The playbook — gold · September 9, 2026
High-grade Mirado Fault hole steps the North Zone out 125 metres
KLDC cuts 7.24 g/t over 11.1 m — with a 25.85 g/t core — and extends its key fault to 180 m of strike, on one hole.
Kirkland Lake Discoveries drilled a hole at its Mirado project that cut 7.24 grams of gold per tonne over 11.1 metres — that’s rich rock, roughly a fifth of an ounce per tonne across a run about the length of a small bus. Inside it sat a still-richer 3-metre core grading 25.85 grams per tonne, the headline number. The hole, KLM26-030, is the northernmost yet, and it pushes the North Zone out 125 metres. When we last covered the company it had just doubled its footprint to 1,300 metres with a broad, low-grade step-out west. This one is the opposite: narrower, hotter, on the fault that matters. Mirado sits 18 kilometres south of Kirkland Lake, Ontario, one of Canada’s most productive gold camps.
The useful metric is gram-metres — grade times width. This intercept delivers about 80 of them, a solid high-grade hit, not a spectacular one. Apply the company’s blanket 80% true-width factor and the 11.1 metres becomes roughly 9 metres of real thickness. What gives it weight is context: high grade now shows up in two holes along 180 metres of the Mirado Fault, KLM26-030 and the earlier KLM26-006. That’s early continuity on a credible feeder-system model. Chair Denis Laviolette co-founded New Found Gold; CEO Stefan Sklepowicz has no public record of building or selling a mine. The market moved this time — the stock rose 37.9% over three months, edging out the junior gold index at 31.5% and gold’s modest 5%, with a late surge from about 0.27 to 0.455 that looks news-driven rather than sector drift.
Now the honesty. That 180-metre fault story rests on just two holes, 180 metres apart, with nothing tested between them — continuity is suggested, not demonstrated. The true-width figure is a single ratio applied across the board, not modelled hole by hole. The high-grade slivers — 25.85 grams over 3 metres, and 36.72 grams over 1.01 metres at Mirado West — are real but narrow, so their contained metal is modest. The shallow intervals are broad but under 0.5 grams per tonne, a low-grade halo, not ore. There is still no NI 43-101 resource for Mirado. This resolves part of last month’s pending list, but 21 of 22 holes remain out: assays are due from 8 more at Mirado North and South, 7 at Mirado West including an alteration intercept in KLM26-047, and 6 regional targets, timing unstated. One hole cannot define scale.