Nevada, Noranda make significant find

The Grew Creek discovery of Noranda Exploration and Golden Nevada Resources appears to be the most significant gold discovery in the Yukon Territory in many years. And for Murray Pezim, Golden Nevada’s chairman, it looks like the biggest thing he has been involved with since Hemlo.

Pezim has been keeping a fairly low profile in recent years — with the exception of a few well- publicized scuffles with senior executives in the International Corona Group. But that relationship has since been patched up (indeed it has hardly ever been better) and Pezim has been concentrating on what he does best: financing new gold discoveries.

Pezim describes Grew Creek as “a major new gold discovery” and given the latest results from holes 87-17 and 19 he may be right. The first returned 20.2-ft grading 0.33 oz gold from 463.6 to 483.8-ft which also included 8.8-ft of 0.75 oz and 4.9-ft averaging 1.24 oz. A second hole, No 87-19, yielded a wide intercept of 75 ft averaging 0.277 oz from 270 to 345-ft which included 40-ft of 0.49 oz and 5-ft of 2.5 oz.

Anomalous gold values were reported in hole No 87-18 over a core interval of 79.1 ft from 498.7-577.8 ft. The best result here was 0.11 oz gold over 4.4 ft.

Noranda is operator for the project and Galveston Explorations, another Pezim Group company, is providing management and consulting services for Golden Nevada.

The president of Galveston Explorations, Chet Idziszek, told The Northern Miner that the gold values occur in a tuff horizon which is open to the north, east and west. This horizon has been indicated for a distance of at least 1,200 ft; the main mineral is pyrite which typically runs 1-2%. They are getting minor mercury and arsenic (in parts per billion), a lack of which indicates they are out of the ore zone.

All drill holes have penetrated the tuff horizon and he says it’s difficult if not impossible to determine whether the hole carries gold by visual inspection. They can correlate values from hole to hole, he adds. Assay returns have taken 3-4 weeks but it should take less time now because Noranda has started sending out assay pulps, he notes.

At time of writing, Noranda was drilling hole No 26 and assay results were pending for seven holes. Once the backlog is cleared up Noranda will be adding a second drill, he confirms. The zone does come to surface to the west and he believes part of it could be open pitable. Earlier work on the property was directed at the low grade bulk tonnage potential so the latest results are a real bonus. Drill hole spacing has been 50 m but they are closing this up to 25 m to more accurately assess the discovery.

The property straddles a major highway and is close to Faro where Curragh Resources operates a major zinc-lead-silver mine. There is power available and the property is readily accessible by road. All these factors should weigh heavily in production feasibility. Golden Nevada can earn a 50% interest in the project for $1 million in expenditures and the company has spent about $300,000 so far; the joint venture’s budget is open-ended given the significance of the find, Idziszek says.