Red Cliff gold results boost Decade and Mountain Boy

Vancouver – Two Vancouver-based juniors – Decade Resources (DEC-V) and Mountain Boy Minerals (MTB-V) – saw their share prices jump on news of high-grade gold intercepts from their joint-venture Red Cliff property in northwest British Columbia.

The first two holes of the 2009 drill program at Red Cliff probed an extension to the bonanza-grade Montrose zone and both returned significant gold hits. Hole 1 cut 32.5 metres grading 7.53 grams gold per tonne starting 30 metres downhole, including a 3-metre segment averaging 14.9 grams gold and another 2.9-metre interval grading 45.8 grams gold. Hole 2 returned 48.5 metres grading 4.17 grams gold from 58 metres downhole, including 6.1 metres of 13.3 grams gold.

The companies said both drill cores contained locally fine visible gold associated with a stockwork of quartz-chalcopyrite-pyrite stringers. The stockwork occurs along a shear zone that is up to 30 metres wide where exposed along the canyon walls of a nearby creek. In addition, disseminated and fracture-filled pyrite and galena-sphalerite-visible gold mineralization form an envelope to the stockwork.

The holes were drilled 500 metres north of the exposed portion of the zone and further drilling will continue moving north. And assay results for silver and base metals are still pending.

Red Cliff is in the Skeena mining division, roughly 40 km north of the town of Stewart. The property hosts seven known zones of mineralization, two of which have already been tapped.

At the Red Cliff zone, limited copper-gold production in the early 1900s left behind 2,300 metres of underground development on five levels. The effort produced some 1,140 tonnes of ore grading 5% copper. In the 1970s another operator pulled an additional 3,780 tonnes from the ground.

At Montrose, a small-scale mining operation between 1939 and 1941 proved the bonanza nature of the zone: the operation pulled out 65 tons of ore averaging 70 grams gold, 83 grams silver, 0.91% copper, 3.5% lead, and 4.41% zinc. At another area known as the Waterpump zone, which is a south fault extension of Montrose, previous operators dug trenches that returned grades such as 4.2 metres grading 21.4 grams gold and 3.3 metres averaging 6.89 grams gold.

Decade, acting as project operator, is earning a 60% interest in Red Cliff by spending $1.25 million on exploration over three years. Once it completes the 60% earn-in Decade can increase its ownership stake to 80% by spending another $3 million on exploration and giving Mountain Boy 250,000 shares and $600,000.

The partners plan to drill at least 5,000 metres in the current program.

On news of the drill results, Mountain Boy’s share price gained 8¢ to close at 13¢. The company has a 52-week trading range of 3¢ to 15.5¢ and has 42 million shares outstanding. Decade’s share price also climbed, adding 23¢ to close at 40¢. Decade has a 52-week trading range of 5¢ to 49¢ and has 19 million shares outstanding.