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Marathon Gold Corp
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Close 2020-01-31 C$ 1.53
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Marathon starts drill program at Valentine

2020-02-03 07:16 ET - News Release

Mr. Matt Manson reports

MARATHON GOLD REPORTS COMMENCEMENT OF 2020 EXPLORATION DRILL PROGRAM AT VALENTINE GOLD PROJECT

Marathon Gold Corp. has commenced the 2020 exploration drill program at the Valentine gold project in central Newfoundland. In total, 44,000 metres of diamond drilling with a total budget of $8.9-million have been approved by the company's board of directors.

Matt Manson, president and chief executive officer, commented: "Our 2019 drill program at the Valentine gold project was primarily an infill campaign designed to upgrade the project's existing mineral resources in support of our ongoing prefeasibility study. The 2020 drill program will be focused on new exploration in areas shown previously to have exhibited high potential from previous drilling, surface trenching or prospecting. A priority will be the Sprite corridor, where drilling in November, 2019, returned very encouraging intersections of gold mineralization in a setting similar to that seen at the nearby Leprechaun deposit. In parallel with our mine development activities, which are based on open pits at the Leprechaun and Marathon deposits, our intention is to maintain a high level of exploration activity going forward, with a view to new discovery and continued resource growth along the approximately 20 kilometres of mineralized trend at the Valentine property. The 2020 exploration drill program will be fully funded from existing cash resources, and drilling has already commenced."

The 2020 Valentine gold project exploration program will break down as follows:

Sprite corridor: up to 32,000 metres

The Sprite corridor constitutes a broad area of previously identified quartz-tourmaline-pyrite-Au veining extending northeast of the project's Leprechaun deposit to the southwest margin of the Marathon deposit, an overall distance of approximately six kilometres. Previous drilling in the area has identified a to date modest estimate of measured and indicated mineral resources 40,000 ounces (680,000 tonnes at 1.76 grams per tonne) and inferred mineral resources of 50,000 ounces (1.19 million tonnes at 1.29 g/t) in several small and shallow pit shell settings located in the southwest end of the corridor (see press release dated Jan. 20, 2020).

Three subareas of the Sprite corridor will be explored in 2020.

(1) Section 13410E

In 2018 and 2019, drilling in the Sprite corridor confirmed a new Main zone-type sequence of stacked, shallow-dipping en echelon QTP-Au veining with significant gold grades in the vicinity of Section 13410E, approximately 2.8 kilometres northeast of the Leprechaun deposit and 500 metres northeast of the current Sprite resource pit shell area. As at Leprechaun, the Main zone developed in this area is located proximal to the Valentine Lake shear zone and forms a steeply northwest-dipping envelop of mineralization spatially associated with mafic dikes.

Previous drilling results in the vicinity of Section 13410E have included hole VL-19-769 with multiple intersections of 1.63 g/t Au over 16.0 metres, 2.04 g/t Au over 9.0 metres, 4.33 g/t Au over 9.0 metres, 7.53 g/t Au over 5.0 metres, and 2.30 g/t Au over 15.0 metres, and VL-18-676 with 6.17 g/t Au over 49 metres. To date, this new Main zone appears to extend to a depth of at least 250 metres with an apparent thickness of up to 50 metres. Hole VL-19-786, representing a 300-metre stepout to the northeast, returned 7.60 g/t Au over 22 metres.

Two thousand twenty drilling in the area of Section 13410E is expected to comprise between 5,000 and 8,000 metres of closely spaced stepout holes over an approximately 500 m strike length with a view to establishing the continuity and potential scale of this new zone.

(2) Section 13410E to Frozen Ear Pond Road

Ten thousand to 14,000 metres of drilling will be committed to broader (50 to 100 metres) stepout holes extending from the Section 13410E discovery area northeastward toward a location known as Frozen Ear Pond Road. This represents a 1.8-kilometre strike length of the Valentine Lake shear zone. This area has seen only intermittent exploration in the past. However, QTP-Au mineralization is evident from drill holes VL-19-776, which returned 10.43 g/t Au over 5.0 m and 4.80 g/t Au over 6.0 m, VL-19-780, which returned 7.25 g/t Au over 10.0 m, VL-18-657, which returned 1.23 g/t Au over 12.0 m, VL-18-659, which returned 7.27 g/t Au over 5.0 m and VL-18-667, which returned 8.36 g/t Au over 6.0 m.

