Saul, your question regarding how much of the Buffalo Valley property
has been explored.
The following was prepared by Joe Kizis of Fairmile Gold Corp:
Fairmile has drilled 238 holes since acquiring the Buffalo Valley
property in 1993. Each hole disturbs a surface area of approximately
0.06 acres; thus, approximately 14.28 acres have been affected by
drilling. This works out to about 0.2% of Fairmile's 8200-acre land
position. Exploration by previous operators would not significantly
increase this percentage.
It is very subjective as to how much ground each of these holes
actually evaluates, particularly because approximately 70% of the
Buffalo Valley property is covered by alluvium (sand, clay and gravel
which was laid down after gold was deposited in the underlying rock).
It would be much easier to determine the limits of the geologic
targets if they were not hidden under the alluvium. Indirect
geophysical and geochemical exploration techniques can assist us in
evaluating these covered targets; however, drill data is absolutely
necessary. Much of the 1997 exploration program at Buffalo Valley was
designed to acquire at least some drill data on all of the 19 Target
Areas that have been identified as being prospective. In amny cases
this resulted in only 1 or 2 holes over very large areas. Only Target
Areas A, B, C, F, and O have received more than 10 holes each, and
either a Resource or Other Mineralization has been delineated at each
of these.
Fairmile has continuously re-prioritized targets as new information is
received and our geologic understanding of the property has advanced.
This has resulted in our very low finding costs (compared to others in
the industry) of about $10 per resource ounce. Drilling at some
targets, such as Targets Q and R, have shown bedrock lies beneath
thick alluvium; thus, a small number of holes shows that these targets
are not prospective for open-pitable gold mineralization. We have
continued to add or modify geologic targets to replace those that have
negatively tested; thus, we feel that we have still not completely
tested more than 10% of the shallow potential at Buffalo Valley. In
addition to the shallow potential, there is considerable deep
potential at Buffalo Valley. The deep potential is largely untested
at this time.
With regard to the high-grade intercept at Target F, this
mineralization is not included in any of the current Resource or Other
Mineralization catagories because offset holes contain lower grade
gold mineralization. The mineralization in this portion of Target F is
too deep for open pit mining and not continuous enough to consider for
underground mining. Fairmile traced this mineralization into
shallower areas to the southwest (South Zone of Target F) in 1996, and
we are currently tracing an extension of this mineralization to the
north (East Zone of Target F).
Regards,
Steve Stakiw |
