Big plan for Golden Pond West

A $23.7-million 2-phase underground exploration program is scheduled to start in early spring — if not sooner — on the Golden Pond West zone, of the Casa Berardi property held in joint venture by partners Inco Ltd. and Golden Knight Resources.

This program is quite separate from what is happening at the Golden Pond East zone, which last year was the subject of a $7.2-million underground exploration program, says Inco vice-president exploration, Terrence Podolsky. Indeed, the two partners are at the moment considering the feasiblity of placing the East zone into production.

And a production decision on the Golden Pond East zone is iminent, The Northern Miner gathers.

The underground program on the West zone is expected to run about 2 1/2 years, says Mr Podolsky. It therefore appears probable that production from the East zone will carry on at the same time as exploration on the West zone.

The East and the West zones are two of the three zones on the Golden Pond property. Between the two lies the Main zone. Together the three zones have a drill-indicated geological resource of 9,975,000 tons of 0.22 oz gold per ton.

This is nearly a 2-million-ton increase over the resource estimate made last fall and it results from a recently completed $2.8-million surface diamond drilling program on the West zone.

Although the current breakdown of resources sees the West zone with nearly half — 4,215,000 tons — the grade in this zone is the lowest of the three at 0.19 oz. It is the East zone with 2,790,000 tons that has the highest grade at 0.25 oz. The Main zone, meanwhile, comes in at 2,970,000 tons grading 0.22 oz. Tenders going out

The tenders are now going out for the West underground job and work will start as quickly as possible once the entire tendering process is completed.

Phase one, expected to cost $9.7 million and run until July, 1988, consists of driving a ramp to access the West zone at the 200-m level where drilling and bulk sampling will be carried out to outline the mineralization in detail in order to evaluate potential mining methods.

The portal of the West zone ramp will be located approximately 4.7 km west of the portal to the East zone ramp, explains David J. Browne, Inco director of mineral developments and properties management.

The West portal will be in close vicinity to one of the only outcrops on the property. This is a plus in terms of access as most of the Casa Berardi area is covered by a thick blanket of overburden ranging up to 50 m in thickness.

The dip of the ramp has yet to be decided, says Mr Browne, but it will either be at 20 degrees or at 15 degrees, which is identical to the dip of the East zone ramp.

The ramp will measure 4.25 m by 4.25 m and will run approximately 1,500 m in length. It’s expected the ramp will reach the 200-m level this December.

Once the ramp reaches this level, some 12,500 m of drilling is scheduled. This drilling will go down to at least the 300-m or 350- m level, says Mr Browne. As well, there will be 450 m of drifting for bulk sampling purposes. A total of 12,000 tonnes is scheduled for bulk sampling. Phase two

The plan for the second phase sees the ramp extended to the 300- m level. An exploration drift, some 3,000 m long, will be driven along the West and Main zones in order to provide a platform for diamond drilling at depth. Mr Browne explains that approximately 43,000 m of drilling is scheduled in this phase from 42 diamond drill stations.

The budget for the second phase is $14 million.

As project manager with 60% interest, Inco will bear 60% of the costs of the program, while Golden Knight with 40% interest, is responsible for the balance of funding.

Mr Podolsky says Inco’s contribution for this year’s program on the West zone will amount to some $6 million. Golden Knight, in which Teck Corp. holds a 30% equity interest, has entered into a flow- through private placement agreement with CMP 1987 (Quebec) Resource Partnership Co. for aggregate proceeds of up to $2 million, which will go towards financing its share of the West zone program.

Other exploration work is proceeding on the joint venture’s 882-claim property. While three surface drills are currently operating in the Golden Pond area, two others are testing exploration targets in Bradette Twp. in the western end of the property.