No doubt some of this years 50,000 meter drill program will be testing the "yellow-chris" zone, located west of the Main deposit. From old data below, it seems clear that Red-Chris deposit size will grow by another 50% or more:
During 1995 American Bullion Minerals Ltd. (80 per cent) and Teck Corporation (20 per cent) conducted the largest exploration program in the province totalling approximately 36,830 metres in 115 diamond-drill holes. Drilling traced mineralization over a strike length in excess of 3 kilometres, adding approximately 400 metres of strike length to the Red-Chris deposit. It has also resulted in the identifying of potential new reserves in the Gully and Far West zones, collectively referred to as the Yellow-Chris zone located within about 1 kilometre of the western limit of the Red-Chris deposit. Some support for part of this work was from the Explore B.C. Program. At the beginning of the year, Fluor Daniel Wright Ltd. calculated mining reserves, based on a cutoff grade of 0.3 per cent copper in an open pit 300 metres deep, at 157 million tonnes grading 0.48 per cent copper and 0.37 gram per tonne gold. Two near-surface, higher grade stockwork copper-gold zones containing 100 million tonnes grading 0.58 per cent copper and 0.46 gram per tonne gold are potential starter pits (Information Circular 1996-1, pages 14,15).
The Gully zone is an east-trending area of quartz stockwork copper-gold mineralization. Ash (Fieldwork 1995) reported that 36 holes had outlined two parallel, subvertical intervals of copper-gold mineralization to a depth of roughly 300 metres that were separated by an unmineralized interval of gypsum stockwork, probably along a later fault. Roughly two-thirds of the mineralization is hosted by altered Red stock. The remainder is contained within a contact zone of sheeted Red stock with screens of feldspathic wacke country rock.
On the Far West zone, which occupies the northern part of the Yellow-Chris zone, copper-gold mineralization has been intersected to a depth of 250 metres over a 700-metre length with widths varying from 150 to 250 metres. Mineralization is hosted by both the Red stock and volcanic sediments. Grades are from 0.2 to 0.4 per cent copper with corresponding gold values in the range of 0.2 to 0.4 per cent copper. |
