RE: November 2006... Production aside... read this re: exploration potential... yet since this article (2006) there was very little to no explortion drilling at Borealis to this day... WHY?... now they are actually producing... probably (or should be) mining new ore... yet here we are... 2 person BoD and 1 person running the office... what the heck is going on?
"Analysis of the data indicated the large pediment area was fundamentally underexplored but the known high-sulphidation environment at Borealis could be a clue to larger potential. Gryphon is examining and modelling similarities of Borealis mineralization to that at Newmont's massive Yanacocha complex in northern Peru where its personnel recently attended a tour.
A "discovery model" was developed by reverse engineering successful methods from other deposits. Results led to the realization that the probability of discovering a nearby deposit strongly increases when there are coincident aeromagnetic low, induced-polarization (IP) high and resistivity high anomalies in a system carrying gold mineralization. Aeromagnetic lows are interpreted as a reflection of strong hydrothermal alteration and the IP high as a sulphide body at moderate to greater depths.
The methodology indicated a couple of gold trends in the vicinity of past mining plus several additional targets on the claims.
The site visit included a tour of one of the gold trends, which has a number of stations established along a several-hundred-metre-long fence of drill holes. Review of results and cross-sections provided by Gryphon Gold illustrated the potential to host significant sulphide gold mineralization within the roughly 100-metre-wide corridor.
District-scale aeromag on Borealis has also led to the identification of a large circular anomaly of magnetic lows, indicating a possible caldera ring structure similar to that modelled at Yanacocha.
Mineralization at Borealis is hosted in a Miocene-aged volcanic sequence of andesitic flows, lahar breccias and tuffs, all underlain by a Cretaceous granodiorite. Predominant structures are a series of northeasterly trending faults dipping steeply to the northwest in addition to a set of west-northwest striking faults. Both fault systems are on regional trends of known mineralization and appear to intersect in the project area.
Gold is typically associated with vuggy silica and pyrite in the breccia zones, grading outwards to kaolinite-quartz-pyrite sequences, then to kaolinite-pyrite that is surrounded by a broad propylitic halo. Gold is generally finely disseminated in the mineralizing system and tends to be enclosed in the pyrite. Oxidation depths are variable and range from 30 to 200 metres. Transitionary zone (mixed oxide-sulphide) mineralization from the deposits can generally also be treated as oxide-type ore in the planned heap-leach operation."