Miwah keeps growing for East Asia

Vancouver – With each drill result the Miwah zone in Indonesia grows, as East Asia Minerals (EAS-V) keeps stepping out to the north and west in its search for the limits of mineralization and instead keeps hitting gold.

The Miwah gold zone now stretches along 1.2 km of east-west strike; a narrow fault separates the west end, known as the Miwah Bluff zone, from the central and eastern portions, which comprise Miwah Main. Drilling of late has focused on extending the Bluff zone to the west as well as pushing the limits of the Bluff zone and the western half of the Main zone to the north.

East Asia has hit gold in every hole drilled on the site to date and this latest effort is continuing the trend.

In its most recent result, hole 33 returned 1.68 grams gold per tonne over 230.5 metres, starting 27 metres downhole and including 2.33 grams gold over 89 metres. And results are not yet available for the bottom 93 metres of the hole, though East Asia’s president and CEO Michael Hawkins said he anticipates “the gold mineralization in hole 33 will extend contiguously past the partial assay interval for a considerable distance.”

The results from hole 33 change the shape of the evolving zone, which previously resembled an L on its side, with the short arm pointing north and the long arm east. Hole 33 essentially connects the ends of the two arms, creating a right-angle triangle instead and significantly increasing the zone’s size.

The change also brings the edges of the zone much closer to the Moon River target area, which sits roughly 500 metres north of the eastern end of Miwah Main. Moon River returned enticing results from soil and rock sampling, though it has not yet been drilled.

East Asia is now drilling a second hole from the same pad; while hole 33 was aimed northward hole 37 is being drilled to the southeast, towards Miwah Main. In a statement the company said hole 37 has thus far “encountered visually favourable alteration/mineralization from 34 to 137 metres and from 165 to 168 metres where the hole is continuing.”

Hole 33 is not the only interesting hole to come out of Miwah in recent weeks. Hole 34 was collared west of all drilling to date and returned 87.9 metres of 0.55 gram gold, starting 106 metres downhole and including 28.9 metres of 1.14 grams gold. Until recently East Asia thought a north-south fault cut off mineralization to the west, but earlier this year prospecting crews found favourable massive and vuggy silica in erosional window outcrops west of the fault. The company now believes mineralization extends to the west, under cover, and calls the new area the Signal zone.

In mid-June a previous hole extended mineralization into the Signal zone: hole 31 encountered 2.19 grams gold over 43 metres, starting 59 metres downhole and including 4.1 grams gold over 15 metres. Then hole 32, drilled from the same collar but pointing west instead of south, cut 1.62 grams gold over 37.6 metres, starting 108 metres downhole.

And in early June the most northerly hole to date at Miwah Bluff, hole 29, hit 1.07 grams gold over 103.5 metres, starting 110 metres downhole and including 2.01 grams gold over 44 metres.

If the northern extension of Miwah Bluff does indeed continue to the east, the mineralized zone at Miwah will be composed of a 1.2-km long, 400- to 600-metre wide, roughly 200-metre thick tabular zone of moderate mineralization that is cut through in several places by higher-grade breccia feeder zones. One of these diatreme feeder zones returned a 24-metre channel sample averaging 83.59 grams gold.

East Asia is adding a third drill rig to the project shortly that will test the Signal zone to the west, a zone north of Moon River known as Sipipok, and the Miwah Main zone to the east. The Miwah project is in Indonesia’s Aceh province.

On news of the results from holes 33 and 34 East Asia’s share price gained 26¢ to close at $5.79. The company has a 52-week trading range of 66¢ to $8.73 and has 72 million shares outstanding, 80 million fully diluted.