Miramar pulls wide high-grade gold at Madrid

Vancouver – Drilling by Miramar Mining (MAE-T) on its Madrid deposit, at the Hope Bay project in Nunavut, cut significant widths of high-grade gold mineralization.

Hole 05PMD328, a 100-metre step-out, intersected 66.5 metres (at a depth of 275 metres below surface) grading 11.5 grams gold per tonne in the western portion of the Madrid deposit.

Miramar Mining president and CEO Tony Walsh described the results as “the best hole drilled at Hope Bay to date”.

The high-grade hole correlates well with results from last year, where an intercept of almost 10 grams gold over 64 metres was encountered about 100 metres from this latest core hole. The thick intersections encountered in the western Madrid area suggest potential for a large mineralized zone and further resource additions.

Of the latest results from 23 holes, a number of other significant gold intercepts were encountered. The bulk of the holes in this program were collared to upgrade and expand resources in the western Madrid area.

Gold mineralization at Madrid occurs primarily as disseminated to stockwork sulphide replacements in strongly altered mafic volcanics within the Archean greenstone environment. Numerous mineralized zones, within the altered assemblage, occur in the hanging wall of the deformation structure, which is the main control on mineralization.

Madrid, the largest of the three gold deposits comprising the Hope Bay project, has an indicated resource of 4.7 million tonnes grading 5.5 grams gold plus an additional 15 million tonnes of inferred resource averaging 5.4 grams gold.

Miramar’s planned development of Madrid is scheduled to commence in its Phase 2 program, following mining of the small-scale, high-grade Doris North deposit.

The company’s 2005 Hope Bay drill program, budgeted at $13 million and estimated to total about 29,000 metres, is aimed at delineating resources to support a feasibility study on the upper Boston, Doris Central and west Madrid zones.

The high-grade results delighted investors who drove up Miramar’s share price by 22%, to the $1.22 level, on high volume of almost 1.2 million shares.