Columbus Gold has started a drill program at the Utah Clipper gold project, which is situated immediately contiguous to the Pipeline-Gold Acres gold mine complex of Barrick Gold in the Battle Mountain gold trend’s Cortez-Pipeline segment in Nevada, where Navaho Gold, a joint-venture partner, can earn a preliminary 51% interest.
Navaho Gold has announced that the drilling at Utah Clipper will examine two deep targets, which contains connected arsenic and gold geochemical anomalies at the surface that may reveal a leakage from the mineralized gold present under the potential lower Platecarbonate rocks. As said by Navaho, the location of the targets are in the structural settings similar to Barrick Cold’s Cortez hills, where a gold deposit housing over 10 Moz of gold reserves was identified during 2003. During September 2011, Barrick reported fresh large discoveries of around 8 km and 6 km to Cortez Hills’s southeast part, called Goldrush and Red Hill. The company has defined 3.5 Moz of inferred gold resource at the Red Hill, having mineralization exposed in every direction and at Goldrush. It intersected 27.8 g/t gold over 20.5 m in a drill hole.
This Utah Clipper property encloses a part of the Roberts Mountain thrust along with metamorphosed limey siltstone and low plate limestone in the thrust’s footwall. The main geologic targets present at the Utah Clipper property are dispersed gold deposits, classical pipeline or carlin style bulk mineable and high-grade vein deposits in low plate carbonates that are controlled structurally.