Stockwatch summary todayDarwin Green's Highgold Mining Inc. (HIGH) leapt to an intraday high of $1.89, ending the day up 34 cents to $1.84 on 868,000 shares following a four-hour halt called pending clarification of news. The company said early this morning, in the news that needed clarifying, that it has received assays of up to 12.42 grams of gold and 8.9 grams of silver per tonne over 107.8 metres from its Johnson Tract project in south-central Alaska. The hit also included 0.88 per cent copper, 7.11 per cent zinc and 1.64 per cent lead, enough for a gold equivalent grade of 19.55 grams per tonne. The hole, one of nine just completed by Highgold at Johnson Tract, was a twin of one drilled in 1993 by Westmin Resources Ltd. The Westmin test had yielded 10.07 grams of gold per tonne and a total of 16.95 grams of gold equivalent per tonne over 99.7 metres. A second hole drilled by Highgold from the same pad, but with a shallower dip, yielded up to 15.73 grams of gold equivalent per tonne, but over just 10 metres. Assays from the other seven holes are pending. Mr. Green, president and chief executive officer, was suitably enthused with the results from his newborn twin. Until the regulators forced him to retract the statement, he had deemed Johnson Tract "one of an elite few gold deposits to generate drill intersections in excess of 100 metres of greater than 10 grams of gold per tonne," adding that the occurrence of high-grade copper and zinc along with the gold makes the mineralization even more impressive. Arousing further regulatory frowns, Mr. Green eagerly pointed out that the product of grade times thickness, 2,107 gram-metres, makes the new hole "one of the industry's best drill intersections reported this year." (Promoters will engage in all sorts of mathematical calisthenics, producing multiplicative products from most anything if they think it will add to their share price. The regulators, onto the tactic, forced Highgold to retract the calculation and all the comments pertaining to it.) What Mr. Green does not say, and the regulators never questioned, is why Johnson Tract sat undrilled for the past quarter century despite the eye-popping grades obtained by Westmin. In fact, the mineralization was first encountered in 1982 by Anaconda Minerals Co. and the project saw considerable drilling over the next 13 years, work that culminated in the declaration of a now historical resource estimate and a prefeasibility study. In 1994, Westmin credited Johnson Tract with 1.04 million tonnes at 10.05 grams of gold and 7.63 grams of silver per tonne, plus 0.75 per cent copper, 8.32 per cent zinc and 1.13 per cent lead -- a modest amount of ore that suggested the high-grade rock was confined to a small horizontal area. (Highgold jumps the required regulatory hurdles required to tout a historical resource, noting it is "not to be relied upon as accurate or representative.") Representative or not, the limited amount of mineralization available, enough to support a small 800-tonne-per day mine for just four years, cooled Westmin's enthusiasm for the project. As well, the challenges of working the area -- the name given the nearby Difficult Creek offers a clue in that regard -- were enough to send Westmin packing in 1997. Since then, Johnson Tract has sat idle.