Northgate encouraged on Dore Lake drilling

Very promising is the way the initial results are being described from the surface drilling program on Dore Lake in the Chibougamau camp of Quebec by Northgate Exploration. And for very good reason.

“Some of the grades have been excellent, particularly in gold,” says President John Kearney, adding should these results continue, an underground exploration program will follow.

Some of the best intercepts from this $700,000 program include drill hole S3-86-4 which intersected 34 ft (estimated true width 12 ft) of 0.234 oz gold per ton, 3.51% copper and 1.019 oz silver per ton.

Hole S3-86-9 intersected 4.6 ft of 0.746 oz gold, 2.34% copper and 1.195 oz silver and 5.2 ft of 0.183 oz gold, 1.51% copper and 0.623 oz silver. The same hole also returned 9.2 ft of 0.221 oz gold, 1.03% copper and 0.441 oz silver.

This drilling program at Dore Lake, located two miles southwest of the company’s Copper Rand mine, is part of a major 30,000 ft diamond drilling program designed to follow-up favorable results obtained from three mineralized shear zones identified by 1986 geophysical surveys and diamond drilling. At that time a 9.9 ft intersection provided values which averaged 0.28 oz gold, 2.16% copper at a depth of 500 ft.

Some 20,000 ft of drilling from the ice was planned for the winter, but only 14,600 ft were completed due to unseasonable warm weather and poor ice conditions.

Winter drilling was concentrated on shear zone one, which information to date indicates, is at least 1,000 ft in width and possibly 3,500 ft long.

Three potential vein structures, designated the A1, B1 and C1, have been identified within this zone. Considerable in-fill and step-out drilling must be completed before their potential is known.

The summer program will be increased by about 5,000 ft to 15,000 ft, says Mr Kearney and will start using a jack-up drill rig as soon as the ice leaves the lake, probably in late May.

Shear zones two and three, which are located 2,500 ft north and 1,800 ft northeast of zone one, respectively, will be drilled in detail at a later date.