Athena Gold Samples 56.5 G/T Gold at Laird Lake, Red Lake Gold District, Ontario

In This Article:

VACAVILLE, CA / ACCESSWIRE / November 18, 2024 / Athena Gold Corporation (CSE:ATHA)(OTCQB:AHNR) ("Athena" or the "Company") is pleased to report high-grade gold samples from its reconnaissance surface sampling program at its newly acquired Laird Lake project, located in Ontario's prolific Red Lake Gold District. The Laird Lake project, spanning 4,158 hectares and covering >10 km of Balmer-Confederation Assemblage contact, represents an underexplored portion of the Red Lake Gold District. The project is road-accessible and lies approximately 10 km west of West Red Lake Gold Mines' flagship Madsen mine, and 34 km northwest of Kinross Gold's Great Bear project.

" We are extremely pleased that our recent expansion into Ontario is already starting to bear fruit. To our knowledge, sample F733057, returning 56.5 g/t Au, is in line with some of the highest-grade surface grab samples publicly reported in the Red Lake Gold District," stated John Power, President & CEO of Athena Gold.

Highlights:

  • An initial six surface grab samples taken at the Laird Lake project in July 2024 confirmed mineralization over 2.2 km of strike length along the contact between the Balmer and Confederation Assemblages (Figure 1). Mineralization is open along strike to the east and west.

  • The Balmer-Confederation contact is believed to serve as a major structural control for gold mineralization in the Red Lake Gold District, with >90% of all gold ever mined in the camp occurring within approximately 300 m of this contact.

  • The highest-grade sample returned up to 56.5 g/t Au collected from a smoky quartz vein with blebby pyrite, chalcopyrite, and traces of visible gold (Figure 3).

  • Grab sample assays from additional prospecting work conducted in October 2024 remain pending, with results expected to be received by year-end.

  • The recent reconnaissance prospecting program is expected to guide a property-wide geochemistry survey, scheduled to commence in H1/2025, the results of which are anticipated to provide targets for Athena's initial drill program at Laird Lake.

  • A recently completed MSc. thesis on the Laird Lake project, suggested that Laird Lake represents the continuation of the same mineralized structure found at both the Madsen and Starratt-Olsen gold mines [i] now owned by West Red Lake Gold (2.5 Moz past-production, 1.7 Moz indicated, 0.4 Moz inferred) [ii] and was later displaced as far as 10 km west (Figure 2).

Figure 1: Map of Laird Lake, showing recent grab samples from July 2024 reconnaissance sampling program.