Significant Gold Mineralization From Inaugural Drill Program At Queensway South
VANCOUVER - New Found Gold Corp. reported on its inaugural 7,250m, 33 diamond drill hole program at Queensway South (QWS) that commenced in August 2022 and was designed to test early-stage exploration targets along an 18.5km long stretch of the Appleton Fault Zone (“AFZ”) approximately 50km south of the Keats Zone. Queensway South is a contiguous portion of New Found’s Queensway project and covers roughly 65km of strike extension on the regional Appleton and JBP Fault Zones across 1320km2 of the Queensway project’s total area of 1,662km2. QWS is easily accessed via the Trans-Canada Highway and a network of forestry roads.
27 of 33 drill holes hit significant gold mineralization while 10 drill holes contained visible gold across four target areas. Several new discoveries were made along an 18.5km corridor that was prioritized due to the amount of gold found in the surficial environment; specific targets tested occur on both sides of the AFZ and exhibit a combination of favorable characteristics including elevated Au-in-grab, till and soil samples.
At Pauls Pond, an area covering a high concentration of gold anomalies on both sides of the AFZ, seventeen drillholes were completed leading to three new discoveries: “Astronaut”, “Nova” and “Nebula” as well as the expansion of the historic “Goose” zone.
Astronaut and Nova are parallel structures located west of the AFZ that have been traced over 1,600m and 250m of strike length, respectively. At Astronaut and Nova, eight out of nine holes drilled contained visible gold, including highlight interval of 19.0 g/t Au over 3.15m in NFGC-QS-22-20. The Company believes these two zones connect through to the Goose zone, which, if confirmed, would expand this mineralized corridor to 2.5km in strike length.
Nebula, the third discovery in the Pauls Pond area, is located on the east side of the AFZ and drill testing of a prominent Au-in-soil anomaly with two holes identified significant mineralization that is associated with a near-surface shear zone that returned an initial highlight result of 4.92 g/t Au over 3.05m in NFGC-QS-22-25.
On the east side of the AFZ drill testing of two trenched Au-in soil and till anomalies led to two new discoveries, “Devils Pond” and “Devils Pond South”. These zones are located 12km apart and all drillholes at both targets intersected broad domains of highly anomalous gold including highlight intervals of 0.47 g/t Au over 8.00m and 0.37 g/t Au over 28.00m in NFGC-QS-22-15 at Devils Pond and 1.01 g/t Au over 8.80m in NFGC-QS-22-30 at Devils Pond South.
Greg Matheson, COO, said, “Results from our inaugural drill program at Queensway South exceeded our expectations. The majority of target areas tested led to new discoveries – discoveries generated by New Found applying prospecting, soil and till sampling, mapping, trenching and interpretation of geophysics across the vast claim blocks of QWS. With only a handful of targets tested, the success of this small program demonstrates the potential of this region and supports our thesis that the Queensway Project is a district-scale host to gold mineralization. There is a lot of work to be done in advancing these new discoveries and continuing to test new targets generated along the AFZ’s 65km+ of largely unexplored strike that falls on the QWS Project. The 2023 summer regional exploration program will consist of a follow-up drill program of approximately 10,000m along with boots-on-the-ground field work to continue to identify new targets and expand on these new discoveries.”