Eastmain sees deep zones at Clearwater

Initial results from an 18-hole drill program at the Clearwater project in the James Bay region of Quebec have traced shallow gold mineralization to a vertical depth of 500 metres, a result that has the potential almost to double the size of the known mineralized zones.

Project operator Eastmain Resources (ER-T) announced that the first six deep holes on the property had intersected the same structures seen on surface, with gold grades similar to those encountered in surface trenches and shallower drill holes. Samples from eight more drill holes are currently in the laboratory.

“Every drill hole we’ve completed has hit the deposit,” says geologist Donald Robinson, Eastmain’s president. The 15 holes in the current program have all intersected between 10 and 15 zones of quartz-carbonate-tourmaline vein material or mineralized schist identical to the gold zones known at surface. At depth, the zones range from 0.5 to 7 metres wide.

“You can tell when you’re in it; the vein material is very obvious and there is a schist enveloping it,” says Robinson.

Assays from the first six holes returned grades of 1 to 41 grams gold per tonne, and three holes contained visible gold.

The present round of drilling is testing a 900-metre strike length down to 750 metres down-dip — equivalent to a vertical depth of 500 metres — at spacings of 100 metres along strike. Earlier drilling had tested the deposit’s eight known vein structures down to a vertical depth of 300 metres. The 18-hole campaign should be finished in about three weeks, after which time the company plans a further 10,000 metres of follow-up drilling.

Eastmain, which currently holds a half-interest in the project with joint-venture partner Soquem, is spending $2.5 million on a drill program to earn half of the Quebec Crown corporation’s interest. Once Eastmain has earned that additional 25%, Soquem has the option to earn the interest back by funding $3 million worth of work over five years. A 3% net smelter return royalty held by Boliden (bls-t), a holdover from Westmin Resources’ previous involvement in the project, was bought out for $45,000 late last year.

Soquem’s December 2001 resource calculation on the Clearwater deposit put the size of the indicated resource at 973,000 tonnes grading 8.3 grams gold per tonne, with a further 510,000 tonnes at 3.7 grams in the inferred category. Grades higher than 34.28 grams per tonne (1 oz. per ton) were cut; the uncut grade of the indicated resource is 9.6 grams and that of the inferred resource is 3.8 grams.

Eastmain expects to have a new resource figure early in 2003, reflecting the results of the current drill campaign and the follow-up program.

Robinson says a re-interpretation of the volcanic stratigraphy at the Clearwater project has been useful for understanding the gold deposit, which is in strongly metamorphosed rocks. Core is now being sawn, rather than split, which allows for better geological examination.

A flow-top breccia horizon has been traced in most of the drill holes and is providing a useful marker unit. Granitic rocks previously mapped as tonalite have proved to be felsic porphyries similar to those found at gold deposits in the Abitibi greenstone belt. “It’s still a complicated deposit,” says Robinson, “but [stratigraphic work] helped us considerably.”