonip Group. The Candland Shale is the principal host for gold mineralization discovered to date on the Kinsley Property.
Strata in the Kinsley Mountain area were ductily deformed during Jurassic time, the extent to which has not been thoroughly evaluated. During Eocene time, a northwest-trending wrench fault system was developed across the property. This fault system provided the plumbing which introduced mineralizing fluids into the Candland Shale. Mineralization is sediment-hosted in nature, and is believed to be of similar age (approximately 38 Ma) to mineralization in the Carlin Trend. Despite being a “Carlin look-alike”, some differences do exist, including a strong correlation of gold with tellurium and bismuth, an association not usually associated with Carlin-type deposits and more typical of intrusion-related distal-disseminated gold deposits.
Surface and near-surface alteration includes decalcification and iron oxide alteration (primarily limonite, goethite and rare hematite). Some scorodite is present locally, as well as structurally- and stratigraphically-controlled jasperoids lenses. At depths below approximately 70 metres, sulphide mineralization is present, consisting of variably siliceous, decalcified and carbonaceous rock with disseminated, very fine-grained pyrite and arsenical pyrite. All of the above alteration types contain gold as very fined-grained particles in the lattice of arsenical pyrite grains or oxidized equivalents.
Click on the thumbnails below to veiw geology graphics of Kinsley.
Pilot Gold's first work-program in 2011 included 1,250 metres (six holes) of diamond-core drilling designed to confirm mineralization in historic reverse circulation holes near the margins of open pits at the past-producing Kinsley Mountain Mine. Many of the historic drill holes, averaging 65 metres in depth, stopped short of potentially mineralized zones. Approximately 138,000 oxide ounces were mined from seven pits by Alta Gold, which ceased operations in the late 1990s due to financial difficulties and low gold prices.
Our first six holes are near-twins of existing holes in two locations, one to the north of the main pit and one located between two satellite pits to the southeast. These drill results highlight the exceptional, untapped potential of this system.
Drill highlights from the 2011 program include:
• 5.91 g/t gold over 18.4 metres, including 11.93 g/t gold over 7.8 metres in hole PK-04;
• 6.75 g/t gold over 7.5 metres, including 13.52 g/t gold over 3.2 metres in PK-03;
• 6.23 g/t gold over 8.7 metres, including 12.05 g/t gold over 3.0 metres in hole PK-02.
2012 Work Program
Kinsley Mountain is one of Pilot Gold’s three priority assets to be advanced in 2012. We plan on advancing Kinsley Mountain through detailed geological analysis, aggressive drilling and deposit modeling. Our planned 2012 work-program includes:
- Deposit modelling: Extensive historic databases were compiled and merged with new surface mapping and sampling. These data are being used to create a three-dimensional model of geology and mineralization to aid in selection of new drill targets.
- Drilling: 12,000 metres of infill and step-out drilling on mineralized zones identified in historic drill programs. In addition to near-mine and resource definition drilling, a comprehensive effort to identify new targets will be undertaken, encompassing both the original 141 claims as well as 128 claims staked by Pilot Gold to the north, a largely unexplored area.
- Resource estimation: Anticipated completion of a project-first resource by year-end.
- Development activities: Preliminary metallurgical work, hydrological, environmental and baseline studies; and, submission of a Plan of Operation to the U.S. federal government to allow for property-wide drilling.
Click on the following link to download Pilot Gold's technical report on the Kinsley Mountain Project.
