Homestake Project - NW British Columbia VMS and Gold Exploration Targets
The Homestake Ridge Project is favourably located within the Iskut-Stewart-Kitsault Belt approximately 32km north-northwest of the tidewater communities of Alice Arm and Kitsault, BC, with road access within six kilometres. The Homestake Ridge property comprises 26 mineral claims containing 151 units and seven crown grants for a total area of 2,585 ha in the Skeena Mining Division with specific claims subject to a 2% net smelter return (NSR).
Location of the Homestake Ridge Project, NW BC
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Infrastructure Highlights:
Superior access
32km to tidewater at Alice Arm by historic roadway
Road access to within 6km of property
Synergies with proposed hydro-development projects and existing infrastructure
Exploration on the property has identified two major accumulations of gold and silver mineralization of potential economic significance, known as the Main Homestake and Homestake Silver deposits. Mineralization is hosted within a complex sequence of lower to middle Jurassic sedimentary, volcanic and intrusive rocks of the Hazelton Group which elsewhere in the Iskut-Stewart-Kitsault Belt have hosted multiple past producing mines (>1MMoz gold) and major mineral deposits.
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Major Deposits Highlights: To date the area has produced
7mm+ oz Au
220mm+ oz Ag
3b+ lbs Cu
43-101 compliant resources and reserves of:
65mm+ oz Au
25b+ lbs. Cu
Since acquisition of the property in 2003, the Company has aggressively explored the Homestake Ridge project and, by the end of 2009, had completed 168 diamond drill holes on the project for a total of 40,811.8 metres at a cost of +$18 million.
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Property Highlights
1,850m+ strike-length of precious metal mineralization from the Homestake Main to the Homestake Silver
Main Homestake Deposit:
123 Drill Holes
28,836 metres
Homestake Silver Deposit:
27 Drill Holes
8,890 metres
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In June 2010, the company issued a NI 43-101 compliant Technical Report on the Project which reported an indicated resource of 191,000 ounces of gold and 1,350,000 ounces of silver contained within 888,000 tonnes and inferred resources of 348,000 ounces of gold and 7,990,000 ounces of silver contained within 2,340,000 tonnes with an average cut-off grade of 3.0 g/t gold equivalent .
The resource update, project audit and preliminary engineering work on project was conducted by Scott Wilson Roscoe Postle Associates Inc. (Scott Wilson RPA), who continue advise on pre-development and engineering aspects of the program. Melis Engineering Ltd. designed and oversaw metallurgical testing and reporting, All North Consultants is responsible for road design. Ridgeview Resources advises on permitting and environmental testing. Coast Mountain Geological Consultants is the primary geological contractor for the project and manages the in-field operations,
Scott Wilson RPA reported “that the updated Mineral Resources estimate is lower in tonnes and higher in grade than the previous estimate in 2007. The differences are due to a number of conflicting influences, some of which increased resources and some which resulted in a decrease. Additional Mineral Resources were discovered in the Homestake Silver Zone. Some of the Inferred Mineral Resources were upgraded to the Indicated category. The cut-off grade was changed to an AuEq, which would have resulted in a modest increase in resources. Finally, the cut-off was increased to 3.0 g/t AuEq from 0.5 g/t Au to reflect a change from an open pit mining scenario to underground.”
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The company has now have clear guidance from Scott Wilson RPA’s work that the best economic path for Homestake will be via underground mining, which requires higher grades than an open pit, but which also requires far less surface disturbance and generally requires less initial capital for mine construction. The June 2010 Technical Report includes recommendations for further drilling to fully delineate the currently open mineralization at the Homestake Silver deposit and to test priority drill targets identified in surface exploration and in recently acquired geophysical surveys.
Table 1: At a cut-off of 3.0g/t Aueq the current Mineral Resource estimate is as follows:
Table 2: Summary of significant assays from the Homestake Silver zone
Historical Exploration
Mineral occurrences on the property have been known since 1914. Modern work on the property, by Newmont Canada, Cambria Resources and Noranda, from 1979 to 1991, included mapping, surface sampling, trenching and limited diamond drilling. Much of this work targeted mineralization, similar to that at Red Mountain as well as epithermal mineralization in the Crown Grant area. Teck Cominco's work from 2000 to 2002 focused on the VMS potential of the property. Teck Cominco drill tested a small portion of the prospective stratigraphy and returned narrow but highly anomalous Au-Ag-Zn-As-Hg-Sb values along the "Eskay-type" horizon.
Exploration Models
Mineralization at Homestake Ridge is spatially associated with a large
volcanic center which occurs within the highly prolific
Iskut-Stewart-Kitsault Belt. Over 80 separate mineral occurrences are
located throughout the property and include extensive areas of precious
and base metal mineralization related to the emplacement of a series of
intrusive stocks and felsic dome complexes into the
volcanic-sedimentary package.
Target deposit types include:
Silbak-Premier (4.3Mt @ 13.0 g/t Au, 273 g/t Ag): Hosted by lower to
middle Jurassic andesitic to dacitic volcanics, ore zones formed a
series of en-echelon high-grade lenses associated with strong
silicification, sericite-kspar alteration and pyritization of the host
rock.
Eskay Creek (2.6Mt @ 48.4 g/t Au, 2152 g/t Ag, 4.2% Zn, 2.5% Pb and
0.5% Cu): arguably the most significant economic discovery in BC of the
last 15 years, this precious-metal rich VMS deposit is believed to be
transitional between classic Kuroko VMS and High-Sulphidation
Epithermal systems.
Red Mountain (12Mt @ 2.54 g/t Au): gold-copper mineralization is hosted
by the phases of the Goldslide Intrusions and includes a high-grade
core of 1.26Mt @ 8.0g/t Au.
Silver Basin Project, NW British Columbia, Silver/Copper/Gold
Bravo has an option to acquire 100% interest in the Silver Basin Project which is located 14 km southeast of Bravo’s Homestake Ridge project in NW British Columbia.
The Silver Basin Project consists of a single amalgamated claim of 760 ha. Bravo can acquire 100% interest, subject to a royalty of 1.5% of which up to 1% can be purchased for $1million, by making staged payments totaling $200,000 and incurring $500,000 in expenditures over a four-year period.
The only modern work at the project has been surface sampling, even though the geologic setting is similar to nearby Homestake Ridge project and the Dolly Varden silver camp. Hazelton volcanic and sedimentary rocks underlie the project, which is the same package of rocks that host the bonanza-grade Eskay Creek mine farther north. Grab and select rock chip samples at Silver Basin contain concentrations that range from background levels up to 8920g/t silver, 25.8% copper, and 0.98g/t gold. The geological study and sampling completed during 2007 assisted in developing drill targets for testing in 2008. Historic production from the adjacent Dolly Varden camp was in excess of 20,000,000 ozs Ag.
President Joe Kizis said, “The Silver Basin Project provides Bravo shareholders with another exciting project near our existing 100% owned Homestake Ridge Project.” Both projects lie within or immediately adjacent to the Kitsault River drainage. This provides several operational advantages, including road access from Alice Arm and nearby deep-water tide water north to a hydropower station being developed at Kitsault Lake. The road lies between the Homestake and Silver Basin projects, approximately <1 km at its closest point to Homestake and 6 km at its closest point to Silver Basin.