A Golden Opportunity On Hope’s Doorstep

Richard (Rick) Mills

Ahead of the Herd

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As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information

Some 1,200 junior resource exploration and development companies are located in Vancouver, British Columbia. Vancouver is well known as a hub for mining expertise and is one of the greatest mining centers in the world.

Not many of those 1200 companies can claim to have a mine, let alone one  with:

• A stable, just inspected permitted tailings impound with room to grow 
• Only a 6 km drive down an all weather gravel road from the Coquihalla Highway to the mine site
• Power lines only six km away
• Old mill equipment and foundations still in place 
• Extensive mine workings
• Inferred gold resource of 686,540 ounces in two ore bodies open in all directions
• Water and mining permit already in place
• Politically mining friendly jurisdiction
• Positive response from local community

New Carolin Gold Corp. TSX.V – LAD can claim all that, and a whole lot more – it’s fully permitted mine project sits just 160 km east of Vancouver, close to the town of Hope. Workers can complete their shifts and sleep in their own beds in their own homes. Supplies can be easily sourced and transported to the mine site.

New Carolin’s Ladner Gold Project

‘The Coquihalla serpentine belt is an elongate, north – northwest trending, steeply dipping ultramafic unit. The belt lies within a major crustal fracture, the Hozameen fault and exceeds 50 kilometers in discontinuous strike length. The serpentine belt reaches its maximum development in the Carolin mine-Coquihalla River area, where it is greater than two kilometers in width. It gradually narrows to the south (Manning Park area) and north (Boston Bar).’Exploration in B.C. 1989, Ministry of Energy and Mines

The Coquihalla Gold Belt (CGB) has geological similarities to the Mother Lode district of California (7m ozs of gold) and the Bridge River district (4.1m ozs of gold) of southwestern BC.

New Carolin’s Ladner Gold Property follows the Hozameen fault structure for approximately 28 km and exceeds 144 square kilometers covering substantially all of the accessible, yet still very underexplored, CGB.

The Ladner Gold Project contains several former underground producing gold mines and numerous gold prospects – more than 30 have been discovered so far.  

Approximately 11 gold showings have been found within a 2 km stretch north of the Carolin Mine.

Carolin Mine

The Carolin Mine, a former underground gold producer from 1982 – 1984, is located on the west fork of Ladner Creek, approximately 18 kilometers northeast of Hope.

The 1,360 tpd mill at the mine was commissioned in early 1982 and produced over 43,500 ounces of gold during 27 months of operation

Construction of the New Carolin Mine started in 1980 when gold’s price was US$600.00 an ounce. When the first gold was poured gold was down to US$300.00 oz. With poor gold recoveries (just 60%) and mined grades lower than forecast due to country rock dilution the mine had to close in 1982.

The original resource estimate was finalized in 1997. The gold resources reported in the table below are historic estimates (not NI 43-101 compliant) based on exploration and development work undertaken by Athabaska Gold Resources in 1995 and 1996 using a database of 595 diamond drill holes (approximately 40,000 meters of diamond drilling).

Currently the Carolin Mine has a compliant Inferred Mineral Resource estimate of 607,000 oz gold @ 1.5 g/t in 12,352,124 tonnes at a cutoff grade of 0.5 g/t gold.

Confirmation drilling is required to bring the current resource up to the historic numbers. The historic resource grade of plus 4 gpt was also much closer to the average grade that was originally mined from the Idaho Zone (New Carolin Mine).

The Carolin Mine mineralized zone is open in all directions.

A mine development map from 1981 shows the 800 level being extended north for 1.2 km to the McMaster Zone. The proposed cross cuts for drilling indicate to this author that previous operators had high confidence that gold mineralization runs beyond the Carolin Mine and that the area between the Carolin Mine and the McMaster zone could yield additional gold resources as development continues.  

There are no shafts at the Carolin Mine and the underground workings are dry and fully accessible.

The future mine model for the Carolin Mine envisions open pit and underground components.

McMaster Zone

The McMaster Zone is approximately 1.3 km north of the Carolin Mine.

A New Carolin May 2012 technical report established an inferred resource on the McMaster zone of 3.6 million tonnes grading 0.69 gram gold for 79,540 oz. gold using a 0.5 gram gold cut-off. Note that over half of this existing resource is at 2 gpt and near surface.

Highlights

• The McMaster Zone occurs within the current mine permit area and is open in all directions.
• The McMaster Zone resource takes into account only gold. The silver accompanying the gold mineralization was not included in the historical database.
• The current resource estimate doesn’t take into account a gold oxide zone. If it continues to depth it could be significant.

The Emancipation Mine was an intermittent gold producer from 1916 to 1941.

The Aurum, Pipestem and Ward adits all produced gold intermittently from 1935 to 1937.

There’s also ‘Jewelry Box’ type gold showings present:

• The Montana – 30 oz’s gold from two tons of material.
• Georgia No. 2 prospect – 33 oz’s of gold from one ton of material.