Bralorne hits high-grade gold in BC

Bralorne Gold Mines (BPM-V) has hit high-grade gold at its eponymous mine near Gold Bridge, B.C.

Standout hole 11-21 hit half a metre true width grading 800.55 grams gold per tonne from 144 metres depth, while holes 11-23 and 24 both showed visible gold but have assays pending.

Bralorne reports that hole 11-21 is the highest grade the company has hit at the mine and that it made the new discovery on a structure parallel to and 49 metres north of the BK vein. The core interval consists of a faulted zone of quartz and altered wall rocks, with visible gold in the quartz fragments.

The company’s share price climbed 13¢, or 14%, to $1.08 on the news with 18,500 shares traded. The company has a 52-week share price range between 75¢ and $1.56 and 28.3 million shares out.

Results released earlier this year from the BK North vein include: hole 11-1, which hit 0.34 metre averaging 93.4 grams gold; hole 11-2, cutting 0.27 metre grading 226 grams gold; and hole 11-6, which returned 0.76 metre carrying 12.6 grams gold. All holes were reported as true width.

The Bralorne mine yielded 4 million oz. gold before shutting down in 1971, while the current owner poured its first gold-silver doré bar at an opening ceremony on May 27 this year, almost 80 years after the mine first opened. The 25-sq.-km property is a roughly five-hour, 322-km drive from Vancouver.

A technical report on the project states that the Bralorne-Pioneer vein system is hosted in the variably altered mafic and ultramafic rocks that occur as fault-bounded lenses in a structurally complex zone between the Bridge River and Cadwallader terranes referred to as the Bralorne Block. The veins are predominantly quartz, with minor carbonate minerals such as calcite and ankerite.

The 2009 technical report outlined an inferred resource on the BK zone of 17,000 tonnes grading 21.53 grams gold, while for the property as a whole it identified 17,600 measured tonnes grading 16.24 grams gold and 142,300 inferred tonnes grading 14.98 grams gold.

By the end of August the company had produced 2,000 oz. gold from stockpiled ore, including 12,750 tonnes at surface grading 12.62 grams gold. Since starting the test milling in May, the company has also recovered 2,800 tonnes of broken ore from the BK 800 zone, where the eastern manway collapsed in March.

Bralorne has been achieving recoveries of 92% at the mill, which operates at 75 tonnes per day when it is active. The company states that it can ramp up the mill to as high as 254 tonnes per day in two years if mine resources warrant it.

Earlier this year a provincial inspection of the company’s facility raised concerns about the tailings pond and environmental management on the site, and the company was informed it would not receive a permit for production until the concerns were addressed. Bralorne commissioned a review of the tailings facility and submitted the report to the BC Ministry of Energy and Mines in September.