Mantra Awards Drill Contract For The Colorado Creek Project
VANCOUVER, BC - Mantra Mining Inc. reported that it has awarded a drill contract for 2500 meters of core drilling on its Colorado Creek Project in the state of Alaska. to Boart Longyear Company. The Company expects to begin the exploration work program in mid June 2009.
The drill program will initially target approximately 10 holes within the more than 4.5 km mineralized corridor defined by a coincident gold soil anomaly and magnetic low located adjacent to a large intrusive center and associated with a series of rhyodacite porphyry sills and dikes. The drilling is designed to test this large-scale gold mineralized system with many characteristics similar to the 30 million ounce gold reserve at Donlin Creek located southwest of Colorado Creek in the central part of the Kuskokwim Gold Belt. NovaGold Resources Inc. and Barrick Gold have recently completed a feasibility study at Donlin Creek and are currently advancing the project through the permitting process in anticipation of making a construction decision to build what could be one of the largest gold producing mines in the world.
Mantra also plans additional surface sampling on trend with the northeast striking mineralized corridor. Historic exploration data, which include 1372.5 meters of core drilled by Placer Dome in 1997, airborne geophysics, and results from over 1900 soil samples and 600 rock samples, have been compiled and integrated into a comprehensive project database. The data define a northeast trending mineralized zone that is at least 4.5 km long and associated with a magnetic low on the margin of a multi-phase intrusive complex. Gold mineralization appears associated with the porphyry dikes and sills that intrude Cretaceous age sedimentary and volcanic rocks, a geologically similar setting to the huge Donlin Creek gold system.
The Company's VP Exploration, Jerry Zieg, state, "Progress at Colorado Creek is going very well since we completed the acquisition of the project in March 9, 2009. Work has focused at this stage on a systematic compilation of the project database to prioritize the targets for initial test work and to identify new target areas within the 10,888 hectare (ha) project area. Final planning is nearly complete for the upcoming 2,500 m drill program at Colorado Creek which is anticipated to be the first of a series of drill programs that the Company plans to conduct to test the potential for a multi-million ounce gold system at Colorado Creek."
The Colorado Creek project is located approximately 70 km northwest of McGrath, and 410 km northwest of
The company’s,