Fortune drilling cuts high gold grades (May 08, 2003)

Infill drilling by Fortune Minerals (FT-T) on the Nico polymetallic deposit, 160 km northwest of Yellowknife, has intersected high gold grades.

Fortune, which has a 35-hole drill program under way to test extensions of the Nico deposit’s high-grade core zones, drilled five holes to test extensions of known resources and to establish continuity with “stranded” resource blocks. All five intersected gold-cobalt-bismuth mineralization.

Hole 03-255 intersected 21 metres grading 9.5 grams gold per tonne, with 0.05% cobalt and 0.04% bismuth. The intersection included a 2-metre interval that ran 35.8 grams gold with 0.12% cobalt and 0.18% bismuth.

A hole drilled roughly parallel to hole 03-255, from a collar 35 metres to the north, intersected 4 metres grading 8.1 grams gold per tonne, plus 0.15% cobalt and 0.01% bismuth. Another, drilled from a collar 45 metres south of hole 03-255, returned only 0.01 gram gold per tonne over a 29.5-metre mineralized length, but graded 0.17% cobalt and 0.14% bismuth.

Two other holes were drilled on a section 100 metres further west. One, almost due west of hole 03-255, encountered a 41.7-metre zone grading 0.21% cobalt, 0.1% bismuth, and 0.3 gram gold per tonne. The other, further to the south, intersected three mineralized zones. The narrowest and shallowest was a 1-metre zone running 4.5 grams gold per tonne with 0.07% cobalt and 0.01% bismuth. A 6-metre-long core length further down the hole ran 0.49 gram gold per tonne with 0.13% cobalt and 0.06% bismuth. The third zone, 5 metres wide, returned grades of 0.29% cobalt, 0.09% bismuth, and 0.07 gram gold per tonne.