Red Eagle tickled pink with Santa Rosa in Colombia

Colombia-­focused junior 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, although the final drilling from phase one did not fare as well.

Hole 42 was the more significant of the two released, returning 70 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 at 70 degrees — hit 7 metres grading 1.96 grams gold from 68 metres downhole, and then 35 metres grading 0.63 gram gold from 113 metres downhole.

The two assay results are the only ones Red Eagle has received from the 19 holes it has drilled in the 4,000-metre, phase-two program. The company plans to drill 24 core holes in the 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, east of the same shear zone that hole 3 first hit last November. Hole 3 intersected 40 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 program in its third phase to test the near-surface saprolite and oxides over the length of the known gold mineralization. The drill program will be used in a resource estimate to be calculated on the San Ramon shear zone later this year.

The company will also incorporate metallurgical results in the resource estimate that Red Eagle recently released. Using a fairly high-grade oxide sample grading 7.4 grams gold, testing showed that an optimized crush size of half-an-inch would release 85.3% of the gold after 144 hours. A sulphide sample grading 24.3 grams gold showed a 94.6% recovery after 48 hours. The company has submitted lower-grade samples for further testing, and is also initiating a bulk-sampling program.

Red Eagle 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 and almost none hit economic gold grades.

The exceptions were hole 29, which hit 1 metre of 6.12 grams gold from 140 metres depth and 1 metre of 9.66 grams gold from 363 metres downhole, and hole 31, which returned 2 metres of 5.18 grams gold from 137 metres downhole, and 1 metre of 13.3 grams gold from 165 metres depth.

The company expects to 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 also 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 30 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 oz. gold equivalent on a 20-hectare block within the property to the project vendors.

Red Eagle’s share price closed up 2¢ at 40¢ on the latest news. The company started trading a little under a year ago and has had a share-price range between 27¢ and $1.35. The company ended March with $5.7 million in working capital and 36.1 million shares outstanding.