Athena Gold Corporation reported 23.85 grams per tonne gold over 5 metres from 21 metres downhole in hole LL-26-006A at its Laird Lake project in Ontario's Red Lake district. The intercept, which the company has named the Scooby Zone, came from the first drill program ever completed on the property.
Within that interval, two one-metre samples carried the bulk of the metal: 62.88 g/t gold from 21 metres and 54.08 g/t from 23 metres. Deeper in the same hole, Athena reported 0.27 g/t over 32 metres from 227 metres.
The same zone was cut in two other holes. LL-26-005 returned 2.18 g/t over 2 metres from 30 metres, in core that the company had earlier said contained visible gold. LL-26-008 returned 8.03 g/t over 0.62 metres roughly 400 vertical metres below hole 6, inside a wider interval of 1.37 g/t over 4.5 metres from 609.5 metres. That deeper hit is the basis for the company's statement that mineralisation continues at depth, though a single sub-metre sample 400 metres away establishes little about the size or continuity of anything between the two points.
Results were mixed across the program. Four of the nine holes — LL-26-001, 003A, 004 and 007 — returned no significant results. Hole LL-26-002 returned 2.17 g/t over 2.6 metres from 118.3 metres while testing the historical Gold-Bearing Zone (GBZ), a banded iron formation occurrence about a kilometre east of the Scooby Zone. Hole LL-26-009, drilled to test the GBZ down plunge, returned 0.89 g/t over 5 metres from 168 metres.
The program consisted of nine holes totalling 5,134 metres, completed in early July 2026. Athena optioned the project in 2024 and says it spent two years on surface sampling, a till survey of more than 2,000 samples and 3D inversion of historical geophysics before drilling. Hole LL-26-006A was aimed at a geophysical target designated G4 and a structural corridor associated with a previously reported 373 g/t gold grab sample — a surface rock chip, which is a selective sample and not representative of any volume of rock.
Athena cautions in its own table that the reported intervals are core lengths rather than true widths, and that it does not yet have enough information to determine true thickness. That matters for a near-surface intercept in a structurally controlled system: a 5-metre core length across a steeply dipping structure can represent considerably less real width.
On analytical work, samples were assayed by two-cycle PhotonAssay at Paragon Geochemical Laboratories, a method the company notes is better suited to coarse gold than conventional fire assay. Athena re-assayed selected samples by 30-gram fire assay and submitted hole LL-26-006 material for screen metallics. According to the release, the re-assays showed some variation against the original PhotonAssay values, which the company attributes to the nugget effect, while remaining consistent in tenor and distribution. Athena says it considers the PhotonAssay results representative.
Vice President of Exploration Ben Kuzmich described hole 6 as "the best gram-metre hit within a roughly 10 kilometre radius," with the nearest comparisons being the Madsen mine and the Great Bear project. Gram-metres multiply grade by intercept length; hole 6 works out to about 119. The release also states that Athena treats an interval above 100 gram-metres as its own threshold for calling something a discovery, so the label is applied against a company-set benchmark rather than an industry standard.
Laird Lake covers more than 7,000 hectares along over 10 kilometres of the Balmer-Confederation assemblage contact. The company cites published work indicating 94 percent of Red Lake's gold — production, reserves and resources combined — sits in the Balmer assemblage near that unconformity. The district has produced more than 30 million ounces since the late 1920s. Nearby ground includes West Red Lake Gold's Madsen mine, about 10 kilometres east, and Kinross Gold's Great Bear project, 34 kilometres to the southeast.
Athena plans to send field crews back this fall for prospecting, trench work near LL-26-001 and follow-up on a gold-in-till anomaly called Nemo, followed by about 10,000 metres of drilling using oriented core in the fall and winter. The release gives no budget for that program and no figures on the company's cash position or share count, so how the work will be funded is not addressed.
Source: Newsfile
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