Kenrich-Eskay starts drilling Smitty, C10 areas
2005-08-05 13:37 ET - News Release
Mr. Wally Boguski reports
UPDATE ON 2005 EXPLORATION PROGRAM
Kenrich-Eskay Mining Corp. has made substantial progress with its 2005 exploration program. The recommended field program is strongly on track. Numerous drill targets are prepared for an intensified drill program in August and September, 2005. Two drills are active in this program as of July 28, 2005.
The 2004 program was very successful in identifying numerous Eskay-type geochemical signatures, thus focusing the continuing prospecting and geological work. The 2005 follow-up work commenced early on the lower, snow-free elevations, affording the exploration crews an additional eight weeks of field time, prior to the start of the usual exploration season in the Eskay area. Exploration for Eskay-type massive sulphide deposits requires a thorough base of data to obtain success and the company's management is pleased with the strong pace of drill targeting achieved so far this season.
First batch of analytical results upgrades the Virginia Lake and Double Mac zones
By the end of July, a total of 859 rock samples had been shipped to Acme Labs, 455 for basic ICP-MS geochemical analysis and 404 for whole rock lithogeochemical analysis. Greater than 200 additional stream sediment samples have been submitted to Acme Labs to date. The first batch of data for the 2005 program has now been received. Preliminary evaluation of the results confirms the anomalous, geochemical character of the Virginia Lake-Battlement area in the northwest part of the property. Subsequent follow-up geological mapping and lithogeochemistry have shown that this area contains perhaps the most extensive areas of favourable rhyolites and mudstones on the property, including highly favourable transitional to tholeiitic rhyolites and dacites. Some are identical to the Eskay rhyolites and are interbedded with mudstones that are anomalous in silver, gold, zinc and mercury. These rocks occupy a belt that may be continuous for up to three kilometres north to south, comprising an exceptional drill target for Eskay-type massive sulphide deposits.
Follow-up to the successful 2004 stream sediment geochemical survey is well under way. Rock sampling has identified bedrock with anomalous geochemistry in numerous locations, especially in the South Unuk, Cumberland and Virginia Lake areas, providing a confident definition of drill targets. For example, prospecting in Konkin Creek on the South Unuk grid has identified a new zone of alteration and vein mineralization, which expands the area of gold-silver-rich veining of the Double Mac zone. A selected sample of a thin massive sulphide-sulphosalt vein from this location returned assays grading 38.6 grams per tonne gold, 2,484 g/t silver and 3.0 per cent Cu. Three selected samples from Double Mac, located 100 metres away, from the 2004 program returned three to five g/t Au. Drilling commenced last week on this zone, employing the ultraportable drill rig owned by the company.
Continuing sampling is targeting the prospective Eskay-equivalent mudstones to the south of and at the same stratigraphic position as the Smitty zone. These areas were inaccessible in the early parts of the 2005 program but are now being delineated for drill targets. These mudstones lie upslope of numerous stream sediment anomalies that have an Eskay-like silver-zinc-antimony-arsenic signature and have a strike length of over three kilometres and thicknesses locally in excess of 100 metres.
Diamond drilling -- first five holes of a planned 50-hole program completed
Concurrent with the early start to the 2005 season, a limited five-hole drilling program was started on the Smitty zone and a total of 917 metres of core was drilled in five holes. All results have been now been received. Discovered in 2004, the Smitty zone is an exceptionally promising lens of zinc- and silver-rich massive sulphide that contains the same lead isotope signature as the Eskay Creek deposit located 10 kilometres to the north of Corey. The five drill holes completed on the Smitty zone show the characteristic mudstone, rhyolite-rich tuffaceous mudstones and basalts of the Eskay horizon, but show the massive sulphide horizon itself is locally disrupted by basalt flows and sills forming during the same time interval. Consistent with the geology of an Eskay system, all drill holes intersected intervals of laminated, semi-massive to massive pyrite, and anomalous concentrations of zinc, arsenic and antimony. The actual Smitty zinc-silver-bearing massive sulphide outcrop and rare debris flow fragments of zinc-bearing massive sulphide in the drill core indicate that richer massive sulphides formed in close proximity to this round of drill holes.
Focus of the upcoming August drilling at Smitty will shift to aggressively testing this highly prospective succession at wider step-outs from the showing itself to target more proximal facies sulphide mineralization.
Multiple Eskay-type targets scheduled for drilling in an intensive August-September program
An intensive second round of drilling commenced on July 26. Two diamond drills are on site. This phase will comprise 5,000 metres of drilling at several targets, including expanded drilling in the Smitty area, as well as the C10 zone located on the eastern flank of Mount Madge. During the drilling at Smitty and C10, targets on the Cumberland, HSOV, Virginia Lake and the southern flank of Mount Madge will be prepared for drilling, among numerous zones in the company's inventory of highest-priority drill targets.
Drilling is under way on the C10 zone that contains an extensive zone of intense quartz-sericite-pyrite hydrothermal alteration hosted by rift-related transitional to tholeiitic mafic rocks. This style of alteration is consistent with footwall or feeder-zone-style alteration zone below a volcanogenic massive sulphide deposit and is similar in nature to the extensive zones of altered and gossanous footwall rocks in the vicinity of the Eskay Creek deposit. The C10 alteration zone and its up-section equivalent rocks will be extensively tested during the August diamond drilling.
The information contained in this document has been reviewed by Sean McKinley, MSc, PGeo, a qualified person as defined by National Instrument 43-101.