Drills turn at Island Pond property

Vancouver — Candente Resource (DNT-V) and Cornerstone Capital Resources (CTP-V) are launching a 15-hole drilling program on the Island Pond gold property, in the Botwood Basin of central Newfoundland.

The 9.5-sq.-km, 38-claim property straddles a paved road 5 km south of the Trans-Canada Highway. Candente stands to earn a 51% interest in the project from Cornerstone by spending $1.5 million on exploration and paying $115,000 in cash and 115,000 shares to Cornerstone over four years. Candente holds a second and third option to increase its interest to 61% and 75% by funding a bankable feasibility study and arranging mine financing.

The first phases of drilling will span at least 1,000 metres and target low-sulphidation gold and silver vein systems, as well as Carlin-type sediment-hosted gold deposits. The Island Pond property is underlain by sedimentary rocks, including calcareous and carbonaceous rocks.

Adjoining Island Pond to the southwest is the Moosehead property, which is held by Altius Minerals (als-v) under option to Sudbury Contact Mines (sud-t). Drilling at Moosehead returned as much as 1,154.3 grams gold per tonne over 0.18 metre, 170.3 grams gold over 1.5 metres, and 14.1 grams gold over 16.84 metres.

Drill targets on Island Pond include structural zones that run parallel to those targeted at Moosehead. Several of these structures have coincident gold, arsenic and antimony soil geochemical anomalies, as well as sulphosalt or precious metal-bearing quartz float.

In the same area, lake-bottom sediments carry up to 10 ppb gold. Island Pond is up-ice from the Moosehead property.