Red Cliff confirms mineralized horizon

A 6-hole program by optionee Noranda (NRD-T) at the Red Cliff copper prospect in Newfoundland has confirmed copper-silver values in a mineralized horizon exposed at the Blue Point showing.

Noranda, which is earning a 51% interest from junior Cornerstone Capital Resources (CTP-V), drilled 823 metres on the Duntara grid in the northeastern part of the property. The best result came in hole RC01-02, 200 metres southwest along strike from the Blue Point showing. In that hole, a 14.25-metre core length assayed 1% copper and 12.1 grams silver per tonne. That intersection included a 6-metre length that ran 1.98% copper and 23.1 grams silver.

About 200 metres northwest of RC01-02, hole RC01-03 cut two zones of low-grade mineralization, one of 1 metre grading 0.12% copper and 1.6 grams silver and another, deeper zone 2 metres thick grading 0.08% copper and 0.45 gram silver. The host unit dips gently to the northwest, and the core lengths are close to the true thickness of the mineralized horizon.

Hole RC01-01, 400 metres southwest from RC01-02, returned 9.7 metres running 0.8% copper and 7.7 grams silver per tonne. Immediately northwest of RC01-01, hole RC01-04 cut a 13-metre intersection in the mineralized horizon, but that interval only graded 0.03% copper and 0.9 gram silver.

Two holes farther along strike encountered the Blue Point horizon farther to the southwest. Hole RC01-05, 800 metres southwest of the showing, cut a 1-metre intersection grading 0.88% copper and 2.1 grams silver, followed by a 2-metre interval that ran 0.12% copper and 0.5 gram silver. Hole RC01-06, 1.7 km southwest of Blue Point, intersected 2 metres that graded 0.05% copper and 0.2 gram silver per tonne.

The Blue Point horizon has been mapped over an 8.5-km strike length and shows a fairly uniform thickness of 30-35 metres. Last year, the surface showing at Blue Point, about 25 km southwest of Bonavista, Nfld., yielded a 13.5-metre channel sample that graded 0.93% copper and 13 grams silver per tonne. The chalcocite and native-copper mineralization is in a “greybed” sandstone unit of the Musgravetown group, and resembles Zambian-style red bed copper deposits.

Noranda plans to conduct lake-sediment geochemical surveys on the property to guide further exploration. The major is earning its interest by spending $4 million over four years and making option payments of $200,000 to Cornerstone, and can increase its interest to 75% by providing a bankable feasibility study.

Cornerstone also holds the Princess and West Princess properties near Musgravetown. The showings on the properties have copper-silver mineralization similar to Red Cliff, and Cornerstone plans to test them with geophysics and drilling.