Fire Creek grows

Vancouver — Klondex Mines (KDX-T) has defined more than 500,000 inferred ounces of gold in three zones on its Fire Creek property in Nevada’s Crescent Valley, part of the Battle Mountain-Eureka trend.

Engineering firm MinQuest supervised the National Instrument 43-101-compliant calculation, which defined 1.8 million tons grading 0.328 oz. gold per ton for a total of 583,000 contained ounces. The estimate is based on veins intersected in drilling over a strike length of 1,600 ft. and includes eight veins in the Main zone, three in the West zone and a thicker vein in the Far North zone.

The resource consists of a high-grade portion of 556,000 tons grading 0.72 oz. gold for 400,529 oz. contained ounces, plus 1.2 million tons grading 0.149 oz. gold per ton containing 182,552 oz.

Minquest made no adjustment for mining dilution beyond 6.6 ft., nor did it cut high values. However, it did eliminate vein blocks averaging less than 0.292 oz. gold over 6.6 ft. from the resource, whereas veins that are at least 20 ft. thick and grade at least 0.088 oz. gold per ton were included.

Klondex believes that further drill-testing will allow it to examine the economic viability of the resource. Plans call for 40,000 ft. of reverse-circulation and core drilling to begin in June to expand the resource. The drilling will focus on areas 1,600 ft. north of the Main and West zones and 1,600 ft. north and south of the Far North zone.

Meanwhile, Klondex has received permission to drill its Reef prospect in the Bell Mountain mining district some 17 miles northeast of the Rawhide mine where plans call for testing gold-bearing veins hosted by Tertiary volcanics.