Challenger Exploration announced results from drilling at its Hualilan Gold Project, San Juan Argentina. The results are from the Company's ongoing drill program targeting extensions to the current 2.1 million ounce AuEq1 Mineral Resource Estimate. The holes reported in this release primarily focus on extensions to the Verde Zone and Magnata Fault mineralisation. The drilling continues to show the presence of coherent zones of significantly higher-grade mineralisation at depth in the Verde Zone. All results were received after the completion of the Company's maiden Hualilan Gold Project MRE. The current MRE, which includes a high-grade core of 1.1 Moz at 5.6 g/t AuEq1, was based on 125,700 metres drilling and will be updated once assays from the recently completed 204,000 metre drill program have been received. Following its $24.7 million dollar financing in September CEL has committed to a further 50,000 metres which will take total CEL drill metres at Hualilan to 254,000 metres. The Verde Zone contributes almost 1 million ounces gold equivalent1 to the current Hualilan MRE when the new high-grade zones at depth are included. The Verde Zone was a CEL discovery targeted using surface magnetics and IP (Induced Polarisation) at the Hualilan Gold Project. The discovery hole (ASX release 2/3/21) returned 125.5 metres at 1.1 g/t AuEq including 71.0 metres at 1.8 g/t AuEq (GNDD-169). The Verde Zone covers 2.0 kilometres of strike and mineralisation remains open along strike and at depth. Mineralisation in the Verde Zone is oriented north-south, is 50 to 100 metres wide, and hosted by bedding parallel fault-fracture zones in sediments and steeply dipping fracture zones in intrusives. A lower grade halo of mineralisation extends into the overlying sedimentary rocks which have been
locally brecciated by the hydrothermal fluids during mineralisation. The overlying mineralisation in the sedimentary rocks dips to the west at 30-50o and is up to 50 metres thick. This overlying halo of lower grade mineralisation is a useful exploration guide to vector to the deeper intrusion-hosted mineralisation. As drilling extends deeper, zones of high-grade skarn mineralisation are being intersected at both limestone-intrusive contacts and also within limestone which is analogous to the Main Norte and Sentazon Manto mineralisation.
The infill and extension drilling at the Verde and Gap Zones is designed as a series of fences of holes at 40 metre spacing along strike. Holes on each fence were collared to target the mineralisation 40 metres below the previous hole. The intention is to drill the entire 2.0 kilometre Verde Zone down to 400 metres vertically on 40 x 40 metre spacing. The infill portion of this program is ongoing as, mineralisation continues to be extended further north and south along strike, and at depth. Accordingly, the focus is to continue to expand the footprint of the mineralisation rather than infill drilling.