Crown pulls high grades at Buckhorn (May 05, 2003)

Assays on core samples from the Buckhorn Mountain property in north-central Washington, held by Crown Resources (CRCE-O), indicate high gold grades over significant widths.

Crown drilled 41 holes between October 2002 and January 2003, mainly in areas west and east of Buckhorn’s known mineralization, which is a gently east-dipping body about 250 metres along strike and 400 metres west-to-east. The new holes extend the known length of the zone downdip to the east and across a fault, the Lookout Fault, which cuts part of the deposit off on the west.

Earlier work on the deposit (when it was known as Crown Jewel) outlined a resource of 3.7 million tonnes grading an average of 12 grams gold per tonne in two zones, Southwest and North.

The most recent assay results were for samples from 14 holes, of which 12 were mineralized. Grades ranged from 3.8 to 84.7 grams gold per tonne, though they were mostly clustered in the 5-to-12-gram range across vertical thicknesses of 0.6-2.7 metres.

However, there were some significantly thicker intersections, generally at grades of 10 grams per tonne or better. A 6.9-metre intersection ran 24.3 grams per tonne on the northeastern edge of the deposit, while a 3.7-metre intersection on the southeastern extension returned a grade of 32.6 grams.

Several drill holes encountered multiple zones of mineralization, usually 1-2 metres thick, with (typically) 5-to-20-metre intervals of unmineralized rock between them.

In late February, Crown announced drill results from the deposit’s Southwest zone. There, thicknesses ranged from 1 metre to 10 metres, with grades typically in the range of 10-40 grams per ton.