Houston Lake Mining digs Dogpaw

Seventy-six percent of the holes Houston Lake Mining (HLM-V, HLKMF-O) has drilled on its Dogpaw Lake property near Kenora, Ontario, have intersected values of 3 grams gold per tonne or higher.

Assay results from its 3,209-metre drill program include one hole that intersected 1.5 metres grading 15.98 grams gold per metric tonne.

Dogpaw is one of eight contiguous properties that make up Houston Lake’s West Cedartree gold project, about 40 km southeast of Kenora.

One of those properties, Angel Hill, a couple of km away, has a National Instrument 43-101 inferred resource of 106,400 tonnes grading 2.97 grams gold per tonne for 10,160 oz. and is open in all directions.

Brian Mox, an analyst at Max Capital in Toronto who covers Houston Lake, says the results at West Cedartree and Dogpaw look promising.

“It’s still early days but what I like about [the mineralization at] Dogpaw and the rest of the project is just its proximity to surface,” Mox told The Northern Miner.

“They’re finding small pods of mineralization throughout the property so you don’t have a massive deposit in one location but you’re getting nice shallow, decent pods of good grades.”

The Dogpaw property has an exploration history dating to the 1940s. Houston Lake’s delineation drill program is intended to upgrade a portion of the historic resource at Dogpaw’s No. 1 vein (53,741 tonnes grading 15.43 grams per metric tonne) to modern standards.

A total of 5,271 metres of diamond drilling was completed in 47 holes. Samples values assayed from trace to 435.6 grams per metric tonne. The best result was received from Drill Hole DP-2007-042 which yielded a core length intersection grading 29.9 grams gold per tonne over 7.5 metres.

Continuity of the No. 1 vein system has been established to a depth of 210 metres and traced along strike for 310 metres to include veins No. 2 and No. 4. The No. 2 vein has been defined to a depth of over 140 metres and for a distance of at least 100 metres along strike.

“We started out with the premise that it was a small resource and what we’ve been able to do is expand the gold mineralization laterally from about, something like, 100 metres to 310 metres along strike; we’ve detected two extensions of that veining system and we’ve proved the gold extends for that 310 metres,” Grayme Anthony, Houston Lake’s president and chief executive, said in a telephone interview from Sudbury. “We think we’ve impacted the original historic resource at Dogpaw significantly.”

Houston Lake plans to release an NI43-101 resource calculation on Dogpaw by the spring. If the resources are solid at Dogpaw and another property, Dubenski, the company envisions a central grinding mill on site that would treat ore from an open pit at Angel Hill and a second pit at Dogpaw.

The company raised C$1 million in working capital in September and with drilling and exploration costs down by an estimated one-third since the summer, Anthony says he is confident that the company can move ahead with its plans.

“Our financial situation as of Sept. 30 was actually better than it was in March,” Anthony says, adding that the company’s share price, while being affected by the downturn, has not been impacted as severely as some other companies.

Houston Lake explores for gold, platinum group metal and rare earth metal deposits in northwestern Ontario with a strategic focus on the West Cedartree gold project.

The geology of West Cedartree is made up of basaltic lavas and pyroclastics intruded by gabbro and quartz feldspar porphyry sills. Gold mineralization is associated with north-south trending shear zones at the contact of or internal to the gabbro sills.

At press-time Houston Lake was trading at 30¢ per share. Over the last year the stock has been trading in a 21¢-74¢ per share range.

Houston Lake has 31.2 million shares outstanding.