Drilling increases Estrades reserves

A drilling program on the Estrades project in the Casa Berardi area of Northwestern Quebec continues to produce some promising results.

Golden Hope Resources and Golden Group Explorations said that diamond drilling has expanded the scope of the project by increasing reserves and better delineating the orebodies.

The two companies are joint venture partners on the Estrades Twp., property which is operated by Teck Explorations. They are optimistic that this gold zone, combined with high grade base metal mineralization, will provide enough reserves of mineable grade to justify pre-production feasibility studies.

Although a new reserve calculation for the project has not yet been made, the following diamond drill results represent significant new discoveries.

Hole 165, cut a 16-ft section grading 0.116 oz gold per ton and 15.42% zinc. Included in the hole is a 9-ft section grading 26.02% zinc. Hole 172, drilled 95.2 ft cut a 14 ft-section grading 0.18 oz gold, 5.13 oz silver and 10.49% zinc.

According to Golden Hope President Gordon Keevil, these results demonstrate that the main orebody is as wide at depth as it is at surface.

He expects a diamond drilling program will continue to test the deposit and a $2.5-million underground exploration program is being proposed to provide further data for a feasibility study

Present geological reserves as calculated by Teck are 2,679,732 tons grading an average of 0.13 oz gold, 3.13 oz silver, 7.39% zinc and 0.08% copper.

Results of the drilling program will continue to be released as they become available.