SODANKYLÄ, FINLAND / ACCESSWIRE / September 17, 2024 / FireFox Gold Corp. (TSXV:FFOX)(OTCQB:FFOXF) ("FireFox" or the "Company") is pleased to announce results from its summer exploration program and plans for additional work before winter. The Company focused its summer work on two of its 100%-controlled projects in northern Finland: Mustajärvi and Jeesiö (Figure 1).
The effort at Mustajärvi is aimed at expanding the footprint of gold mineralization beyond the three zones already identified in drilling and trenching over the last several years. The project has yielded numerous strongly mineralized intervals from drilling, including 13.85m at 28.74 g/t gold from 24m down hole (22MJ006) and 15.5m at 13.09 g/t gold from 11m down hole (22MJ021). The first trench from Mustajärvi East in the summer of 2023 also included outstanding results of 6.87m of 59.12 g/t gold (only 80m from a highway).
Outcrop at Mustajärvi is rare, as most of the property is covered by variable deposits of glacial sediments. However, recent prospecting has discovered a new prospect with outcropping gold mineralization, including rock chip samples of 4.82 and 4.41 g/t gold. The new target is approximately 500 metres away from the nearest drilling. Fill-in base-of-till (BoT) sampling also continues to highlight structures and aid in the interpretation of the deposit. Company geologists are preparing a small trenching campaign to follow-up on last year's success at Mustajärvi East and increase the exposure around the new prospect. The team also aims to conduct some magnetics and electromagnetic surveys ahead of a planned winter drill program.
Jeesiö is a large project with numerous targets across different settings. Since 2021, FireFox has enjoyed modest success in the south of the property from very limited work. This summer and fall, Company geologists are adding detailed ground magnetics in areas of encouraging rock sampling. The new magnetics data suggest that gold in rock samples (33.6 g/t, 6.39 g/t, 7.79 g/t, 5.04 g/t and numerous others) in the Kataja and Saittavaara areas may be related to NW-SE and NNE-SSW trending D3 and D4 structures that trend under cover to the north and appear to intersect magnetic lows. Magnetic lows are often indicative of alteration and gold mineralization in orogenic gold terranes. Trenching and BoT sampling are planned in the prospective areas. The first drilling in this part of Jeesiö may also come during the winter.
Carl Lofberg, FireFox's CEO, commented about the new results, "There aretwo noteworthy things about this program. First, we keep growing the footprint of the gold system at Mustajärvi, and again, the new prospect exhibits strong grade at surface. Secondly, we are seeing the benefits of repeated application of our orogenic gold toolkit: detailed magnetics, iterative structural interpretation, reconnaissance mapping follow-up in exposed areas, and base-of-till sampling in covered settings. Gold in rock samples associated with the right generation of deformation is a key ingredient in discovery in Lapland. We look forward to having the excavator back on site at Mustajärvi and Jeesiö and the drill to follow in the winter."
The potential grades noted above and discussed below are conceptual in nature; there has been insufficient exploration to define a mineral resource, and it is uncertain if further exploration will result in these targets being delineated as a mineral resource.
Figure 1- Regional view of FireFox properties, highlighting Mustajärvi and Jeesiö.
Mustajärvi Update
The Mustajärvi Project lies along the highway between the cities of Kittilä and Sodankylä, approximately 17 kilometres east of Kittilä. Drilling to date has delineated three different lodes of gold mineralization along more than 1.5 kilometres of strike. Due to its near-surface high-grade nature, the Company has been focusing most recently on the East Target.
Summer field work at the East Target included a short BoT sampling program in untested or sparsely tested areas of deep cover. This work confirmed anomalous gold in several locations, providing at least one drill target for follow-up testing, where a BoT sample collected above the interpreted Mustajärvi Shear Zone yielded 0.47 g/t Au. This anomaly is located 300 metres northwest from the East Target and 80 metres west from drillhole 21MJ005 (Figure 2), which returned 3.79 g/t gold over a 1 metre interval from 15m downhole (see news release dated August 17, 2021), suggesting continuity of this zone to the west. The Company is planning a down-hole geophysical survey to help vector towards continuation of the sulphide minerals associated with the gold mineralization. The FireFox team expects this feature to evolve into a drill-ready target by later in the year.
Figure 2 - Mustajärvi East target area with new BoT sampling.
Elsewhere at the project, the summer reconnaissance mapping program discovered a mineralized outcrop in an area that had seen limited previous field work by FireFox. The area is generally low-lying with swamp and overburden making outcrop scarce. The outcrop is exposed on the slope of a north-northwest trending topographic low that is believed to be a fault. Such faults have been associated with high-grade gold mineralization elsewhere on the property.
The outcrop consists of silica-rich meta-sedimentary rock with semi-massive specularite layers, interpreted as a possible oxide facies banded iron formation (BIF). BIF is well known in the stratigraphic section, and specularite has been associated with gold in drilling at Mustajärvi East. However, this outcrop is more than 500 metres away from any previous drilling. Hand-panning of a small amount of weathered regolith that was
Figure 3 - Photos of BIF and gold grains from regolith.
collected adjacent to the outcrop yielded numerous tiny gold flakes and some small rock fragments containing visible gold (see Figure 3).
Rock chip samples were collected from the outcrop and the Company is currently compiling all available data in order to finalize the interpretation and plan a follow-up program this fall if possible.
Approximately three kilometres east of the East Target area, the 318-hectare Pikkulehto property block is undergoing the first ground-magnetics survey to delineate areas for follow-up BoT sampling. The survey is anticipated to continue into the fall.
