The Great Western Exploration Limited (ASX: GTE) share price has risen 6% today to 26 cents per share after the gold, copper, and nickel explorer completed its Finlayson gold target.
Great Western completed reverse circulation (RC) drilling in Finlayson, WA, which is about 70km north of the rich gold mining territory of Wiluna.
RC drilling is a type of exploratory drilling relying on circulated air pressure to transport rock cuttings through hollow inner tubes. Great Western is now moving its RC drill rig onto its next gold target at Golden Bullock, near Sandstone in WA.
Great Western is primarily focused on identifying and evaluating the precious metals, rather than mining and refining them. Both the Finlayson and Golden Bullock drilling sites are 100% licenced by Great Western.
Great Western's Finlayson results
Great Western's RC drilling intersected a sequence of dolerite and ultramafic with wide zones of shearing and strong alteration that includes sulphides.
The samples it collected are now on their way to the lab, with assay (the testing of a metal or ore to determine its ingredients and quality) results expected in 4–6 weeks.
Great Western's Managing Director Tom Ridges said that the Finlayson results were promising and Golden Bullock may prove equally so.
We are very pleased with the validation of our exploration model at Finlayson and how the drill programme has progressed. The company awaits the assay results.
We now turn our attention to commencing the Golden Bullock drill programme to test a large gold geochemical anomaly the company delineated earlier this calendar year.
This has proven enough to continue investor excitement around the company, with today's gains increasing the Great Western share price to a 392.42% return over the past year.
The Golden Bullock 'surface anomaly'
Great Western is now exploring a site around the Atley North Gold Project, which Great Western delineated earlier this calendar year. The initial RC drilling programme at Golden Bullock is expected to take approximately 2–3 weeks.
The Golden Bullock site has drawn investor and exploratory interest due to its large-scale surface geochemical anomaly, which is generally associated with gold mineralisation.
This area has a substantial strike (exploratory) length of over 2.5 kilometres and a width of 1.5 kilometres, making it a potentially lucrative slice of the greater Sandstone region.
The Great Western share price this past year
The Great Western share price has been on a tear over the past 12 months, rising from 2 cents in May 2020 to a high over 31 cents last month, before settling around its current price throughout March.
It's beaten the already impressive basic materials sector by 341% over the past 12 months and remains a small-cap share, with a current market capitalisation of $35 million.
