Drilling Underway at Bravada's Wind Mountain Project
VANCOUVER, BC - Bravada Gold Corporation reported that drilling is underway at its wholly owned Wind Mountain project, part of the Company's program of advancing the project through pre-feasibility. Wind Mountain is one of the Company's 22 Nevada properties (approximately 20,000 hectares) located in the Battle Mountain-Eureka, Walker Lane, Northern Nevada Rift, Austin, and Kings River Rift gold trends.
The program is expected to consist of drilling 70 shallow reverse-circulation holes, +6000 metres in total. Many of the holes will be in-fill within the Wind Mountain and Breeze deposits, with some of the holes testing structures that appear to host higher-than-average grade for the deposits. Currently drilling along these structures is too widely spaced to demonstrate continuity of the higher grades within the resource block model. Some of the drill holes will test areas of shallow mineralization previously intersected in widely scattered historic drill holes and some will test anomalies identified by the Company's January soil survey, where gold values ranged from nil to 1.4 g/t. Those holes that could expand the currently modelled open pit or delineate new areas for open pits will be tested first in order to allow follow-up drilling to proceed as soon as possible. Metallurgical test work began in March when eight samples, each approximately 180 kilograms, were collected from historic heaps, 'waste' piles, and in-situ mineralization exposed in the bottom of the existing open pits. These samples provide material necessary for several important metallurgical tests, some of which will continue over many months, providing important data about crushing, reagent requirements, and recovery characteristics. Results to date from samples of the historic heap-leach piles are particularly encouraging. Analyses by size fraction demonstrate that while gold in the finer fractions was effectively leached, gold was not leached from the coarser fractions. Silver shows a similar pattern. Tests will now be performed to determine the costs for crushing and the respective recoveries for various crush sizes to determine if reprocessing the heaps could be profitable. There are approximately 20 million tonnes of uncrushed, also called run-of-mine, material on the heaps. Similar crushing tests will also be performed on 'waste' piles (approximately 9 million tonnes) and in-situ mineralization in order to determine if those materials should be crushed prior to heap leaching. Biological surveys are nearly complete and archaeology surveys are scheduled to begin this month. These surveys will be necessary for additional exploration and mine permitting. The project is located approximately 160km northeast of Reno and has good road access and a power line to the property. The company's address is Suite 1100, 1199 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC V6E 3T5.