Revival Gold builds scale at Beartrack and Arnett in Idaho

Revival Gold (TSXV: RVG; US-OTC: RVLGF) has reported the last four holes from its 2018 drill program at its contiguous Arnett and Beartrack gold projects in Lemhi County, Idaho, 17 km from the town of Salmon.

The company drilled 900 metres across six holes at Arnett’s Haidee target in November 2018. Before that, it drilled 7,700 metres across 15 holes at Beartrack.

“The focus of the drilling in 2018 at Beartrack was about building resource, but it was also about building scale,” Revival president and CEO Hugh Agro says in an interview with The Northern Miner on the sidelines of the 2019’s Prospectors & Developers of Canada Association convention in Toronto. “And when we get back in there this year, we’ll be focused on scale, because we’ve got a lot of strike length — a lot of mineralization to drill off.”

The company was able to get into Arnett at the end of its 2018 drill season, but had to shut its drills down early when weather conditions worsened.

Although the company can turn drills year-round at the project, it finds that stopping in November for the winter is more efficient.

A drill at Revival’s Beartrack gold project in Idaho. Credit: Revival Gold.

“We’re itching to get back in there this year,” Agro says.

The company cut 15 metres grading 0.64 gram gold from 15 metres downhole in Haidee, as well as 8 metres at 6.65 grams gold from 377 metres downhole from 383 metres downhole at Beartrack’s Joss area.

Agro says the plan this year is to get back into Arnett, while building on what Revival has at Beartrack.

Beartrack is a former producer, having featured an open-pit heap leach mine in the 1990s that recovered 600,000 oz. gold. It closed when gold prices fell below US$300 an ounce.

A resource Revival tabled at Beartrack in 2018 totalled 33.3 million indicated tonnes grading 1.13 grams gold for 1.2 million oz. gold and 16.9 million inferred tonnes at 1.41 grams gold for 765,000 oz. gold. The resource has mostly mill material, with 14 million tonnes of leachable material.

The company’s 2018 drilling extended Beartrack’s strike length 950 metres south of its current resource, around the project’s Joss target. The project is open southwest and at depth, and covers 5 km of strike length.

“We’re trying to show is that it’s a big system,” he says. “For a mill resource we need to have a big body of mineralization to justify the cap.

“As a mining engineer, it’s less interesting to me to find material. What we want to do is find economics, and so by showing scope on Beartrack’s system, we get closer and closer to the critical mass that makes sense for a potential mill operation.”

Arnett is a 23.8 sq. km claim block adjoining Beartrack to the west. The company’s 2018 drilling at Arnett confirmed near-surface gold in oxides over 400 metres of strike at Haidee. The target is open northwest and down dip to the southeast. While the company has a starting point with leachable material already defined at Beartrack, it sees the potential for building its leachable material at Arnett.

Revival’s Idaho project already has an ADR facility, leach ponds and power. Credit: Revival Gold.

“What we’re doing is building out the critical mass of leachable material,” Agro says. “Because we’ve got an existing ADR facility, we’ve got leach ponds, we’ve got cyanidation permits and we’ve got power to site. We’ll have to put additional capital into refurbishing the infrastructure, but the point is the typical cost for these leach operations is quite a bit less than a mill operation, so for a smaller company, our first goal is to get that up and running. The second step is the wider potential on the property for a mill.

“So we’ve kind of got our cake and can eat it too. We’ve got the near-term project and we’ve got the longer-term potential.”

A drill at Revival Gold’s Beartrack gold project in Idaho. Credit: Revival Gold.

The company is permitting five drill targets along a pair of 2 to 4 km parallel trends at Arnett. When it does this, it will have 52 permitted drill pads across the two projects.

It has a total 51 sq. km land position across its Arnett, Beartrack and Rabbit projects. Rabbit, which lies south of Beartrack and Arnett, is a greenfields target still subject to permitting. The company hopes to drill Rabbit in 2020.

In 2019, the company plans to finish permitting as well as its second-phase, sulphide metallurgical test work at Beartrack. The company will drill between 1,000 and 2,000 metres of step out holes at the project, and complete regional geochemical work.

At Arnett it will drill 4,000 to 6,000 metres for resource expansion and exploration. It will complete geochemical sampling and magnetic geophysics, as well as oxide metallurgical test work.

“We’re looking to start a resource update by the end of the year,” Agro says. “If all goes well, in 2020, we’ll be into a preliminary economic assessment.”

Shares of Revival Gold are trading at 79¢ in a 52-week range of 54¢ to 99¢. The company has a $33-million market capitalization.