Eastmain pulls gold at Reservoir

Drill results from the Reservoir project, 300 km north of Matagami, Que., spell good news for Eastmain Resources (CDN). And recent exploration successes at the Eastmain West property of Diabior Explorations (ME) and Virginia Gold Mines (ME) have only brightened the picture.

A drill hole advanced recently on the eastern end of the project’s North zone returned an average of 1.79 grams gold per tonne over a core length of 21 metres, including an interval grading 5.35 grams gold and 1.35 grams silver, plus 0.17% copper, over a core length of 6 metres. Previous drilling on the zone had intersected grades of up to 0.57 gram gold per tonne over comparable widths. The new hole indicates that improved grades over minable widths may exist at depth.

Six other holes drilled on 200-metre intervals, west of the discovery hole, cut mineralized intersections with apparent widths of 5 to 30 metres, also at greater depths than earlier holes had explored. The North zone is open to the east along strike and downdip, and occurs in pillowed basalts near the margin of a feldspar porphyry; both rock types have quartz-carbonate veins and disseminated pyrrhotite, pyrite and chalcopyrite.

The recently discovered zones reported by Diabior and Virginia Gold at their Eastmain West project, about 40 km to the east, also indicate the mineral potential in the area. These metre-wide shear zones, which have gold concentrations of 20-80 grams per tonne, appear to be on a stratigraphic horizon similar to the North zone.

Eastmain is awaiting assay results from drilling at its Lac Hudson property south and east of Reservoir. Three holes were drilled along a 500-metre strike length of a soil-geochemical anomaly that coincides with an electromagnetic conductor. Previous drilling (four holes drilled from a single setup centred on the conductor) intersected a zone of gold mineralization with apparent widths of up to 3.8 metres. Eastmain believes this gold zone is on the same stratigraphic horizon as its Reservoir zones.