Isaac's Harbour.....Update
CIH-99-5
March 28, 1999 - Sunday, we are 412 meters of depth. Progress for the week has been slow due to maintenance, a coring bit change and now, Sunday we have to shut down and pull the drill stem again as the constant quartz zones are wearing out the bits very fast. Another bit change was completed Sunday and we are ready to continue boring hole on Monday.
These bit changes are great news from a discovery point of view. We have been hitting very rich veins. For example, from 408.8 meters to 396.4 meters we have hit quartz and sulfide veins of rich mineralization, many visible gold sightings. Vein widths in centimeters include: 1, 30, 10, 2, 5, 1, 10, 10, 40, 2, 5, 4, 20, 60, 10, 20, 10, 7, 10, 8, 70, 2, 1.2, 1, 1, 1.5. These 26 veins are spread over just 12 meters and represent 28.4% of the width.
We will probably end this hole in a few days and leave the casing in place so we may re-enter the hole later with a BQ core and continue deeper. We are 300 meters (1000 feet) deeper than the old workings and it keeps getting better.
The old workings are starting to shed a great deal of light as Doug has been entering ramp #2 further as the de-watering allows access. We have found many old timbers still intact with the White Spruce still in perfect condition, hard and white. We now know about the under ground trolley system. They were using hand-sawn wooden rails and steel-wheeled carts to haul the ore back to the surface. Wood planks rough-cut of 2-inches thick, 16-inches wide and 20 feet long were used as the rail system (this is the pre-metric days of the 1890's).
Saturday we pulled a great deal of core, with the new bit, boring was good. In the last 60 meters we have had 55 veins of quartz and very excellent sulfides. This is the best of the hole #5 core to date.
Friday we pulled more cores. Things are looking better all the time as we ponder how to continue to great depths with this small rig. We are using NQ (2-inch) core and it is getting heavy. The drill stem now weighs 7 tons while the rig weighs only 8 tons.
Thursday was mostly a lost day, as we had to change the drill bit. At this depth it took all day to pull the pipe and then send down the new bit with the full length of drill stem. We are getting very deep for this rig and may have to switch over to BQ (1-inch) core because of weight problems. |
