Vancouver – Wide, high-grade gold values from a second phase trenching program on the Jumping Josephine (JJ) project in southeastern British Columbia’s Rossland-Republic Trend gave Astral Mining (AST-V, ASMGF-O) a significant market boost.
Infill trenching on the Main zone returned up to 7 metres of 31.2 grams gold per tonne in trench 2A, including a one metre interval of 133.9 grams gold.
The infill program, conducted at 10-metre intervals, followed initial trenching from earlier this year done at 50-metre spacings across structure. Completion of fifteen trenches on the Main zone has traced the gold-mineralized quartz stockwork over 270 metres of strike and it remains open to the southwest and northeast.
Further trenching and initial drill testing of the zone is planned for the spring of 2007.
Gold mineralization is associated northeast-trending shear zone comprised of quartz stockworks, vein-breccias, ladder-veining and parallel sheeted veins within granodiorites. A number of new gold showings were discovered on the project area in 2003 when logging road construction exposed mineralized rock.
The 118-sq. km JJ claim package includes several small-scale past producers in the historic Bonanza-Pass (Granville Mountain) mining camp where high-grade gold and silver production came from a number of quartz veins between the 1912 and 1964.
Astral is earning a 60% interest in JJ from Kootenay Gold (KTN-V) for option payments of $100,000, exploration expenditures of $2.1 million and issuing 400,000 shares over 5 years.
Shares of Astral Mining rallied about 56% on the results to close up 17 at 47 apiece on very strong volume. Kootenay Gold edged up 7 to close at $1.12 per share.
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