Houston Lake keeps on growing the West Cedartree

Houston Lake Mining (HLM-V) has taken another step towards realizing its ambition of creating a mine out of high grade ore near Kenora in western Ontario.

The company announced its first National Instrument 43-101 compliant resource estimate at Dubenski – an area that that lies within its West Cedartree project.

The resource estimate focused on just one of Dubenski’s known zones, the shaft zone. The other two zones are known as the central and east zones.

“The historic resource encompassed three gold zones, yet our initial drill program targeting just one of these three gold zones has already found 87% of the ounces contained in the historic resource,” Grayme Anthony, Houston Lake’s president and chief executive said in a statement.

Indicated resources came in at 177,400 tonnes grading 5.97 grams gold for 34,050 total ounces, and inferred resources came in at 118,700 tonnes grading 5.02 grams gold for 19,150 total ounces.

Those numbers were calculated with gold capped at 50 grams per tonne. Without a cap the indicated resource’s average grade moves up to 7.32 grams gold for 41,750 total ounces and the inferred resource’s grade moves up to 5.63 grams gold for 21,500 total ounces.

Dubenski’s historic resource stood at 355,286 tonnes grading 6.32 grams gold and covered the shaft, central and east zones down to 150 metres.

Houston Lake describes the resource as high grade and near surface. A 1 gram per tonne cutoff grade was used in the calculation.

Drilling of the shaft zone defined the deposit over a strike length of 60 metres and to a vertical depth of 90 metres.

The company says mineralization remains open at depth and has not been fully closed off along strike.

The report – prepared by Watts, Griffis and McOuat Limited — says gold potential remains “under-explored, especially at depths below 100 metres from surface.”

The resource estimate was based on an 18 hole diamond drilling program that drilled roughly 1,800 metres in January and February of last year.

Houston Lake has drilled a second phase since then with the aim of expanding shaft zones resource. Results from some 200 assays are expected in 6 to 8 weeks.

Dubenski Property is one of eight contiguous properties that make up Houston Lake’s wholly owned West Cedartree gold project located 40-km southeast of Kenora, Ontario.

With the completion of the resource at Dubenski, Houston Lake now has a NI 43-101 compliant resources on two areas within West Cedartree – Dubenski and Angel Hill. A third area, Dogpaw Lake, has a historic resource calculation.

And while Houston Lake plans to develop Angel Hill and Dogpaw into open pit mines, it cannot do so with Dubenski. The deposits close proximity to a lake would raise environmental issues were it do so.

In Toronto on Jan. 16 the company’s shares closed flat at 30¢ on roughly 30,000 shares traded. Over the last 52 weeks its shares have moved between 74¢ and 21¢ and it has 32.7 million shares outstanding.