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Snowfield, British Columbia

  • Snowfield Technical Report

Location and History

Snowfield is located 65 kilometers (40 miles) north-northeast of Stewart, British Columbia, along the eastern margin of the Coast Mountain Range. Access is by helicopter, and the Eskay Creek Mine access road lies approximately 25 kilometers to the northwest. The project, together with our adjacent Sulphurets project, totals 4,467 hectares.

Geology

The property is underlain by Jurassic volcanics, volcanoclastics and sedimentary rocks of the Hazelton Group. The host rocks of the mineralization have been subjected to a pervasive propylitic to quartz-sericite alteration. During the summer of 2007, Silver Standard completed 29 diamond drill holes totaling 8,634 meters. These expanded the known Snowfield Zone, which is a flat lying body of mineralization that is elongated in an east-west direction and appears to have a keel shape at depth along the axis of the body. The mineralization is consistently zoned, with the highest grades at surface.

A single drill hole, MZ-01, tested a new zone, the Mitchell East Zone, which is hosted by similarly altered rocks but contains significant values in copper as well as gold. Very little is known about this new zone, however, the mineralization starts at surface and appears to dip to the north, parallel to the slope of the valley. Drill hole MZ-01 intersected 916 feet averaging 0.02 ounces of gold per ton (279.5 meters averaging 0.71 grams of gold per tonne) and 0.14% copper. The bottom 102.0 feet of this hole contained 0.04 ounces of gold per ton (31.1 meters at 1.38 grams of gold per tonne) and 0.31% copper.

The Snowfield Zone mineralization has now been drill tested over an area measuring 400 meters by 500 meters. The high-grade surface zone averages over 2.5 grams gold per tonne and ranges in thickness between 30 meters and 90 meters. The entire package of mineralization averages 150 meters to 170 meters in thickness but can range up to 225 meters in thickness. The Snowfield Zone is currently open in all directions.

Project Scope and Plans

In 2008, a 20,000-meter drill program is planned to test for extensions of the Mitchell East gold/copper zone and expand the known mineralization of the Snowfield Zone.

For details on resources of the Snowfield Project, view the current Resource Summary (312 kb pdf)