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Gold/Mining/Energy : Int'l Wayside Gold Mines Ltd (IWA-VSE) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gil Kempenich who wrote (1115)	5/12/2000 11:01:00 PM
From: teevee	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1321

Gil, Northern Miner Vol. 86 Number 11 By Richard Graham As its drill program continues to cut bonanza-grade gold values over considerable widths, International Wayside Gold Mines (IWA-V) has hired an independent geological consulting firm to verify the presence, location and grade of a newly discovered mineralized zone on its Cariboo property in north-central British Columbia. The new program, to be carried out by Vancouver-based Panterra Geoservices, will include a format for logging and sampling drill core, as well as petrographic studies and re-sampling of several mineralized intervals. The firm was hired after a number of mining analysts expressed concerns over the method of core sampling used and the general lack of security for core waiting to be logged. Especially worrisome was the whole-core analysis of portions of reportedly mineralized intervals. Wayside says it had ordered analyses on whole cores because the closely spaced rock cleavage made the core extremely friable and difficult to cut. The company also stated that, in some intervals with poor recovery, it had sent whole cores for analysis. Normal industry practice is to cut or split the mineralized core and send half in for analysis, leaving the remaining half as a permanent record of the intersection. The interval can then be visually inspected and re-analyzed, if warranted, at some future date. Analyzing the whole core makes it impossible to perform an accurate check on the assay value of the intersection; and since no mineralized core is left behind, the observations of the drill site geologist cannot be verified. If the core is highly friable or intensely clay-altered, the common practice is to wrap it up in adhesive tape prior to rock sawing, resulting in an even cut and allowing the half core to remain as a permanent record. In a further attempt to quell concerns and maintain analytical integrity, the company has initiated new procedures for handling and storing core, including construction of a fully secure core-handling facility. The junior has come under scrutiny in recent weeks since announcing the discovery of a new gold zone in the footwall of the BC quartz vein, a former producer on its Cariboo gold property in the Barkerville area, where a placer gold mining rush occurred in the 1860s. Gold mineralization is said to be held in phyllites, altered to a tan-coloured rock with abundant sericite and semi-massive-to-massive pyrite bodies -- markedly different from the previously discovered gold-bearing quartz veins in the area but somewhat similar to the pyrite-rich replacement ores that formed the great bulk of material mined historically. The replacement ores formed in manto-like bodies replacing limestone, and carried substantially higher grades than the quartz veins -- above 0.6 oz. per ton. There are two differences: Wayside's pyrite bodies are in phyllite beds rather than limestone, and the new zone contains no visible carbonates, typically (and predictably) abundant in the replacement ores. The gold values received by Wayside correlate well with the amount of pyrite mineralization in the core, and several bonanza-grade gold spikes over 6-ft. intervals suggest the presence of coarse gold. Even at relatively high grades, gold in replacement bodies tends to be finer than in veins, and the producing replacement bodies had little visible gold. Wayside confirmed that there was no visible gold in the new zone and that "spiky" results had tended to correlate with more finely grained pyrite. The latest hot results came from hole BC-13, which cut 109 ft. averaging 0.309 oz. gold, starting at a down-hole depth of 245 ft. The interval included several higher-grade sections, including a 10-ft. length averaging 0.341 oz. gold per ton; 12 ft. of 0.794 oz.; and 15 ft. averaging 0.758 oz. The junior has since completed another hole, BC-17, and moved the rig 200 ft. to the northwest. Wayside optioned the Cariboo claims in 1994 with the goal of defining an open-pit resource around the old underground mine operations. The recent drilling, which led to the discovery of the new gold zone, was an attempt to locate the extension of the BC Vein structure to the southeast of the Cariboo Gold Quartz mine.