Alto Ventures (TSXV: ATV) collected ‘pristine’ grains of gold at its Mud Lake property in Ontario.
According to the miner, out of 40 surface glacial till samples gathered, 38 were processed and 37 contained one or more of the pristine grains.
Pristine grains are delicate pieces of free gold
“Pristine grains are delicate pieces of free gold that are generally interpreted to have been derived from sources close to the sampling sites,” Alto said in a media statement. “Four samples contain over 50 gold grains each including numerous pristine grains; one sample collected in 2019 contains 429 gold grains of which almost 96% of the gold grains are described as pristine.”
According to the company, the samples were collected during the 2018 and follow-up 2019 field seasons.
“To date, there are 12 known surface gold occurrences associated with the northeast striking Mud Lake Shear Zone which has been traced for six kilometres on the property,” the press release states. “Historical results include 50.6 g/t Au and 19.81 g/t Au in surface grab samples as well as 3.39 g/t Au over 6.1 metres and 7.25 g/t Au over 1.0 metre in separate drill holes.”
Alto reported that samples that contain high gold grain counts cluster near the southwest corner of the property and bring focus to the southwest end of the Mud Lake Shear Zone where past exploration was limited only to trenching.
Mud Lake is located approximately 25 kilometres northeast of the town of Beardmore, Ontario. Gold mineralization in the area is associated with quartz and quartz-carbonate veins that occur as shear-parallel en-echelon veins.