SW ZoneThis is a question for those that have been shareholders of this company for a number of years, or who have a pretty specific knowledge of the SW Zone and the historic resource.
Firstly, although I have scanned through the drilling reports from the 2002-2004 time frame, it is actually still unclear whether the historic resource included the 04 Zone and the 04 Extension Zone - they are both considered part of the SW Zone by description and on maps, but the way it is described in some of these historic reports, it appears as it is just the SW Zone and the South Zone actually part of the historic resource. Further, the amount of drilling and density of drilling on the 04 Zones suggests they may have not been included.
The reason I ask if anyone knows about this is that there were historically some impressive holes in these areas:
In the 04 Zone, there were hits in 87 and 95 drilling of like 1.58g/t over 58 metres, 1.1 g/t over 22.5 metres, 7.49 g/t over 8 metres, and 2.34 g/t over 38.5 metres - all in the top 300 metres. Only three holes in the 400m to 500m range were done, with 2 hitting mineralization.
The 04 Extension Zone had hits like 5.67 g/t over 6.3 metres and 6.24g/t over 3.3 metres.
Also of note, another new zone drilled in 2002, where I believe only two holes were drilled - called North of the SW Zone - one hole hit 6g/t over 2 m (incl 20.62 g/t over 0.5 metre).
If you read some of the old reports you will see that it is not entirely clear......another thing I noted, and this will be from the absense of geological knowledge - is that there have been comments before about the high cut-off (3g/t) and grade (6/gt) of the historic resource, and obviously some imply that in the current environment, a much lower cut-off is justified and this results in greater tonnage and ounces. Of course, the reality is not known until the analysis is done. However, the thing I noticed is that the tonnage of the WJ indicated and inferred is like 13.6 million tonnes, where as the SWZ historic resource is 3.25 million tonnes. And, curiously, there would be more tonnes in the SWZ resource below 400m. I don't think there is anything in the WJS resource from lower than 400m. In fact, WJ88-40 appears to be the only hole drilled below 450 metres and it hit 1 g/t over 31.5 metres at about 950 metres. Someone with some knowledge and perspective of this might help fill in the blanks.
Anyhow, so much of the entire area has not had any drilling under 400 metres, and even at shallow depths, there are a lot of untested areas. Then, there is also the area between WJS and SWZ and all the follow-up targets from the 2010 drilling.