Ongoing resource drilling at Nova Minerals RPM gold project’s North deposit, in Alaska, has delivered a “bonanza” gold grade discovery of 1 330 g/t from selective sampling of mineralised veins in drill core, resulting in a 13% boost in the ASX-listed company’s share price on Tuesday.

The drilling showed wide zones of continuous mineralisation up and down dip of hole RPM-005, with visible gold observed in current drillholes.

Drilling has now started to test the RPM South zone, which the company said exhibited the same geological characteristics and a larger surface sample anomaly footprint than RPM North, which the company believed had the potential to open up a new gold zone of similar size and tenor to RPM North.

Nova said that infill and step-out drilling would continue off the RPM Pad 1 to prove up and expand the existing 1.5-million ounces at 2 g/t inferred resource at the RPM North deposit, upgrading it to indicated status.

Step-out drilling has started at the RPM Pad 2 to expand the existing resource along strike to the west by several hundred metres.

Nova said that diamond drilling had shown further encouraging results from the previously wide-spaced programme, while follow-up drilling to the west would follow the most western hole, RPM-005, which intercepted 10.1 g/t of gold at 132 m, and would explore the genetic link between it and RPM-007.

“The RPM deposit continues to deliver, with a similar style of strong gold mineralisation now being observed in the core from the new holes RPM-007 and RPM-008, drilled up and down dip respectively of RPM-005. We are very encouraged by initial geological observations and are now anticipating positive assay results to be returned, which will show the potential for down dip continuity of the mineralisation, which starts at surface to a depth of over 300 m,” Nova CEO Christopher Gerteisen said.

He added that anomalous magnetics had detected gold-associated minerals in the ground, showing a potential strike length at RPM North of 1.4 km.

“We can’t cover it all this year, but the current drill programmes intend to test some of that near resource strike,” he said.

Gerteisen believed that the results of the exploration so far boded well for proving up and expanding the resource at RPM, which would be included in Nova’s Phase 2 scoping study to be completed later this year.

“For the time being, drilling continues full steam ahead at RPM, with three rigs currently operating. In addition, reconnaissance exploration is now under way across the wider Estelle Gold Trend. . . We expect to report further significant discoveries this year,” he said.

Nova’s Estelle Trend development is a 35-km-long corridor of 21 identified gold prospects bracketed by the Korbel project in the north and the RPM project in the south.

Currently, these two flagship projects have a combined total estimated Joint Ore Reserve Committee gold resource of 9.6-million ounces, of which 3-million ounces are indicated and 6.6-million ounces are inferred.

Nova’s stock rose to A$0.64 a share on Tuesday.