Overview
Two and a half kilometres east of the Olive-Shamrock Zone and on strike with the Potato Hills Trend lie a series of Cretaceous granodiorite intrusions that have seen only limited exploration work to date. A suite of historic stream sediment samples has identified the creek draining this zone as highly anomalous in arsenic and gold, and a summer 2013 exploration program designed to test this area as a possible extension returned grab samples from trace up to 8.2 g/t Au in the quartzite host rock. A detailed, grid-based soils geochemical program was subsequently conducted and a strong arsenic+gold-in-soils anomaly associated with the intrusive stocks was identified.
The Bluto Zone has a strong two-kilometre-long by one-kilometre wide, coincident gold+arsenic-in-soils geochemical anomaly that strikes at ~060° (the Potato Hills Trend) centered on a series of Dublin Gulch Stock related intrusions. Historic, Dublin Gulch Property-wide stream sediment sampling defined the creek draining this area (Indicator Creek) as a first-order anomalous watershed and helped develop Victoria’s interest in the area. Chip sampling of exposures in the area of the soils anomaly in 2013 by Victoria returned from trace up to 8.16 grams per tonne gold in the Zone. And a follow-up soils sampling survey in 2014 over the Zone defined the arsenic+gold soils anomaly currently being tested.
The Bluto Zone had seen limited previous exploration work conducted during the tungsten exploration campaigns on Dublin Gulch in the 1960’s -1980, mostly in the form of Cat trail access and commiserate bulldozer trenches. These trenches were only analyzed for tungsten as precious metals was not a consideration at the time.
The Bluto trenches were designed to complement and support the first ever diamond drill exploration program in this newly defined gold mineralized zone on the Dublin Gulch Property. The results outlined herein define Bluto’s potential and through the demonstration of anomalous gold mineralization on surface and validate the Potato Hills Trend concept that has been actively applied on Dublin Gulch Property this season.
In total, 25 trenches totaling 3,191 metres were sampled by nominal two metre channel samples during the 2017 Bluto Trench campaign. The trench results summarized below represent a combination of targeted trenches constructed across the Bluto Zone and trenches built parallel to access trails where bedrock exposure was evident.