Tower Prepares to Resume Drilling on Lightning Zone, Identifies Strong New Gold Grain Dispersal Train on Parallel Structure to the West
Vancouver, August 9, 2022 - Tower Resources Ltd. (TSXV: TWR) ("Tower" or the "Company") is pleased to report that it is preparing to resume diamond drilling on the newly discovered Lightning Zone on the Company's Rabbit North property near Kamloops, British Columbia, between New Gold's New Afton underground Cu-Au mine and Teck's Highland Valley open pit Cu-Mo mine (see Fig. 1), and that it has identified a strong new gold grain dispersal train along a major, parallel structure 1 km to the west.
Diamond Drilling Program
Six to eight holes are planned on the Lightning Zone to expand the zone both laterally and to depth near the long gold intersections of discovery hole RN21-026 (95 m of 1.40 g/t Au including 19.2 m of 4.21 g/t Au) and follow-up holes RN22-028 (138 m of 1.55 g/t Au including 24.5 m of 4.76 g/t Au) and RN22-029 (70.5 m of 1.78 g/t Au including 13.5 m of 4.92 g/t Au) (see Fig. 2 and Tower's January 11 and June 22, 2022 press releases).
Several holes will be drilled along strike at 50 m step-outs both south-southeast and north-northwest of Hole 026 based on the north-northwest strike of the Lightning Zone determined from the six-hole March-April drilling program (see Fig. 2 and Tower's July 13, 2022 press release). One hole may be drilled down the steeply dipping zone to better gauge its potential depth which is already known to be substantial because Hole 028 exited the zone at a vertical depth of approximately 150 m (500 feet).
Durand Creek Train
The new gold grain dispersal train, named the Durand Creek Train (see Fig. 3), resulted from the two till heavy mineral surveys that Tower performed on the Southern Extension and eastern and western parts of the Core Claims in May and October, 2021 (see Tower's August 10 and November 12, 2021 press releases).
The inaugural May survey identified a wide gold grain dispersal train originating in the till overlying the Cu-Au endowed Durand Stock on the eastern part of the Core Claims, east of Durand Creek, and extending down-ice at 150° for 5-10 km over a 3 km embayment in the claims and onto the Southern Extension claims (see Fig. 4). The tail of dispersal train on the Southern Extension was too wide for the gold grains to be derived solely from the east side of Durand Creek, indicating that part of the train is sourced from the west side which has historically been thought infertile and has never been explored.
The May till survey also identified a much stronger gold grain subtrain, the Dominic Lake Train, just south of the Durand Stock, indicating the presence beneath the till of an undiscovered Au or Cu-Au zone superior to any of the nine known Cu-Au zones in the stock.
In the October survey, infill sampling on the Dominic Lake Train traced the train 600 m up ice, leading to the drill discovery of the Lightning Zone 300 m further up-ice in December, just seven months and ~$400,000 from collection of the first till sample. As well, reconnaissance-scale till sampling was performed west of Durand Creek. Due to the emphasis on the Dominic Creek Train, these lower-priority samples were not tested for gold grains until early this year, delaying the identification and evaluation of the Durand Creek Train.
The Durand Creek Train is ~600 m wide and hugs the west side of Durand Creek which is underlain by a major structure, the Durand Valley Fault (see Fig. 3). Importantly, this fault has the same north-northwest trend as the Lightning Zone, suggesting that (a) the fault itself may be mineralized; and (b) the Lightning shear zone may be a parallel subsidiary fault.
The strength of the Durand Creek Train increases progressively up-ice to >100 gold grains per sample. While the till samples within the train were too widely spaced to resolve the source of the gold grains, the train appears to originate from the general area where Durand Creek, which follows a deep valley with a steep gradient, bends sharply to the west, potentially indicating a dilative, fluid-permissive, triple junction fault intersection. Infill sampling similar to that performed so successfully on the Dominic Lake Train is planned for the Durand Creek Train, possibly in October, to locate its source sufficiently closely for diamond drill testing.
Methods and Qualified Person
Overburden Drilling Management Ltd. (ODM) planned and executed the till survey and processed the samples at the company's heavy indicator mineral laboratory in Ottawa, Ontario. The sample sites were pre-selected with the aid of stereo air photos.
ODM supplied a two person-person field crew led by Mathew Duffy, MSc. Geology, GIT, to collect the samples, with Donald Holmes, P.Geo. and Stuart Averill, P.Geo., assisting and supervising for the first three days. At each site, if till was evident, a pit was excavated into the C-horizon of the post-glacial soil profile, typically to a depth of 0.5-0.8 m, to reach minimally oxidized, structurally compact till, the subglacially deposited variety that is required for an effective survey. If this type of till was not present in the initial pit or exposed within 100 m, a gap was left in the survey. At every 20th site, a duplicate sample was collected for quality assurance purposes.
The till from each pit was sieved at 8 mm to obtain approximately 12 kg of -8 mm material which, when further screened in the laboratory, yields approximately 10 g -2 mm sandy silt, the particle size fraction that is normally processed for heavy indicator minerals.
Prior to extracting the heavy mineral fraction from the samples, ODM removed a representative 500 g split and further sieved it at 0.063 mm to separate the fine silt + clay fraction. This fraction was analyzed geochemically in Kamloops, B.C., by Actlabs Ltd., a laboratory certified as ISO/IEC 17025 Accredited (Lab 790) by the Standards Council of Canada. Gold was determined by fire assay/atomic absorption ("FA/AA") analysis of a solute obtained by aqua regia acid digestion. Thirty-five additional elements were analyzed by inductively coupled plasma (ICP) on the same solute. No milling prior to acid digestion was required due to the very fine particle size of the submitted samples. The detection limits for the elements of greatest interest at Rabbit North - Au and Cu - were 5 ppb and 1 ppm, respectively.
About Tower Resources
Tower is a Canadian based mineral exploration company focused on the discovery and advancement of economic mineral projects in the Americas. The Company's key exploration assets, both in B.C., are the Rabbit North copper-gold porphyry project located between the New Afton copper-gold and Highland Valley copper mines in the Kamloops mining district and the Nechako gold-silver project near Artemis' Blackwater project.
On behalf of the Board of Directors
Joe Dhami, President and CEO
(778) 996-4730
www.towerresources.ca
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Figure 1 - Location of Tower's Rabbit North property relative to the active mines of the Kamloops district.
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Figure 2 - Plan view of the Lightning Zone with the main Au intercepts projected to surface.
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Figure 3 - Gold grain content of the till in the area of the Durand Creek gold dispersal train. The average sample weight was 10 kg.
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Figure 4 - Gold grain results from the May, 2021 till survey. Note that the anomalous gold grain values on the western half of the Southern Extension are too far west for the grains to be derived from the Cu-Au endowed Durand Stock on the eastern part of the Core Claims east of Durand Creek, suggesting the presence of a second gold source west of the creek.
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