Feb 18 2011
Bravada Gold Corporation (TSX VENTURE:BVA)(FRANKFURT:6BG) reported that it has received approval from the Bureau of Land Management for its drilling permit at its wholly owned Wind Mountain project, one of the Company's 22 Nevada properties located in the Battle Mountain-Eureka, Walker Lane, Northern Nevada Rift, Austin, and Kings River Rift gold trends.
The permit allows for drilling 70 shallow in-fill holes at the Wind Mountain and Breeze deposits, with drilling expected to begin when a drill contractor is available in mid to late March. These holes will test structures that appear to host higher-than-average grade for the deposit, but are currently drilled too widely spaced to demonstrate continuity in the resource block model. Some of the drill holes will provide material necessary to characterize waste material, which is necessary for mine permitting. The program will also consist of sampling for metallurgical testing, which is expected to begin in early March. The metallurgical testing will include many important tests, some of which will continue over many months, and will provide important information about crushing, reagent requirements, and recovery characteristics for in-situ mineralization, as well as to help in determining the economic potential of historic waste piles and existing heaps.
Soil sampling was completed in January over an exploration area north of the known deposits and geochemical results have identified new shallow targets. The program consisted of 332 soil samples on a spacing of 50 metres. Gold values in the soils range from nil to 1.4 grams per tonne, with 32% of the samples containing +0.1 grams gold per tonne and 9% of the samples containing +0.3 grams gold per tonne. The area of the survey has generally poor rock exposure and has received very little previous drilling. To further define these new targets, an additional 74 soil samples have been collected where anomalies were not closed off by the original survey and detailed geologic mapping is underway as weather allows.