Riverside Initiates 1,500M Drill Program at Its 100% Owned Oakes Project in the Geraldton Gold Belt
Riverside Resources Inc. has announced the start of a self-funded drill program at the 100% owned Oakes Gold Project in northwestern Ontario. The first holes of the drill program will be targeting the principal HG Target ("HG" or "High Grade") previously identified during the 2020-2021 exploration work programs. Additional holes are planned to test parallel IP anomalies identified as the Crib and Brinklow targets to the south and west of HG.
Previous exploration work at Oakes has included induced polarization (IP) surveys, field mapping, geochemical assay, sampling and trenching. Much of this target generation work was funded by a previous partner and Riverside has now commenced a 1,500 metre drill campaign to test targets with demonstrated high-grade surface values up to 31.9 g/t Au, (see press release July 29, 2019) correlating with high resistivity geophysical anomalies (see Figure 1).
The Oakes project is located 20 km northeast of Equinox Gold's Hardrock/Greenstone Deposit along the Trans-Canada Highway. The Hardrock/Greenstone Project has Proven & Probable Reserves of 5.5Moz at 1.27 g/t Au[1]. Drilling at Oakes is the first step for Riverside's self-funded work to advance the Project beyond the IP and surface work the Company completed over the last two years.
Riverside's President and CEO, John-Mark Staude: "We are very excited to be self-funding the drilling at the Oakes Project, which we have advanced the past two summer field seasons to the extent that drilling was the next logical step. Our team has done tremendous work compiling the old and new data into a model that is quite compelling and we are pleased to have a good drilling partner on site turning the steel and our geos at location with boots on the ground."
Figure 1: Riverside's proposed drill program testing four initial areas at the Oakes project superimposed over IP inversion diagram. The focus of the phase I drilling is at HG.
To view an enhanced version of Figure 1, please visit:
https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/6101/115522_df8dc920b44eba3f_002full.jpg
The proposed drill program consists of 12 inclined diamond drill holes totaling 1,500m. The HG Target is the primary target deducted from field work. Corresponding geophysics is a linear, northwest trending structure identified through an IP survey (see Figure 1). The IP work was followed up by stripping and trenching which returned high-grade rock chip and channel assays (see press release December 11, 2019). The past two years Riverside's team has been able to gain an understanding of the mineralization, structural geology and stratigraphy to the point now where Riverside is self-funding the drill campaign while having a total cash treasury of over $4,500,000 and no debt for the company.
In December of 2021, Riverside completed an inversion study on the IP data which allowed the Company to refine its geological interpretation and drill targets. The HG Target is interpreted as a northwest trending vertical shear zone along the contact between metasedimentary and metavolcanic sequences. These aspects are typical of some of the other major gold camps in the region including Geraldton, Beardmore but more generally also at Red Lake and Island Gold.
Drilling will also evaluate the eastern step out from the HG with potentially just one hole and then west of the HG with a possible two holes. A parallel southern IP trend has shown significant chargeability anomaly such that a single hole will likely make for further follow up programs this year based upon this initial drill program into these undrilled target zones.
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