Ulaan Project

Overview

In Q4 2020, Erdene announced that it exercised its option to acquire 100% of the Ulaan exploration license (Press release), located immediately west of Erdene’s Bayan Khundii gold project mining license.  The Company has carried out limited exploration on the license since acquiring a 51% of the license in 2017, however, the property has demonstrated significant geological potential.

The Ulaan license covers approximately 1,780 hectares and hosts a large and intense phyllic style quartz-sericite-pyrite (QSP) alteration zone (about 3 kilometres in diameter) with characteristics of a porphyry copper and epithermal gold system.  Ulaan lies at the southeast end of a major alteration zone, extending for over 10 kilometres to the northeast. This alteration trend has a central zone of intense secondary silica with a peripheral halo of sericite alteration and an outer zone of white mica and sericite, which hosts the Bayan Khundii gold deposit. This northeast-trending alteration area, which incorporates the Ulaan, Bayan Khundii and other mineralized targets in the area (including Erdene’s Dark Horse and Altan Arrow prospects), is associated with a regional structural dilational jog and associated major volcano-plutonic centre, along a northeast-trending transform fault. The various alteration and mineralization styles within the Ulaan target and the adjacent zone of alteration are consistent with a fertile magmatic island arc, with evidence for possible arc migration, and overlapping or telescoped mineralization along major structures.

In Q3 2021, Erdene announced results from its maiden drill program on the southern portion of Ulaan license. The program returned a significant new gold discovery 300 metres west of the Bayan Khudnii deposit. The program consisted of seven drill holes totaling 1,543 metres.

Ulaan Q3 2021 Drilling Highlights

(All intervals averaging over 0.30 g/t gold)

1. Reported intervals in this release are downhole apparent widths. Continued exploration is required to confirm anisotropy of mineralization and true thicknesses.
2. End of hole.
3. Holes UDH-09, UDH-11 and UDH-12 did not intersect significant gold mineralization (over 0.3 g/t gold).

The gold mineralization intersected within the drill holes highlighted in Table 1 is associated with quartz-adularia veins within a white mica altered and silicified tuffaceous units, the same style as the mineralization at Erdene’s Bayan Khundii Gold deposit, including little to no associated sulfide minerals.

Follow-up drilling to the first 13 drill hole at Ulaan, in Q3 2021, returned very broad zones of mineralization, exceeding 200 metres, including multiple intersections exceeding 10 g/t gold. The program consisted of nine (9) drill holes totaling 3,204 metres.

Drill Highlights:

• Intersected the broadest intervals of mineralization in the Khundii Gold District to date, along with local high-grade intervals:
  • UDH-14: 216.6 metres of 1.07 g/t gold
    • Includes 5 metres of 19.58 g/t gold within 53 metres of 3.55 g/t gold
    • Ended in gold mineralization at 404.6 metres
  • UDH-15: 364.3 metres of 0.79 g/t gold
    • Includes 10 metres of 7.29 g/t gold within 91 metres of 1.98 g/t gold
    • Ended in mineralization at 461.3 metres  
  • UDH-16: 119 metres of 0.59 g/t gold
  • UHD-17: 36.3 metres of 2.26 g/t gold
    • Ended in 21.6 g/t gold over 2.3 metres at 350.3 metres
• Drilling expands mineralization at South Ulaan to the west, with multiple thick gold mineralized zones with high-grade intersections:
  • UDH-21: 77 metres of 3.2 g/t gold and 71 metres of 0.8 g/t gold
    • Includes 27 metres of 8.7 g/t gold, including one metre of 156.5 g/t gold
  • UDH-22: 65 metres of 3.1 g/t gold within 152 metres of 1.7 g/t gold
    • Includes 7 metres of 18.5 g/t gold, including one metre of 119.8 g/t gold
  • UDH-19: 190 metres of 0.7 g/t gold  
    • Includes 5 metres of 12.5 g/t gold, including one metre of 60.6 g/t gold

Exploration results to date suggest the greater Khundii-Ulaan alteration zone and known gold occurrences are part of the same, large, gold-bearing hydrothermal system which remains largely under-explored. Gold mineralization identified to date is hosted within an expansive, white mica and silica altered tuffaceous sequence exposed around the periphery of the Khundii-Ulaan hydrothermal alteration system. Quartz vein textures and clay alteration compositions indicate a large-scale epithermal type gold mineralizing environment existed within the Khundii-Ulaan system with the tuffaceous lithologies acting as preferred hosts for gold mineralization. Exploration planning is currently underway to test multiple high-priority geological, geochemical and geophysical targets across the Khundii-Ulaan target area.

Peter Dalton, P.Geo. (Nova Scotia), Senior Geologist, Erdene Resource Development Corporation, is a Qualified Person within the meaning of National Instrument 43-101 and has reviewed and approved the scientific and technical information contained herein.

Reports

No technical report available at time. See Erdene’s latest MDA disclosure for technical description of the project (click here)

Illustrations

Maps