Aston Bay commences airborne exploration at Epworth

Aston Bay (TSX.V: BAY, FSE: 6AY, WKN: A2AUFP) has commenced planned airborne geophysical surveys at its Epworth copper-silver project in Nunavut, Canada . At the same time, the area controlled by the company was expanded by 119 square kilometres to 890 km² through the acquisition of nine additional claims.

Aston Bay Holdings has now completed its prospecting, sampling and mapping programme on the high-grade Epworth copper-silver project. A total of almost 400 rock samples and 44 lake sediment samples have been collected. A further 50 samples are available for petrological studies. The work was carried out by a reconnaissance team from Emerald Geological Services and Dr Elizabeth Turner has completed her initial mapping programme.

The work carried out by Emerald Geological Services was conducted over a 35 day period and focused on the three priority deposits identified as Metallic South/Payback, Northwest Claims, Southwest Claims and the historic CBC Showing areas. The programme was very successful as the understanding of the historic deposit was improved and new significant copper mineralisation was identified on the previously unexplored zones.

The understanding of the deposit was deepened

Dr Elizabeth Turner, Aston Bay Holdings’ Technical Advisor, conducted a seven-day helicopter-borne mapping programme and literature review in early August. She took 50 samples for petrological analysis and also carried out regional mapping and stratigraphic studies. Both were carried out with the aim of better defining the Epworth mineralisation and placing it in a regional geological context.

The next step is now to coordinate the results of the programme with the ongoing geophysical surveys and Dr Turner’s studies and to identify the best target areas for future groundwork and initial drilling in each of the four zones. These are planned for 2025.

Encouraged by the initial feedback from the mapping team and the discoveries made, Aston Bay Holdings has staked an additional 119 square kilometres as new claims in the northwest area of the project. This brings the total area of claims controlled by the company to 890 square kilometres.

Aston Bay now intends to repeat the positive experience at Storm at Epworth

A MobileMT geophysical survey is now underway. It will cover the entire property and will be carried out with the help of helicopters. A total of 8,105 line kilometres will be flown in order to identify further exploration targets for copper and to delineate regional and property-related structures. The work will be carried out by Expert Geophysical Systems.

The survey will begin in the northern half of the claim block at a spacing and the individual lines will be flown at a distance of 100 metres from each other. In the southern half, the plan is to fly the lines 200 metres apart.

The MobileMT technology utilises naturally occurring electromagnetic fields that are generated by lightning discharges on the earth. The electromagnetic fields and the currents they induce are used to understand the variations in the electrical resistance of the subsurface.

MobileMT is thus able to provide geoelectric information from shallow depths to depths of more than one kilometre with a high spatial and resistivity resolution. The MobileMT system detects resistivity contrasts of geological structures and helps to determine the boundaries of the individual forms.

The opportunity for gold and cobalt mineralisation is also present

Encouraged by the positive experience Aston Bay Holdings has had with partner American West on the Storm Copper Project, also located in Nunavut, the company believes the results of the geophysical survey will significantly enhance the understanding of the geological environment.

Combined with newly digitised historical geophysical data and new geological interpretations in developing targets for further work, this should allow the most attractive targets to be identified for the initial drilling planned for next year.

Aston Bay is now hoping to achieve similar successes at Epworth as have been achieved together with American West at the Storm project over the last two years. The chances of this are good, in our opinion, as Epworth has proven high-grade copper-silver-zinc mineralisation at surface. It is very similar to that of the Storm project. In addition, Epworth also has interesting cobalt and gold deposits.