AFRICA SPECIAL — High River tests Burkina Fasan prospect

Toronto-based High River Gold (HRG-T) has completed most of the second phase of its exploration program at the Taparko concession in eastern Burkina Faso.

High River is earning a 61.5% interest in the property from Incanore Resources, a private Canadian company, and, since March 1996, has been exploring the GT zone, where previous work had outlined 110,000 tonnes grading 14.4 grams gold per tonne.

The program has increased the size of the prospect substantially, adding 120 metres along strike and 50 metres downdip. In the second phase, High River tested five other mineralized showings along a 5-km shear structure.

The most recent drilling has been focused on Zone 5, about 4 km north of the GT zone. The prospect, orginally outlined by soil geochemistry and areas of quartz veining, was sampled at surface along a 290-metre strike length. The samples returned gold grades ranging from 3 to 35 grams per tonne.

Crews dug eight trenches in the saprolite soils across the structure, covering a strike length of 310 metres. Individual trenches showed grades ranging from 3.3 grams over a surface width of 6.3 metres to 13.7 grams over 0.9 metre. At its widest (12.9 metres), the trenching returned grades of 6.4 and 8.7 grams.

Nine holes drilled along the same stretch of Zone 5 intersected considerable quartz veining at a vertical depth of about 25 metres. Gold grades ranged from 4 to 9 grams over core lengths of 1-15 metres, and three of the holes intersected more than one mineralized zone. The best intersections were encountered at the northern end of the zone, where hole 112 cut a 15.1-metre length grading 11.7 grams gold, and a separate 2.3 metres grading 53.6 grams.

Seeking to test the open, northern end of the structure, High River dug two more trenches, 40 and 80 metres north of hole 112. These showed mineralized widths of 11.3 and 10.4 metres. A tenth drill hole, stepped 200 metres to the north of hole 112, also intersected gold mineralization, cutting 7.3 metres of 1.3 grams.

In Zone 3, immediately south of Zone 5, two shallow drill holes intersected gold mineralization grading 7.7 grams over 10.1 metres and 8.5 grams over 5.8 metres; another two cut 7-metre mineralized lengths grading 0.2 and 1.4 grams.

At the K Zone prospect, 800 metres north of the GT zone, trench samples have graded as high as 12.6 grams gold. Drilling encountered grades of 5.6-11.6 grams over core lengths of 2-8 metres, and lower grades (2-2.7 grams) over widths of 1-4 metres.

Zone 1, Taparko’s southernmost prospect, a short distance south of GT, has also been tested. Drilling there intersected 3.3 metres grading 4.7 grams gold.

High River is continuing its program of reconnaissance soil and rock sampling combined with geological mapping, having recently identified two new surface showings. Drilling on Zones 5 and 3, and on the K Zone, is under way.