Engineer Mine high-grade propels BCGold

Vancouver – Bonanza-grade gold and silver values from BCGold‘s (BCG-V, BCGOF-O) historic Engineer mine, located 32 km west of Atlin in northwestern B.C., has given the junior’s stock a significant lift.

Shares of BCGold rallied more than 100% in February 28th trading — before closing the day up a dime at 35 apiece — following word of underground grab samples from a narrow vein exposed in the 5th level assaying up to 860 grams gold per tonne and 1,774 grams silver per tonne.

The high-grade grabs were taken more than 85 metres below any previous development on the Shaft vein, hinting at the structure’s depth potential.

Noting the vein is largely un-explored and has seen minimal historic development, BCGold is keen to further test the structure and hunt for further potential high-grade gold and silver mineralized veins.

BCGold says at surface, the Shaft vein is a steeply dipping, 30 cm wide quartz-calcite vein with occasional coarse free gold while down 113 metres at the 5th level — vein mineralogy consists of banded quartz with rare pods of allemontite (a mixture of stib-arsen and arsenic or antimony), electrum and roscoelite (a vanadium mica typically associated with epithermal gold systems of alkalic affinity).

The company thinks that its mineralogy is quite similar to the Engineer vein — about 215 metres to the southwest suggesting the Shaft vein could be a faulted extension or telescoped counterpart of the main Engineer vein.

The historic Engineer mine produced about 18,000 oz. gold and 9,000 oz. silver from the mid-1920s to the early-1930s. Roughly 5,500 metres of underground development on eight mine levels — targeted high-grade epithermal quartz-carbonate vein structures averaging 39.4 grams gold and 19.5 grams silver. All the past producing veins are open to depth with no exploration conducted deeper than 200 metres below surface.

The company’s 2008 exploration plan includes drilling on Shear Zone “A”, a bulk tonnage target were underground chip-sampling has up to 45 metres of 5.1 grams gold. Additionally, dewatering of the lower three levels, underground rehabilitation, and mapping and sampling programs are planned. Some test-mining and bulk sampling may also be undertaken on sections of the Engineer, Shaft and Double Decker veins.

BCGold has an option to earn 100% interest in the Engineer mine property for $850,000 in payments, 525,000 shares and 390,000 warrants. There are no underlying royalties on the project.