Rainy River expands resource for northern Ontario property

Results from an additional 124 drill holes or 68,453 metres have boosted Rainy River Resources‘ (RR-V) resource at its advanced gold project in Ontario to 2.37 million oz. gold in the indicated category and 2.66 million oz. gold in the inferred, the company reports.

The numbers demonstrate a 147% resource increase in the indicated category and a 388% increase in the inferred. Average gold grades also increased with the same cutoff grades as in the April 2009 resource estimate.

The gold project is about 162 km south of Kenora, 418 km west of Thunder Bay, and about 21 km north of the Canadian National Railway, which runs east-west just north of Canada’s border with Minnesota.

Rainy River acquired 100% of the project from Nuinsco Resources in June 2005.

The company has focused on defining mineralization below the limits of the proposed open pit and as a result has increased total underground gold resources to 935,000 oz. in all classes, a 298% increase over the 2009 resource estimate.

If the resources for the proposed open pit and underground are combined, the Rainy River project contains 56.83 million tonnes grading 1.3 grams gold per tonne and 1.81 grams silver, for 2.37 million oz. gold and 3.31 million oz. silver. In the indicated category the combined resource tallies 68.93 million tonnes grading 1.2 grams gold, 2.73 grams silver, for contained gold of 2.65 million oz. gold and 6.04 million oz. silver.

The open-pit resource used a cut-off grade of 0.4 gram gold per tonne and for the underground resource a cutoff grade of 3 grams gold per tonne was used. The resource also incorporated a US$850 per oz. gold price.

The most significant addition of contained gold can be attributed to the extensive 2009 drilling at depths below the conceptual pit bottom. That included the ODM “Deeps”, 433 Zone and the newly discovered high-grade Beaver Pond depth extensions.

The Vancouver-based junior exploration company is fully cashed up, with $69 million in its treasury.

News of the updated resource sent Rainy River’s shares up 21¢ or 4.3% to close at $5.12 per share. Over the last 52 weeks the company has traded in a range of was $1.65-$5.47 per share and has 60.4 million shares outstanding.