Red Eagle hits high-grade infill at Santa Rosa

VANCOUVER — Colombia explorer Red Eagle Mining (RD-V) has hit encouraging high grade gold intercepts in a phase two drill program at its Santa Rosa project near Medellin, while the final drilling from the phase one program did not fare as well.

Hole 42 was the more significant of the two drill results from phase two released so far, returning 66.9 metres averaging 3.06 grams gold per tonne starting at 139 metres downhole and including a 6 metre intercept grading 31.85 grams gold from 184 metres depth. Hole 41, drilled from the same pad as 42 but at a 45 degree angle rather than 70 degrees, hit 7 metres grading 1.96 grams gold from 68 metres downhole, and then 34.6 metres grading 0.63 gram gold from 113 metres downhole.

The two assay results are the only ones Red Eagle has received so far from the 19 holes it has drilled in the phase two program, totalling about 4,000 metres. Overall the company plans to drill 24 core holes in the phase two program to fill in the widely-spaced drilling of phase one that established the San Ramon trend over 1,800 metres in length and up to 60 metres in width.

Holes 41 and 42 were designed to intersect at higher elevations and to the east the same shear zone that hole 3 first hit last November. Hole 3 intersected 39.7 metres grading 1.35 grams gold, or 1.59 grams gold with no top cut. Results from holes 41 and 42 do not have a top cut applied.  

Once the company has completed phase two it will start a 5,000-metre, 36-hole phase 3 program to test the near-surface saprolite and oxides over the length of the known gold mineralization. The drill program, combined with preliminary metallurgical test work, will go towards finishing a resource estimate on the San Ramon shear zone later this year.

Red Eagle has also released drill results from holes 24 to 40 that made up the rest of the phase one drill program. The exploratory holes were designed to target anomalies outside the San Ramon deposit, though almost none of them hit economic gold grades. The only exceptions were holes 29, which hit 1 metre grading 6.12 grams gold from 140 metres depth and then 1 metre grading 9.66 grams gold from 363 metres downhole, and 31, which returned 1.5 metres grading 5.18 grams gold from 137 metres downhole and 1.2 metres carrying 13.3 grams gold from 165 metres depth.

The company should also soon release drill results from its Pavo Real project near Ibague, where it finished a 3,400-metre, 10-hole drill program in May. Red Eagle has already launched a new drill program at the Mina Vieja brownfield copper-gold target not far from Pavo Real, with several holes completed.

In early May the company finalized the option agreement on Pavo Real, whereby it can earn in 100% of the 9.5-sq.-km property by paying US$535,000 over thirty months. Red Eagle still has to pay US$4.5 million to secure Santa Rosa, plus the greater of US$2 million or US$15 per gold eq. oz. on a 20-ha block within the property to the project vendors.

Red Eagle’s share jumped as much as 7¢ on the latest news before closing up 2¢ or 6% at 37¢. The company started trading a little under a year ago and has had a share price range between $1.35 and 27¢. The company ended March with $5.7 million in working capital and 36.1 million shares outstanding.