Jeesiö Project Update
The 100%-controlled Jeesiö Project covers approximately 74.6 km2 along one of the major trans-crustal structures that control the emplacement of numerous orogenic gold deposits in Lapland. The main Jeesiö targets include the Utsamo and Kataja Belt areas. From south to north, the Kataja Belt consists of three gold prospects: Saittavaara, Katajavaara South (KJ South) and Katajavaara Hill (KJ Hill). The prospects span more than 4 kilometres, apparently related to en echelon northerly striking younger ("D3" or "D4") structures. The high-resolution airborne magnetics data reveal multiple generations of folding and faulting across the southern part of the property.
An extensive ground magnetics survey was completed over 16.15 km2, including the Kataja Belt and adjacent areas. This work has provided a more detailed interpretation of the complex structural setting of the area, in particular, in the northern part of the Kataja Belt near the confluence of two major features. The magnetics data reveal intense folding and shearing, suggestive of favourable conditions for focusing hydrothermal activity and gold deposition (see Figure 4). FireFox has identified multiple gold anomalies from the limited boulder, outcrop and trench sampling in the southeastern part of the target area, however most of these structurally favourable areas are coincident with topographic lows, which are now swamps. Swamps and wetlands cover approximately 45% of the survey area, so mapping and sampling have not yet been possible in that area. In the 2024 fall program, the FireFox team will conduct more trench sampling at the Katajavaara prospect in order to follow-up on and vector from the previously reported high gold grab sample of 33.6 g/t reported in 2023 (see News Release dated January 25, 2023).
Figure 4 - Magnetics Interpretation and Target Areas in Southern Jeesiö Permit.
Additional targets have been identified from the ground magnetics surveys in the southern and southwestern parts of the Jeesiö permit. The team collected rock samples from strongly deformed sericite quartzites, including one sample reported to date that contained 1.1 g/t of gold. These are similar to rocks sampled 500 metres to the southeast at the Saittavaara prospect that yielded gold values of up to 6.28 g/t, as previously reported (see News Release dated February 22, 2024). The new prospects occur in highly folded quartzites northwest from the Saittavaara occurrence, where drilling intercepted a near-surface zone of 4.0m averaging 2.03 g/t Au (see News Release dated August 3rd, 2021). FireFox geologists have collected numerous samples from the area and expect results to be received early in the fourth quarter. Reconnaissance mapping and sampling continues over the area throughout the fall of 2024.
Methodology & Quality Assurance
Samples reported in this news release were collected by FireFox geologists, who transported the samples to the Company's secure facility in Sodankylä. After documentation and insertion of quality assurance samples, the rock samples were delivered to an ALS sample prep lab in Sodankylä. The samples were then crushed to -2 mm, split and pulverized into 1kg pulps, before being shipped to the ALS facility in Rosia Montana, Romania for gold by fire assay of 50 gm aliquots with AAS finish (method Au-AA24). Other elements, altogether 48, were measured after four-acid digestion by ICP-AES and ICP-MS (method ME-MS61) at the ALS facility located in Loughrea, Ireland.
ALS Laboratories is a leading international provider of assay and analytical data to the mining industry. All ALS geochemical hub laboratories, including the Irish facility, are accredited to ISO/IEC 17025:2017 for specific analytical procedures. The Firefox QA/QC program consists of insertion of certificated standard material and blanks inserted by Firefox into the analytical batches did not show deviations from recommended values.
Patrick Highsmith, Certified Professional Geologist (AIPG CPG # 11702) and director of the Company, is a qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101. Mr. Highsmith has helped prepare, reviewed, verified and approved the technical information in this news release.
About FireFox Gold Corp.
FireFox Gold Corp is listed on the TSX Venture Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol FFOX. FireFox also trades on the OTCQB Venture Market Exchange in the US under the ticker symbol FFOXF. The Company has been exploring for gold in Finland since 2017 where it holds a large portfolio of prospective ground.
Finland is one of the top mining investment jurisdictions in the world as indicated by its multiple top-10 rankings in recent Fraser Institute Surveys of Mining Companies. Having a strong mining law and long mining tradition, Finland remains underexplored for gold. Recent exploration results in the country have highlighted its prospectivity, and FireFox is proud to have a Finland based CEO and technical team.
For more information, please refer to the Company's website and profile on the SEDAR+ website at www.sedarplus.ca.
On behalf of the Board of Directors,
"Carl Löfberg"
Chief Executive Officer
CONTACT:
FireFox Gold Corp.
Email: info@firefoxgold.com
Telephone: +1-778-938-1994
Forward Looking Statements
The information herein contains forward looking statements that are subject to a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in our forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause such differences include changes in world commodity markets, equity markets, the extent of work stoppage and economic impacts that may result from illness, extreme weather, changes in government and changes to regulations affecting the mining industry.
Forward-looking statements in this release may include statements regarding: the intent to conduct additional drilling; the belief as to the location of the most prospective gold targets; the location of targets for future drill programs; and the current and future work program, including the extent and nature of exploration to be conducted in 2024. Although we believe the expectations reflected in our forward-looking statements are reasonable, results may vary.
The forward-looking statements contained herein represent the expectations of FireFox as of the date of dissemination and, accordingly, are subject to change after such date. Readers should not place undue importance on forward-looking statements and should not rely upon this information as of any other date. FireFox does not undertake to update this information at any particular time except as required in accordance with applicable laws.
Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.
SOURCE:FireFox Gold Corp.
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