La Ronge rises on winter drilling results from Preview

VANCOUVER – The drills at work at La Ronge Gold‘s (LAR-V) Preview property in north-central Saskatchewan over the winter were searching for mineralization at the edges of and along strike from the main Preview SW deposit – and that is precisely what they found.

Fourteen drill holes tested for gold proximal to the defined resource at Preview SW, which stands at 1.96 indicated tonnes grading 2.12 grams gold per tonnes and 3.71 inferred tonnes averaging 2.09 grams gold. The gold at Preview SW is hosted in quartz veins and dioritic-gabbroic sills within a series of sub parallel shear zones.

One of those expansion holes returned the best gold grade from the project to date. Hole 151 was collared 75 metres northeast of the defined resource and cut 4.1 metres grading 633.6 grams gold, starting 204 metres downhole and including 2.3 metres of 1,123.3 grams gold.

Hole 155 was also collared northeast of the deposit and returned a series of intercepts representative of the deposit at Preview SW. First the drill encountered 8.8 metres grading 1.79 grams gold at 102 metres depth, then it hit into 5.1 metres grading 3.22 grams gold at 120 metres depth, and finally it cut 31.1 metres averaging 1.6 grams gold from 136 metres downhole. Nearby, hole 156 produced a similar result: 9.6 metres grading 1.87 grams gold followed by 4.6 metres of 8.96 grams gold and 14.6 metres of 2.4 grams gold. Three other holes – numbers 152, 153, and 154 – returned similar intercepts and helped to expand the limit of known mineralization to the northeast.

Three holes designed to expand the deposit to the southwest also hit into gold mineralization. Hole 150 produced the best result, returning 12.6 metres grading 5.76 grams gold from 165 metres depth. Nearby, hole 147 cut 2.3 metres of 4.03 grams gold from 77 metres depth followed by 5.2 metres of 3.28 grams gold, while hole 148 returned 6.9 metres grading 1.71 grams gold from 125 metres downhole.

Hole 157, drilled in an effort to expand the deposit to the west, did not encounter gold.

La Ronge used the last few holes of its winter drill program to test two step-out targets. Preview North and Preview A lie within the same corridor of sheared diorite that hosts Preview SW, but Preview North is 2.6 km northeast of the defined deposit while Preview A is 430 metres northeast of the defined deposit.

Preview North is actually the site where gold was originally discovered at Preview Lake, back in 1939. Also known at the Adit prospect, Preview North provided ore to a small mill that produced a single brick of gold in 1941, before being mothballed. La Ronge’s three drill holes at Preview North this winter represented the first subsurface exploration at the site since 1961.

The first hole tested for mineralization directly beneath the 24-metre long adit that produced ore for the milling operation and returned one short intercept: 2.75 grams gold over 1.7 metres. The second hole, drilled 100 metres to the northwest, did not encounter significant mineralization.

The third hole did hit into significant gold. Drilled roughly 200 metres southwest of the adit, hole 163 returned three mineralized intercepts within 50 metres of surface: 5.7 metres grading 17.98 grams gold from 10 metres depth, 5.7 metres grading 5.96 grams gold from 19 metres depth, and 21.3 metres of 1.88 grams gold from 29 metres depth.

La Ronge says the result suggests mineralization at Preview North plunges to the southwest. The company is also intrigued that mineralization in hole 163 bears similarities to Preview SW, where several near-surface veins host high-grade gold alongside wider occurrences of lower-grade mineralization.

Over at Preview A, the final two holes of the winter drill program collectively returned three gold-bearing intercepts. Hole 159 cut 1.8 metres grading 1.46 grams gold from 24 metres depth followed by 5.8 metres of 3.7 grams gold from 63 metres downhole, while hole 160 returned 3.2 metres grading 2.6 grams gold from 114 metres depth.

With the winter drill program finished La Ronge has completed initial testing of the 2.6-km long sheared diorite corridor between Preview SW and Preview North. La Ronge will return to Preview North to probe for more near-surface gold. In addition, La Ronge says the same sheared diorite corridor also extends for 2.5 km southwest from the Preview SW deposit and bears similar geophysical and geochemical markers, but has yet to be tested.

La Ronge now plans to update the Preview project resource estimate, in advance of a preliminary economic assessment. The company also plans to complete another 3,000 metres of drilling this year.

La Ronge started releasing these Preview project drill results in January and announced the final batch – including news of the hit at Preview North – in early April. During that time the company’s share price edged upwards, climbing from 15.5¢ at the start of 2013 to a recent close at 23.5¢. La Ronge has 33.4 million shares outstanding.