Battle Mountain begins drilling Queenston’s Kirkland claims

Beginning to make its mark on the Canadian exploration scene, Battle Mountain Canada, a unit of Battle Mountain Gold (NYSE), recently started drilling a new gold zone in Ontario’s Kirkland Lake mining camp. Battle Mountain, which can earn a 70% interest in a total of 337 claims from Queenston Mining (TSE), plans to drill about 23 holes on the Amalgamated Kirkland property in Teck Twp. by the end of the year. The agreement calls for exploration expenditures of $5 million over a 6-year period.

Most of the holes will probe the 102 zone, a new discovery on the extensively explored property, where channel samples returned grades averaging 3-3.5 grams per tonne over variable widths of up to 6 metres. The remainder of the holes will test two other recently discovered zones.

Unlike the quartz vein-hosted, infrequently altered gold mineralization typical of the Kirkland Lake camp, mineralization on the Amalgamated Kirkland property is associated with intensely altered volcanics and metasediments. In combination with a complex regional geology, this distinct alteration pattern, including up to 15% pyrite, called for a new exploration strategy.

“If we were going to find gold, we had to do something that the old-timers hadn’t done,” Terence Bottrill, senior geologist for Battle Mountain, told The Northern Miner during a recent interview.

So Bottrill started looking for synvolcanic fault zones to the south of the Kirkland Lake break, in what appears to a mirror image of the volcanic band that hosts the old producers. Distinct magnetic signatures from airborne and ground surveys, which outlined the highly altered, pyrite-rich bands, helped to narrow down the possibilities.

“We regard it as a bit of a coup to have found gold mineralization in zone 102,” remarked Orval Leigh, vice-president of exploration for Battle Mountain Canada. “This is unlike anything else that has been seen in the district.”

Although Leigh is concentrating on the Kirkland Lake play for the moment, he implied that the Canadian mining industry would be hearing more from the U.S. gold producer’s Toronto office in the not- so-distant future.