Bravada Gold (BVA.V) announced at the end of August diamond drilling was underway on the Highland gold-silver project where two core holes will be drilled into the Big Hammer area. The Highland drill program is still fully funded by mid-tier producer OceanaGold (OGC.TO, OGC.AX) as part of its joint venture agreement to earn a 75% interest in the project after spending US$10M in exploration on the Highland project. We talked to CEO Joe Kizis about these two Highland holes:
“For interpreting the x-section below, we are looking at patterns in many other xsections of CSAMT to the north and south of this individual line. In the center of this section (and in the others) are rocks that would have been deposited in a basin. In this case the long linear patterns connecting this with other lines indicate the sediments formed in a long N-S graben, which is a basin that formed in an extensional “pull apart”. Many low-sulfidation gold/silver deposits form in this type of environment. The Big Hammer rhyolitic dome/intrusion shows up as resistive, which makes sense as a dense rock, and the highly altered andesite around the dome shows up as more conductive (less resistive). The sediments deposited within the graben show up as the most conductive due to lower density filled with groundwater and widespread clay alteration.”
“These two holes were designed to test the western graben-margin faults, which are usually where the highest gold grades are often found at surface at Highland. CSAMT cannot detect sulfides like IP can, unfortunately. We must drill to determine if those faults were channel-ways for gold-rich fluids, or if they are barren, possibly formed after the gold event. We know there is gold on the western margin of this graben from our surface rock-chip sampling, so we drilled these “probable” faults that are interpreted from CSAMT and geological mapping where we have exposures at surface.”
Although labs are still very much backed up in Nevada, we do hope to see some assay results in the next few weeks but considering it took Fremont about a month longer than it anticipated to receive results from its Griffon drill project we may have to be patient and perhaps Bravada will start its Wind Mountain drill program before we see the Highland assay results.
At Wind Mountain, the area that will be drill-tested this winter is described as ‘the ultimate source for the large amount of disseminated gold and silver mineralization’ and Bravada’s deeper holes will now drill-test the theory.
Today is also the first trading day of the shares issued as part of the C$665,000 placement which closed in June. In that financing, Bravada Gold issued 8.3M units priced at C$0.08 per unit with each unit consisting of a common share and a full warrant allowing the warrant holder to acquire an additional share at C$0.15 for a period of three years. We can reasonably expect some selling to occur over the next few days.
Disclosure: The author has a long position in Bravada Gold. Bravada is a sponsor of the website.
