JUNIOR MINING

Great Basin Gold finds some remarkable gold and silver values at Hollister

Some spectacular bonanza gold and silver grades have been turned up by Great Basin Gold in a trial mining area at its Hollister mine in Nevada.

Author: Lawrence Williams
Posted: Tuesday , 09 Nov 2010

LONDON - 

Canadian/South African junior gold miner, Great Basin Gold, which is bringing the Hollister mine in Nevada, US and the Burnstone mine in South Africa into production, has encountered some dream gold and silver grades at the former.  While the grades encountered are not necessarily indicative of the likelihood of finding mare of the same tenor material at the operation the company has felt obliged to announce the find as it will be general knowledge amongst some of its employees and would be virtually certain to leak out, so the announcement is designed to caution investors and potential investors against building too much into the grades found at this stage.

Great Basin's statement says that trial mining in the Blanket Zone above the Main Clementine vein #18 at its Hollister project in Nevada has encountered bonanza grades.  Indeed some of the grades are quite spectacular.  Channel sampling encountered the bonanza grades over a strike distance of 170 feet (57 meters). Channel samples taken every 10 feet (3 meters) gave values ranging from a low of 1.5 oz/ton (52.0 g/t) gold and 3.2 oz/ton (111.9 g/t) silver to a high of 2,560.4 oz/ton (88,845.9 g/t) gold and 1,829.8 oz/ton (63,494.1 g/t) silver over channel widths from 0.3 to 2 feet wide!

The current trial mining area (stope) is continuously mineralized along its 180-foot (60-meter) length. Diluted over 3.5 feet (the width of the stope development), the average sample values were 66.4 oz/ton (2,404 g/t) gold and 78.5 oz/ton (2,723.9 g/t) silver. Muck piles have also been sampled; thefully diluted value of the muck samples taken from the stope to date averages 22.3 oz/t (773.8 g/t) gold and 23.4 oz/ton (811.9 g/t) silver.

Great Basin's President and CEO, Ferdi Dippenaar, commented: "In the past, we have identified the Blanket Zone as a target area worth exploring, and trial mining at the top of vein #18 has turned out to be a great way to test the prospective nature of this style of mineralization. Although we have encountered a limited amount of this high grade material through trial stoping, drilling is underway to determine the full extent of mineralization. More information will be made available as and when it becomes available."

It is early days yet to draw definitive conclusions from the findings.  The bonanza grade material could just be confined to a very limited area - but it does suggest that there may be other areas in the zone of other high grade material which could make a marked difference to mill grades - and could be extremely useful in generating some initial high levels of cashflow which could be invaluable in early mine construction.  One has to realise that the greater part of the operation would still be conducted mining more normal grades.  Stated ore reserves at this stage of development at Hollister are 1.12 million tonnes grading 28.91 g/t gold (high by many mines' standards) and 148 g/t silver at a cut off grade of 0.33 g/t gold.  It is ot an easy deposit to mine and bigger companies than Great Basin have walked away from it in the past.  But, gold prices have risen enormously - and the latest bonanza grades had not been discovered. 

It is a risky business bringing a mine to production and it helps if the operating company has a degree of luck going for it - and these bonanza grades could not have been anticipated, but will certainly raise more interest in the junior miner as it brings its operations to production.