Alto Ventures (TSXV: ATV) announced today that it has received a work permit to carry out exploration programs consisting of line cutting, ground geophysics and 3,000 metres of diamond drilling on its Oxford Lake project in Manitoba, central Canada.
The work permit, however, was issued with certain conditions including a requirement that a heritage resource impact assessment is completed before work begins.
Given these provisions and the fact that the beginning of the winter season would have been the perfect time to carry out the work, Alto management team said it doesn't plan to start drilling right away.
"A decision as to whether to proceed with a drill program will be made prior to the winter of 2020," the company's President, Mike Koziol, said in a media statement.
The Oxford Lake gold property is located approximately 150 kilometres southeast of the town of Thompson. The property consists of 17 contiguous unpatented mining claims which together cover approximately 2,870 hectares and two Mineral Exploration Licenses, covering approximately 23,600 hectares.
The property includes the Banded Iron Formation hosted Rusty Gold Deposit, with historical resources of 800,000 tonnes averaging 6 g/t gold (approximately 154,000 contained ounces of gold) as well as several other gold occurrences. There is also the Blue Jay gold zone, which lies on trend and 2 kilometres east of the Rusty Deposit and it too is associated with BIF.
Drilling by Alto in 2012 on the Blue Jay Zone intersected two zones of high-grade gold mineralization in hole RUS12-03; Zone One - 2.7 m averaging 6.7 g/t Au including 22.5 g/t Au over 0.5 m and Zone Two - 6.8 m averaging 5.7 g/t Au including 11.7 g/t Au over 1.6 m and 16.5 g/t Au over 1.0 m.