Goldcliff sees Growing Bulk Tonnage Opportunity at Panorama Ridge
By Katherine Young
The world’s most powerful currency just received a slap in the face by the world’s top earning supermodel. Gisele Bundchen, has insisted on being paid in Euros rather than US dollars. When even supermodels are making news by protecting their wealth from the plummeting US dollar, gold becomes foremost on investors’ minds. Of course, gold is widely considered a hedge against the dollar and so far, following the decline of the greenback, the gold price has responded as expected. Gold has increased relative to not just the American dollar, but to the other major currencies across the world. And many predict an unprecedented further acceleration in the price of gold. Goldcliff Resource Corp’s President, George Sanders, points out the enormous opportunity for investors to leverage their exposure to the rising gold price by investing in a gold resource like Panorama Ridge, Goldcliff’s 100% owned flagship gold property.
Although Goldcliff has thus far focused on reporting drilling results from a few high-grade zones on the property, according to Sanders, Panorama Ridge in fact has substantial bulk tonnage, open pit potential. In addition to the high-grade gold that Goldcliff is drilling, Sanders explains that in today’s gold market the low-grade material at Panorama is becoming economic, and in turn substantially increasing the potential size of the Panorama resource.
“We’ve been focused on the material right around a gram per tonne and in excess of a gram and we’re finding lots of potential tonnage of that material, but that material occurs within an even bigger envelope of low grade material. As these gold prices move higher, that lower grade material starts to become of serious economic interest. It moves into a resource category as you’re able to lower your cut-off grades.”
Focused in British Columbia adjacent to the historic and prolific Mascot Mine, Goldcliff is in the midst of a 10,000m drill program that is slated to wrap up in the spring of 2008 with resource estimates to follow soon after. Results from the Panorama Ridge property, concentrating on the high grade York/Viking and Nordic zones, will arrive over the next weeks and months as Goldcliff’s drilling results make their way through queues at the assay labs.
Highlights published thus far have included 1.56 g/t gold over 40.84m including 3.05 g/t gold over 19.23m and 5.24 g/t gold over 8.56m and 31.2 g/t gold over 0.25m at the Nordic zones. Highlights from the York/Viking zone include 58.27m of 1.01 g/t gold, 38.01m of 1.19 g/t gold, and 27.88m of 1.05 g/t gold.
The Panorama Ridge story began one afternoon in 2000 when geologists Leonard Saleken and Grant Crooker drove up the Nickel Plate Road only four kilometers from the Nickel Plate Mascot Mine near Hedley, BC. There they discovered new logging roads that extended into terrain with favourable outcrop and similar geology to the Mascot Mine area. Saleken and Crooker knew the potential of what they had. Immediately, they checked the records for previous claims. They found none and excitedly began the process of staking ground. Today Goldcliff has over 4,000 hectares in claims at Panorama Ridge and a growing body of significant exploration results.
Geographic proximity to the Mascot Mine is one advantage that Goldcliff has exploited. However, it doesn’t end there. Three members of the Goldcliff team, Leonard Saleken, Chairman and chief geologist, Paul Saxton, director and mining engineer, and Edwin Rockel, geophysicist, worked at the Mascot open pit in the 1980s and 90s when it produced over 1.0 million ounces of gold. Sanders points out that Mascot and Panorama have the same geological setting and same style of mineralization, “so in a sense our guys have already ‘been there and done that’. The whole team has been involved in more than one successful junior where deposits have been developed into ore bodies or companies have been sold to bigger companies. So we do have a lot of experience under our belts.”
Another important strategy the Goldcliff team has executed is the acquisition of two other British Columbia properties. Sanders explains, “the additional assets we’ve acquired in the last year [the Ainsworth and Plug properties] augment the company’s portfolio. While they’re early stage assets, we’re pretty excited about those and they could be a real sleeper value to the valuation of the company.”
The carefully selected 2,735 hectare Plug Project is located at the Merrit-Logan Lake epithermal gold-silver belt, and the 56,997 hectare Ainsworth Silver Project is in the Kootenays. Although both are early stage projects, optimism for the Plug project is punctuated by two showings, the Plug showing of 4.35 g/t gold and 52.2 g/t silver over 11.98m including 20.78 g/t gold and 113.0 g/t silver; and the Meadow showing of 2.24 g/t gold and 400.6 g/t silver over 4.44m including 6.14 g/t gold and 1715.0 g/t silver.
A news release dated Feb. 15, 2007 detailed the value of the Ainsworth project: “The claim holdings contain old silver producers and a number of strongly anomalous silver, copper, molybdenum, lead, zinc and gold values. Goldcliff’s interpretation of the region’s geological, geochemical and geophysical data established an exploration model for mega-silver-deposit discoveries in the region. The region has historical silver production of 85 million ounces silver.”
With these three properties, the experienced Goldcliff team has strategically situated the company both next to a past-producing mine, and on the crest of a possible gold tsunami.
This article is intended for information purposes only, and is not a recommendation to buy or sell the equities of any company mentioned herein. It is based on sources believed to be reliable, but no warranty as to accuracy is expressed or implied. The opinions expressed in the article are those of the author except where statements are attributed to individuals other than the author, in which case the opinions are those of the individual to whom they are attributed.
