A soil sample has returned a gold grade that many miners'd be happy to pull from a drill core. Dalaroo Metals just hit 23.26 grams per tonne (g/t) gold in a surface sample at its Bondoukou gold project in Côte d'Ivoire, West Africa.
The result came from the Gold Ridge prospect and headlines a batch of assays that've now defined a coherent, 7-kilometre-long mineralised corridor that remains open in both directions.
Dalaroo's soil sampling program – digging down about 40cm into the B-Horizon layer – returned 529 samples grading above 25 parts per billion (ppb) gold. Of those, 127 samples went above 100ppb and 19 samples exceeded 500ppb.
Beyond the headline 23.26g/t hit, other high-grade results include 3.25g/t, 2.54g/t, 2.09g/t, 1.96g/t, 1.72g/t and 1.21g/t gold.
The Gold Ridge corridor is made up of three distinct target areas. The 1.5km-long Northern-Mag prospect, where the 23.26g/t result was found, is outlined by a 100ppb gold contour. The 3.5km Central-Wilfred prospect is defined by a 50ppb contour with peaks of 0.56g/t and 0.51g/t gold. The 2km long by 1.2km wide Southern-Ali prospect returned a peak of 0.71g/t gold.
The soil anomalies line up with Dalaroo's geological model. They correlate with an interpreted magnetic-geophysical corridor and are associated with widespread artisanal gold workings, favourable geology and key structural controls.
"The definition of a coherent 7-kilometre gold corridor, supported by favourable geology, geophysical signatures, widespread artisanal workings and multiple high-grade soil anomalies, represents a major milestone in our understanding of the project and reinforces our confidence in the scale of the underlying mineralised system," said Dalaroo CEO John Morgan.
The convergence of data from several surveys has given the company a robust framework for drill targeting. The new information suggests Dalaroo could be onto a significant, structurally controlled Birimian gold system – the same type that's made West Africa a world-class gold province.
Gold Ridge sits just 35km northwest of Endeavour Mining's Tanda-Iguela gold project, one of the most significant recent gold discoveries in Côte d'Ivoire with an indicated resource of 4.5 million ounces of gold. It also lies immediately adjacent to Koulou Gold's Gontougo project, an earlier-stage exploration play with the same geology as Tanda-Iguela.
Bondoukou is just one part of Dalaroo's broader exploration portfolio. The company is also advancing the Blue Lagoon rare earths, zirconium and niobium project in south-west Greenland, plus the Lyons River and Namban projects in Western Australia.
Dalaroo isn't wasting time. A 5000-metre auger drilling program is already underway to better define the gold anomalism beneath any transported surface cover. Results from that work'll then be used to hone targets for a major 20,000-metre reverse-circulation (RC) drilling program scheduled to kick off in July. The company has locked in local contractor FTE Drilling for the campaign.
It's rare to see soil sample results delivering grades that many explorers'd be happy to pull from a drill core, let alone from a simple surface sample. Now, with a 7km-long runway of high-grade surface anomalism completely untested by RC or diamond drilling, a well-supported geological model, and the drill bit about to test the system for the first time, Dalaroo looks set to generate a serious amount of news flow across its West African and Greenland projects in the coming months.