Noble Peak to option U.S. zinc property

“We expect to have an offer from a major U.S. mining company within three weeks,” President Norman Ursel told shareholders at a recent annual meeting in Toronto.

The ground of the Crypto zinc property, covering 4.3 square miles, was picked up by Noble Peak from BHP-Utah Mines in July in return for one million Noble Peak shares (representing 12.1%).

The ground hosts a zinc-rich polymetallic deposit which remains open along strike and downdip. Probable reserves, based on limited diamond drilling, are 11 million tons grading 6% zinc near surface and 9% zinc at depth. Widths are as high as 40 ft.

The option agreement will likely involve a significant work commitment from the major, which will act as operator, with Noble Peak maintaining a majority interest in the ground.

Rotary drilling is required to define a plan for open pit mining.

It is also possible that Noble Peak can negotiate option payments which could then be used for further work on its extensive holdings in the Rankin-Ennadai greenstone belt, north of the border between Manitoba and the Northwest Territories.

Field crews will be returning to the company’s base camp at Quartzite Lake next April to continue work on the adjacent Cashe and Mac Zone gold deposits.

“We have been getting extraordinarily consistent results from the Cashe Zone,” Ursel says, “and consistent improvements in values with depth.”

A reserve figure of 3.5 million tons grading 0.25 oz gold per ton is a commonly accepted threshold for making a mine in the area.

A 6-month shipping season, “easy” overland transportation during the winter months and airport facilities being upgraded to military specifications at Rankin Inlet mean the area is not as geographically remote as some believe, Ursel says. Gold is not the only target on the 2,000-acre claims held by Noble Peak. Car-size glacial boulders consisting of massive sulphides have been located about 0.6 miles “down ice” of significant conductors identified in recent airborne geophysical surveys.

In the past two years, the company has established a reasonable indication of the gold and base metal potential of the area, which has been compared with the Abitibi greenstone belt by the Geological Survey of Canada.

Borealis Exploration’s (ASE) interest in Noble Peak has been reduced to less than 10%.

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