Sonid North Gold Project

Summary

Exploration by KSO has resulted in the discovery, under sand cover, of a large open-ended Au anomaly now referred to as the Mud-house prospect.  Scout RC drilling has indicated multiple zones of anomalous gold values up to scores of metres wide and enclosing lenses and veins grading better than 1g/t Au.  A low angle southward dipping structural control confers an open-pit potential in the event of ongoing exploration success.  Systematic drilling is to be undertaken through 2011.

Geological overview

The Sonid North tenement is centrally located in a roughly east-west trending belt of Palaeozoic sedimentary and volcanic rocks intruded by late Palaeozoic and Mesozoic intermediate to acid batholiths and their associated multi-phase stocks, dykes and plugs.  The sedimentary/volcanic sequence is locally metamorphosed to greenschist facies and the entire sequence has been deformed by strong regional scale thrusting and faulting.  There are numerous gold prospects in the surrounding district and KSO’s Marmot tenement immediately to the east takes in a large and complex alteration zone containing strongly anomalous copper, molybdenum-copper and gold sub-zones.   

KSO Exploration

Although the Sonid North tenement has been in KSO’s portfolio since listing, exploration was severely constrained up until 2010 by widespread sand cover.  Soil sampling and geological mapping coverage was patchy at best and while yielding interesting results in the Mud-house and other areas (small vein outcrops yielding better than 1g/t Au) there were no indications of a system meriting RC or diamond drilling. 

In 2010 the first-time availability of a RAB drill-rig offered a solution to the cover problem and a series of north-south oriented RAB hole fences were drilled across the trend of the scattered Mud-house outcrops.  The drilling defined a branching Au-in-weathered bedrock  anomaly at least 1.8km long. 

Follow-up of the RAB drilling results included a small amount of trenching and two scout lines of RC drill-holes.  These confirmed depth continuity of the Au mineralisation and assisted in interpretation of the hosting geology.  The mineralisation appears to be dipping at a shallow angles to the south-southwest and consists of low to moderate grade lenses enclosed in broad anomalous Au envelopes.  As the topography is falling in the same direction as the dip of the mineralisation, the prospect is seen to have open-pit potential should grades prove adequate.  The mineralisation is hosted at the interface of an overlying diorite sheet with underlying chlorite meta-volcanics and the sequence is intruded by both rhyolites and a quartz-eye granite porphyry.

Ongoing exploration will include diamond drilling for more accurate determination of grade in the zone defined to date; and, RC drilling to investigate down-dip and strike continuity and grade indications.