Wayside sizes up Cow Mountain and Bonanza Ledge

A preliminary assessment of International Wayside Gold Mines‘s (IWA-V) Cow Mountain and Bonanza Ledge deposits in central B.C. pegs probable reserves at 3.1 million tonnes running just under 3 grams gold per tonne, for 294,722 contained ounces of gold.

The report suggests the reserve is good enough to sustain a 1500-ton-per-day processing plant for 6.5 years. At that pace, the operation would produce 261,967 oz. of gold and generate a before-tax internal rate of return of 5.6%, based on a gold price of US$300 per oz. The plan calls for used equipment.

The suggested mine plan involves mining from two pits on Cow Mountain and one on Bonanza Ledge. The strip ratio is pegged at 4.39 to 1.

The study suggests a $2.4-million program to advance the project, including:

• underground bulk sampling from Bonanza Ledge;
• infill drilling of the BC vein to convert inferred resources to indicated;
• more underground drilling below the 1200 level at Cow Mountain;
• surface drilling designed to convert inferred resource to indicated; and
• further exploration for other high-grade deposits.

The study does not consider inferred resource at Cow Mountain and indicated resources on the BC Vein. Previous mining suggests that the mineral resource is open to depth below the 1,200 level on Cow Mountain. The BC Vein is open in all directions.