Michael Povey and Simon Ridgway's Volcanic Gold Mines Inc. (VG) erupted 19.5 cents to 54 cents on 2.67 million shares today following word of a 4.58-metre hit averaging 79.84 grams of gold and 5,053 grams of silver per tonne. The hole tested the southern extension of the La Pena vein on the company's Holly project in southeastern Guatemala. The latest assays are from two new holes in the area; the other produced just seven grams of gold and 48 grams of silver per tonne over 1.52 metres.
A third hole was also drilled in the area, but it failed to intersect the main structure. This, the company says, is because "some fault offsets made it more challenging to extend mineralization to the north in the Paleozoic Phyllites." (That is geological jargon for 500-million-year-old rock metamorphized from slate, not the moniker for a Central American baseball team.)
Two weeks ago, Volcanic revealed that one of four new holes at Holly had produced 191.8 grams of gold and 539 grams of silver per tonne over 1.53 metres from the La Pena vein hangingwall -- "spectacular results" in the words of Mr. Povey, chairman, and Mr. Ridgway, president and chief executive officer. Today, they were not as excited, although Volcanic nevertheless cheered the "bonanza high grades" encountered in the southern extension area. Assays from other holes are still pending, but the drills have now moved to the nearby Banderas property.
Holly is a 19-year-old discovery, but one that sat idle from the mid-2000s until last year, when Volcanic acquired an option to earn a 60-per-cent interest in it and Banderas from another of Mr. Ridgway's companies, Radius Gold Inc. (RDU). (Radius was also strong today: It rose 4.5 cents to 27.5 cents on 583,000 shares.) At the time of the option deal Volcanic was being run by Charles Straw, but Mr. Ridgway, the company's founder, took the reins from him early this year.