Kootenay steps out at Promontorio

Vancouver – Over the past two years Kootenay Gold (KTN-V) has had a tightly focused drill program at the Pit zone on its 90,000 ha. Promontorio property in Sonora state, Mexico.

Within that zone Kootenay has put in the overwhelming majority of the 57 holes it has drilled to date.

Drill-hole results at the Pit zone include typically long intercepts, such as the 437 metres grading 28 grams silver per tonne, 0.44 gram gold and 1.6% combined lead-zinc Kootenay drilled starting 3 metres below surface in hole 24.

Up until this February, Kootenay’s drill program had defined a 300 by 300-metre silver-gold and polymetallic mineralized area up to a depth of around 400 metres at the Pit zone that was open to the east, west and north.

Now, Kootenay has finally stepped out with five drill holes in an effort to see if Promontorio, a brecciated porphyry, has the potential to be something even bigger.

Three holes drilled 1.6 km northwest, in the Dorotea zone, returned the most promising results. In a style of mineralization similar to the Pit zone, all three hit decent grades of silver, gold, lead and zinc.

Starting near surface, hole 55 cut 13.5 metres grading 77.39 grams silver, 2.78 grams gold, and 1.08% combined lead and zinc, and hole 56 returned 34.5 metres at 74.83 grams silver, 1.73 grams gold and 2.42% lead and zinc.

Hole 58 hit 17 metres grading 86.1 grams silver, 0.52 gram gold and 3.79% lead and zinc, starting 123 metres down-hole.

Two stepout holes drilled within about 1 km to the northeast also hit grades of silver, gold, lead and zinc fairly typical of the Pit zone. Hole 53 hit 59 metres averaging 32.24 grams silver, 0.27 gram gold and 1.25% combined lead and zinc, starting at a depth of about 135 metres. Hole 54 returned 101 metres of 26.21 grams silver, 0.37 gram gold and 0.74% lead and zinc.

Especially significant to Kootenay are the higher gold grades in the Dorotea zone.

With those in mind Kootenay, which has about $16.5 million in cash, says it plans to spend around $6 million on exploration in 2009. It will focus much of that program on the 1.6 km between the Dorotea and Pit zones, as well as potential targets northwest of Dorotea.

Drilling may also explore some of seven other prospective targets at Promontorio that Kootenay recently generated. Those include a new 5.5 by 1.5-km-wide area called the Champinon zone, where Kootenay took 101 grab samples.

The samples averaged 0.53 gram gold and 44 grams silver.