Good news has been hard to come by in recent weeks. On some recent mornings I found myself wondering if most junior mining investors would be better served by cashing out what’s left and taking their chances at the dice tables in Las Vegas. At least there they have pretty girls, ‘free’ drinks, and if you lose enough they’ll put you up in a hotel room for the night. But I digress, this morning two of my top picks have brought me back from the edge of the abyss with two excellent updates.
Banyan Gold (TSX-V:BYN) released an updated resource estimate for the AurMac Project in the Yukon. This snapshot in time that does NOT include any drilling in 2022 shows a 3.99 million ounce resource with an average grade of .60 grams/tonne gold.
It’s important to note that if Banyan were to increase the cut-off grade to .5 g/t gold AurMac would still total 2.5 million ounces at an average grade of 1.0 g/t gold. Banyan accomplished today’s resource with 40,000 meters of drilling, an extremely impressive accomplishment by any measure. I still expect that AurMac will at least double in size from today’s four million ounce estimate.
Recent drill results have demonstrated three important aspects of the Powerline deposit:
1. Excellent continuity
2. A deposit that remains open in all directions
3. Higher grade zones beginning to take shape.
At today’s C$100 million market cap Banyan is being valued at slightly more than C$25 per ounce for its four million ounces at AurMac (assuming zero value for 500k ounces at Hyland). Not only is the valuation per ounce likely to increase from today’s low valuation, but the number of ounces is also sure to increase (we know that based upon drill results published so far in 2022).
Next up is BC gold explorer Endurance Gold (TSX-V:EDG), a company that has been relatively quiet since closing a financing in February. Endurance has been quietly carrying out an RC drilling program at its Reliance Project, and this morning’s update is encouraging to say the least. The company points out some potentially wide mineralized intersections indicated based on the pXRF scanning of the RC bags (arsenic mineralization has a strong positive correlation with gold mineralization). Five of the 18 holes have intersections over 10 meters.
Of particular note is RC intersection 22-062 which the company described as follows:
“RC22-062 intersected 2,039 ppm pXRF As over 38.1 m, confirming a potential encouraging width to the Eagle South Zone (“020 Target”). To assist in determining the true width of the 020 Target, hole RC22-062 was targeted at the same intersection but drilled at an oblique azimuth to hole DDH21-020, which previously returned 15.7 grams per tonne gold over 24.8 m, (see News Release January 12, 2022). The difference in azimuth between DDH21-020 and RC22-062 is 30 degrees.”
This means that the ‘020 target’ appears to be wider than previously interpreted by hole DDH21-020 that returned 15.7 grams/ tonne gold over 24.8 meters. For the remainder of the RC program, the RC drill will be moving up those switch backs southeast from the current intersections to open the system to the southeast with a few more RC holes around DDH21-020 to increase confidence in strike, dip and plunge on the 020 Target.
Endurance will then transition to a diamond drill program beginning in early June at the latest, following this zone at depth and along strike. Lab turnaround will likely be better right now for the RC results and lab turn-around will slow down as the summer progresses and everyone else starts drilling.
Banyan and Endurance are both junior gold exploration companies of the highest quality and continue to be on my buy list on any gold sector related weakness.
Disclosure: Author owns BYN.V and EDG.V shares at the time of publishing and may choose to buy or sell at any time without notice.
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Disclaimer
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