Rainy River completes sampling at Rainy River project
2005-08-16 18:25 ET - News Release
Mr. Nelson Baker reports
RAINY RIVER PROJECT AN 84-HOLE RC DRILLING PROGRAM COMPLETED
Rainy River Resources Ltd. has completed an 84-hole reverse circulation heavy mineral till sampling program on the company's 100-per-cent-owned Rainy River project located in the Kenora mining district, Northwestern Ontario.
Over the past 30 years, Overburden Drilling Management Ltd., under the direction of Stu Averill, has perfected a very effective exploration tool for tracing gold, copper and zinc and other heavy mineral grains lying within a glacially transported till layer above the bedrock surface "up-ice" to their bedrock source. When clay layers occur as part of the overburden, this procedure of following gold or other minerals up-ice far exceeds other standard exploration methods such as geophysics in targeting new mineral discoveries when bedrock is sparse or non-existent locally. Such is the case for the Rainy River project.
Between 1994 and 1997, Nuinsco Resources Ltd., using reverse circulation heavy mineral sampling, delineated the "largest and most intensely gold-anomalous till layer ever encountered on a reverse circulation program in Canada, much larger in fact that the anomaly that led to the discovery of the Casa Berardi gold deposits in Quebec." Subsequent standard drill testing by Nuinsco along the eastern margins of this large gold anomaly resulted in the blind discoveries of two gold-rich deposits, the No. 17 gold zone and the 433 zone, both shallow water deposited pyroclastic flows associated with the Richardson Caldera structure. The potential for discovering other blind, perhaps commercial-grade, deposits is considered to be high.
Two important studies on the Richardson Caldera gold mineralization conducted by Dr. L.D. Ayers, a noted volcanologist now retired from University of Manitoba, and by Dr. James M. Franklin, a prominent consulting geologist with over 30 years of experience in the study of Bousquet-style (16.5 million ounces of gold) mineral deposits, both concluded that the No. 17 gold zone closely resembles that of the prolific Thompson-Bousquet mining camp, Canada's fourth largest mining district in the Abitibi greenstone belt and has substantial similarities to the Sturgeon Lake area in Northwestern Ontario. Both of these analogues are shallow water deposited, gold-rich VMS (volcanogenic massive sulphide) deposits and are multiple deposit systems.
Beginning in early June, a total of 84 reverse circulation holes in the southern portion of the Richardson Caldera in the vicinity of the No. 17 Gold zone and the 433 zone were completed. The purpose of this program was to explore for other blind gold and base metal zones within the Richardson Caldera that may have been missed by previous exploration. Results from this program are expected near the end of this month.