Drills to turn at Southern Rio’s 3T’s project

Vancouver — Southern Rio Resources (SNZ-V) is planning a second round of exploration drilling at the 3Ts Project, located 125 km southwest of Vanderhoof in central British Columbia.

In late 2003, the junior completed an eight hole, 1,730 metre program of diamond drilling on the Ted Vein to provide additional data to facilitate an initial resource calculation.

At last report, the Ted Vein has been defined along a strike length of about 350 metres from surface to a depth of 120 metres. It has an estimated true width of up to 14 metres.

Any resources defined by the current drill program will add to those already defined on the nearby Tommy vein which hosts an inferred resource of 470,700 tonnes grading 7.4 grams per tonne gold and 65.2 grams per tonne silver.

The Tommy and Ted Veins are classical shear-veins hosted within a much larger epithermal alteration system. Mapping of the alteration suggests that the Tommy Vein is displaced at its southern end, and that the mineralized vein structure may continue across the fault.

The upcoming drill program is designed to target the Tam and Taken properties, where prospecting during the summer and fall last year identified several clusters of mineralized boulders with gold and silver values up to 84.3 grams gold per tonne and 1,032.0 grams silver per tonne. The highest priority target has been dubbed the Ringer zone, where the mineralization is unusually gold rich, and with a much higher gold/silver ratio than in any of the currently known zones.

At the Ringer zone, several large, angular boulders of quartz vein material were found that measured up to 2 metres in maximum dimension. The prospect is situated on the southwestern portion of the Taken property.

Southern Rio believes that these new boulders are not sourced from any of the known outcropping veins on the property due to their location, physical character and geochemical signature. The most likely source is an undiscovered mineralized bedrock vein or veins located up-ice to the southwest.