Exploration drilling at the Golden Bear property in northwestern British Columbia continues to return encouraging results for owner North American Metals (VSE).
Hole 266 on the Ursa zone returned a 95.8-metre intersection grading 4.5 grams gold per tonne, including a 27.2-metre interval grading 12.2 grams. The 95.8-metre interval is reported to contain gold values along its entire length.
The Ursa zone was discovered this summer about 800 metres north of the Kodiak A zone, where heap leaching is planned for next spring.
Drilling on the Ursa is now complete for the season and the company expects to begin a second phase of drilling next year.
The geometry of the Ursa is uncertain. The zone is believed to be plunging steeply to the north below holes 263, 264 and 265 which returned weaker values at shallow depths.
Back at the Golden Bear mine site, a few kilometres to the south, the company is proceeding with decline development on the Grizzly zone. The decline, which is now past the 600-metre point, will be driven for a total length of 900 metres prior to underground drilling. The drilling will further test three surface holes which pierced the Grizzly zone, the best of which returned a 15.5-metre intersection grading 14.4 grams.
North American recently announced a surprise discovery of a gold-bearing fault structure in a re-muck station at the 500-metre point of the decline. The discovery, now dubbed the Cub zone, graded 27 grams over a true width of 3.9 metres.
The company attempted to test the Cub zone further with a small bazooka drill, but technical problems forced it to abandon the program until a more powerful underground rig is brought in.
A 6,500-metre underground drilling program is expected to get under way in late November, with the objective of outlining sufficient reserves to restart the mine’s 365-tonne-per-day refractory mill.
Meanwhile, the company is proceeding with feasibility work on the Kodiak B deposit and the low-grade stockpile. Construction work on leach pads for the Kodiak A deposit was discontinued in October as a result of heavy rains, and is expected to resume in the spring.
Kodiak A contains an estimated minable diluted reserve of 473,000 tonnes grading 4.6 grams. The first phase of leaching calls for the mining and stacking of 325,000 tonnes grading 4.6 grams at a 2.73-to-1 stripping ratio. Based on an 89% recovery, the company projects production at 46,000 oz. at a cash cost of about US$225 per oz.
Wheaton River Minerals (TSE) owns 81% of North American Metals’ outstanding shares and is owed more than $60 million by the company.
Results from the 1994 Ursa zone drilling are as follows:
Hole Interval Width Gold
(m) (m) (g/tonne)
255 27.9-50 22.1 4
256 27.5-70.7 43.2 7.3
257 7-28.4 21.4 3.7
258 28.2-63.1 34.9 3.4
259 113.1-124.4 11.3 8.7
260 16.5-25.3 8.8 4.3
261 44.7-51.5 6.8 1.1
262 47.2-87.5 40.3 5.7
263 37.7-41.8 4.1 2.7
264 49.3-50.1 0.8 4.1
265 106-108 2 2.1
266 39.6-135.4 95.8 4.5
All assays are cut to 31 grams per tonne.
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