It’s Raining Gold For Rainy River

Thick gold-rich intercepts helped gather some momentum behind Rainy River Resources’ (RR-V) stock.

The company announced results from its latest round of 16 diamond drill holes at its Rainy River Gold project in northwestern Ontario.

The most impressive of which was the discovery of a new high-grade zone in the Beaver Pond area where one hole intersected 42.5 grams of gold per tonne over 51 metres — including 6 metres grading 352.84 grams gold.

Mineralization was struck at a vertical depth of 250 metres below surface.

The new intersection occurs 125 metres up-plunge from a prior hole, which intersected 29.2 metres grading 2.3 grams gold, and 30 metres east of a hole that returned 1.34 grams gold over 49.5 metres.

The rich grades were intercepted below shallow mineralization at Beaver Pond, which was first encountered back in March 2009.

But results from Beaver Pond weren’t the only noteworthy intercepts.

Another hole confirmed the high-grade potential of the 433 zone with an intercept of 1.5 metres grading 436 grams gold.

That intercept came at a vertical depth of 325 metres.

So far, the company has defined a strike length of 170 metres in an east-west direction for the zone.

The hole was drilled as an infill hole between two prior holes that hit 1.5 metres grading 8.8 grams gold and 1.3 metres grading 72.3 grams gold, respectively.

Rainy River says the third interception establishes the potential for a continuous high-grade zone in the area.

Such results were bullish enough to convince the company to add a sixth drill rig to the project so that it can continue on its aggressive exploration of high priority targets.

All the recent drilling will go into an updated resource estimate that is due out by the end of the first quarter. Since the beginning of January 2009, the company has drilled 120 holes at the property.

With roughly $20 million in the kitty, Rainy River is well positioned to follow through on its plan to do definition drilling on the main gold resource in preparation for a pre-feasibility study, while still drilling high-priority gold targets.

In Toronto on Jan. 18 — the day results were released — the company’s shares shot up 14% or 66¢ to $5.26 on 2.47 million shares traded.