Stronghold Metals Inc. has provided the following update to its previously announced 2011 exploration program at the Eagle Mountain Gold Project in Guyana and to announce analytical results from an additional fourteen (14) diamond drill holes of the program.
Highlights
- The current planned program is for a minimum of 120 exploratory, expansion and in-fill diamond drill holes and a minimum of 15,000 metres.
- To date, 73 holes have been completed, representing 10,338 meters of diamond drilling.
- The analytical results of the first 32 holes have been announced in recent months. Analytical results of an additional 14 complete holes have been received to date and are reported in this news release.
- The Company is highly encouraged by ongoing drilling results and intends to continue its infill and step out drilling program in order to increase the confidence of the mineral resource and to further expand the known mineralized zone, success contingent on results.
- Most of the new diamond drill holes with complete analytical results to date have returned favourable gold intersections.
- Stand-out results include intersections from different zones, as follows:
- 42.20 metres at 0.97 g/t Au from 0.0 to 42.20 metres depth, with the first 11.3 m of mineralization hosted in oxide material (saprolite) in EMD11-77 (Zion - infill),
- 19.05 m at 3.13 g/t Au from 0.0 to 19.05 metres depth, with the first 5.7 m in saprolite in EMD11-83 (Bottle Bank - infill),
- 7.80 m at 30 g/t Au from 36.0 to 43.8 metres depth, which includes a 1.80 m at 118.64 g/t Au in EMD11-85 (Bucket Shaft - infill),
- 7.50 m at 2.93 g/t Au from 37.5 to 45 metres depth in EMD11-86 (Bucket Shaft - infill), and
- 12.27 m at 1.72 g/t Au from 62.18 to 74.40 metres depth in EMD11-89 (Bucket Shaft - infill).
Note: A step out hole is a hole drilled outside the known gold mineralised area, indicating expansion of the deposit towards this direction. It must be noted that the average gold grade of productive systems of the Guyana Shield region is known to be between 1.0 and 1.5 g/t Au for historic open pit mining.
The Eagle Mountain Drilling Program
The Company's primary focus has been the accelerated development of the advanced exploration stage Eagle Mountain Gold Project. The Project comprises an area of approximately 5,050 Ha (12,480 acres) in central Guyana, 200km southwest of the capital Georgetown and 45 kilometres from the historic Omai Gold Mine, which was in production from 1993 to 2005. The Company is pleased to announce that the on-going resource outline diamond drilling program at Eagle Mountain is progressing very well. To date, 73 drill holes totalling 10,338 metres have been completed in the current drilling program. Analytical results from 46 complete holes have been received from ACME Analytical Laboratories Ltd. to date and it is extremely encouraging that most holes have gold intersections of favourable grade that correspond well with historical data from the Project. In September 2010, Stronghold entered into an Earn-In and Joint Venture Agreement with a subsidiary of IAMGOLD Corporation, under which Stronghold has been granted the right to acquire in stages up to 95% interest in the Property. In November 2010, Stronghold filed an NI 43-101 reporting an Inferred Mineral Resources of 18Mt @ 1.27 g/t gold, containing 733,500 ounces of gold (using a 0.5 g/t Au cut-off grade). More than 250,000 ounces of the contained gold in this inferred mineral resource is hosted in oxide material (saprolite). The primary focus of the 2011 drilling program at Eagle Mountain has been to enhance the NI43-101 compliant mineral resource with both exploration drilling to extend the mineral resource zone and definition drilling to increase the resource within that previously defined zone.
The 2011 diamond drilling program (comprising 15,000 meters of drilling) has the following three objectives:
- Expand the Inferred mineral resource by in-fill drilling and step-out drilling along and across strike in three directions.
- Confirm historic records of gold mineralised horizons by twinning older historic holes. With success, that gold mineralization can be brought into the current mineral resource estimate.
- Upgrade the Inferred mineral resources to Indicated mineral resources with closely spaced in-fill drilling.
The exploration program in Guyana is supervised by Stronghold's Guyana team, which is headed by Ms. Anne Casselman, M.Sc., Exploration and Country Manager. The completed drill holes are a combination of infill holes and exploration step out holes. It is also very promising that very good intersections have been returned to date from several different zones within the known deposit and at least one zone outside the known mineralisation towards the North and Northeastern sides of the deposit. Currently, the program has been shifted to another zone outside the known mineralisation towards the North and Northwestern sides of the deposit.