Consistent gold hits for Red Eagle in Colombia

VANCOUVER — The Santa Rosa gold project in Colombia is producing promising intercepts even as owner Red Eagle Mining (RD-V) updates the project’s gold tally and wraps up a first-pass economic assessment.

In January the company produced an initial resource estimate for San Ramon, which is the most advanced of numerous gold prospects at the 390 sq. km Santa Rosa property. Red Eagle focused on San Ramon during its first 18 months on-site, and the effort delineated 7.3 million indicated tonnes grading 1.37 grams gold per tonne and 9.5 million inferred tonnes averaging 1.5 grams gold.

Most of those indicated tonnes sit within 100 metres of surface, while the inferred resource lies at a 100- to 250-metre depth.

The company says an open pit at San Ramon could  extend up to 250 metres.

After calculating the San Ramon resource, Red Eagle returned to Santa Rosa and kicked off a 17,000-metre drill program to upgrade the open-pit inferred resource to indicated status and probe the resource at depth.

Half of the gold ounces contained in the deeper inferred resource come from rock grading better than 5 grams gold, which means that San Ramon offers underground mining potential. To test the opportunity, Red Eagle is drilling broadly spaced holes extending to 500 metres depth.

As soon as it received results from the first batch of holes, Red Eagle added another 5,000 metres to its drilling plans.

The first results — which were  released in early March — included short, high-grade hits that Red Eagle was hoping to find at depth, as well as longer, lower-grade intercepts that it expected closer to surface. For example, hole 172 cut 0.6 metre grading 157.7 grams gold from 398 metres depth, while hole 177 returned 37.5 metres of 1.27 grams gold from 69 metres.

Two months later Red Eagle released San Ramon’s fourth set of results, with the numbers showing the same strength.

In the category of longer, lower-grade intercepts, San Ramon has produced 63.4 metres grading 1.36 grams gold, 28.8 metres of 1.54 grams gold, 46.5 metres of 0.93 gram gold and 36.1 metres of 2.64 grams gold. The latest results, released May 7, include a higher-grade addition to this category, with 9.03 grams gold over 24 metres.

San Ramon’s high-grade hits are also growing. The category now includes 6.08 grams gold over 7.3 metres, 36.3 grams gold over 0.8 metre, 7.11 grams gold over 8.7 metres and 35.72 grams gold over 2.3 metres. In the latest results, hole 219 returned 9.83 grams gold over 6 metres.

Red Eagle has drilled more than 2,000 metres in the current program. Now that it has upgraded the inferred resource to indicated, the rest of the drill holes will target mineralization at depth.

After the drilling program Red Eagle will update San Ramon’s resource estimate by July.

Red Eagle’s work to date has traced the structure along 1.8 km of east–west strike, with a 60- to 70-degree dip to the north.

Red Eagle’s preliminary metallurgical test work shows that flotation and cyanide leaching recovers 93.5% of the gold from San Ramon samples. This data will be incorporated into a preliminary economic assessment that Red Eagle is aiming to release by September.