(3) Frozen Ear Pond Road to Southwest Marathon pit

Eight thousand to 10,000 metres of drilling will be committed to exploration in the remaining 1.2 kilometres of strike extent along the Valentine Lake shear zone from the Frozen Ear Pond Road northeastward to the southwest margin of the Marathon deposit pit shell. Infill drilling within the Marathon deposit in 2019 showed QTP-Au mineralization to be open to the southwest. Broad 50-to-100-metre stepout holes will be drilled to test the potential extension of Marathon mineralization southwest into the Sprite corridor and the area previously referred to as the Gap.

Footwall zones: up to 12,000 metres

Wide-spaced reconnaissance drilling will be conducted over two broad areas located south of the Valentine Lake shear zone in footwall meta-sedimentary rocks. Each area has demonstrated the potential for gold mineralization through soil geochemical anomalies and surface occurrences of quartz-pyrite veining, and neither has been drilled previously. The 2020 Footwall zone drill program will test for the first time the potential for economic occurrences of gold mineralization extending through into footwall rocks, potentially associated with structures secondary to the main Valentine Lake shear zone. The discovery of such mineralization could have a significant impact on the exploration potential of the property. These two areas also represent the expected sites for the Leprechaun open-pit waste rock pile, the main tailings storage facility and the mill. As such, drilling here will serve the separate purpose of site condemnation.

Additional exploration objectives

Exploration including prospecting, trenching and potentially drilling will be conducted in 2020 on four additional areas of focus. These are (1) the Triangle Pond area located one km northeast of the Marathon deposit where previous trenching has exposed extensive QTP-Au veining; (2) the Narrows area, also northeast of the Marathon deposit, with a view to locating the trace of the Valentine Lake shear zone in this area; (3) the Victory Southwest area adjacent to the Victory deposit where previous trenching has exposed QTP-Au veining with visible gold; and (4) the Rainbow area at the southwest extent of the Sprite corridor, with a view to testing the continuity of mineralization exposed in the Sprite resource pit shell area. Exploration in these areas will be conducted opportunistically based on the progress of drilling in the Sprite corridor and Footwall zones.

Final 2019 Sprite drill results

Fire assay results from the final six out of 46 drill holes drilled in late 2019 within the Sprite corridor have now been received. Of these remaining holes, VL-19-789, a 90-metre stepout from the developing Main zone of mineralization on Section 13410E, returned 1.67 g/t Au over 19 metres. All significant assay intervals are reported in the associated table. All quoted intersections comprise uncut gold assays in core lengths. Four of the six final holes did not return significant intersections of mineralization.

 SIGNIFICANT ASSAY INTERVALS, SPRITE CORRIDOR, VALENTINE GOLD PROJECT

DDH            From        To    Core length   True thickness     Gold
                (m)       (m)            (m)              (m)    (g/t)

VL-19-789       125       128              3              2.1    10.14
                134       137              3              2.1     2.78
                145       148              3              2.1     3.52
                162       181             19             13.3     1.67
including       174       176              2              1.4     3.53
VL-19-790        65        68              3              2.1     1.31
                143       146              3              2.1     1.49

** No significant intervals in VL-19-788, VL-19-791, VL-19-792 and 
VL-19-793.

Qualified person

Disclosure of a scientific or technical nature in this news release was prepared under the supervision of Sherry Dunsworth, MSc, PGeo (Newfoundland), the senior vice-president of exploration and a qualified person under National Instrument 43-101.

Quality assurance/quality control (QA/QC)

QA/QC protocols followed at the Valentine gold project include the insertion of blanks and standards at regular intervals in each sample batch. Drill core is cut in half with one-half retained at site, the other half tagged and sent to Eastern Analytical Ltd. in Springdale, Nfld. All reported core samples are analyzed for Au by fire assay (30 g) with atomic absorption finish. All samples above 0.10 g/t Au in economically interesting intervals are further assayed using metallic screen to mitigate the presence of coarse gold. Significant mineralized intervals are reported in the associated table as core lengths and estimated true thickness (80 per cent to 95 per cent of core length).

Acknowledgments

Marathon acknowledges the financial support of the junior exploration assistance program, Department of Natural Resources, government of Newfoundland and Labrador.

About Marathon Gold Corp.

Marathon is a Toronto-based gold company rapidly advancing its 100-per-cent-owned Valentine gold camp located in Newfoundland and Labrador, one of the top mining jurisdictions in the world. Marathon has confirmed the feasibility of the Valentine gold camp, which currently hosts four near-surface, mainly pit-shell constrained, deposits with measured resources totalling 1,166,500 ounces of gold at 2.18 grams per tonne, indicated resources totalling 1,524,900 ounces of gold at 1.66 g/t and inferred resources totalling 1,531,600 ounces of gold at 1.77 g/t.

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