Western High Atlas: Gold Surfaces North of the Old Ait Zekri Mine

orty-eight grab samples taken at surface have just extended by 2,800 meters the mineralized trend running north of the old Ait Zekri mine, in the Western High Atlas. Morocco Strategic Minerals Corporation, listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol MCC, published on September 15 the assays from its program on the Tamdghoust exploration permit: gold-bearing quartz veins, locally carrying silver and copper. Gold grades peak at 2.57 g/t and fourteen of the forty-eight samples run above 0.20 g/t; one and the same sample assays 4.27% copper with 193 g/t silver, and silver alone rises to 143 g/t elsewhere on the permit. The analyses were entrusted to the African Laboratory for Mining and Environment, in Marrakech, and approved by Merouane Rachidi, an independent qualified person under Canadian standard 43-101.

Ait Zekri is not a discovery. Eighteen historical diamond drill holes, totaling 2,018.6 meters, have already cut gold there down to 180 meters below surface, with 1.94 g/t over 5 meters in hole SAZ-12 and 2.85 g/t over 2 meters in SAZ-17; that older data, compiled by GoldMinds Geoservices, has been folded into a three-dimensional geological model that brings the surface showings and the zones intersected at depth into a single picture. “Across the High Atlas portfolio, our focus is on advancing the strongest targets toward drilling,” says president and chief executive officer Pierre-Olivier Goulet. The company announced the same day a grant of four million nine hundred and twenty thousand stock options at an exercise price of 0.25 Canadian dollars, and is targeting its first drilling before the end of 2026, subject to the required authorizations. Only then will this old mining district say what it keeps beneath its veins.

Photo: Alexander Leisser, CC BY-SA 4.0.