Drilling Begins on Miranda Golds Horse Mountain Project
Tuesday, August 19th 2008
Miranda Gold Corp. announces that Newcrest Resources Inc., Miranda’s exploration funding partner, has commenced the 2008 drill program at the Horse Mountain project. Newcrest has permitted 13 drill sites and anticipates drilling up to 20,000 ft (6,096 m). The drill program will follow up drilling that intersected 98 ft of 0.022 oz Au/t (29.9 m of 0.754 g Au/t) in core hole BHM-001.
Newcrest’s drill program aims to vector into higher-grade portions of the Horse Mountain gold system in part by off-setting the known mineralization in hole BHM-001. The program will test structural and gold/arsenic soil geochemical targets north and northeast of drill hole BHM-001, within the northeast-striking structural high. Specifically, the drilling will test for higher-grade gold zones that may be adjacent to faults that acted as conduits for the gold-bearing fluids or higher-grade mineralization that is confined in structural traps. Additional drill holes will test soil geochemical anomalies and structural targets north of drill hole BHM-005, a reverse circulation drill hole that intersected 50 ft of 0.017 oz Au/t (15.2 m of 0.583 g Au/t).
Horse Mountain is a sediment-hosted, disseminated gold project 11 miles (17.6 km) west of Barrick’s Pipeline Mine complex, in north-central Nevada. The property consists of 139 claims that cover a 2 sq mile (5.2 sq km) zone of hydrothermally altered chert/quartzite, altered dikes and elevated gold, arsenic, antimony and mercury in the upper-plate of the Roberts Mountains thrust. Below the flat lying Roberts Mountain thrust, previous drilling intersected oxidized, decalcified and gold-bearing carbonate rocks of the Roberts Mountains Formation. This formation is host to numerous world-class gold deposits in both the Carlin and Cortez trends. The 98-ft gold zone intersected in BHM-001 begins at a depth of 926 ft (282 m) and is hosted in a northeast-striking structurally-high block (horst) of favorable lower-plate carbonate rocks.
Ken Cunningham, Miranda’s President and CEO, is pleased with the aggressive program that Newcrest will implement. “The Horse Mountain project represents a Carlin-type gold system with an extensive alteration halo that deserves to be thoroughly drill tested. Based on our past association with Newcrest we feel they will do an excellent job testing the project.”
This drill program represents the 3rd Miranda property to be drilled by partners this year. In total, Miranda anticipates partners will fund a total of 50,000 ft of drilling on six properties.
Miranda Gold Corp. is a gold exploration company active in Nevada and whose emphasis is on generating gold exploration projects within the Battle Mountain-Eureka and Cortez Trends. Miranda performs its own grass roots exploration and then employs a joint venture business model on its projects in order to maximize exposure to discovery while minimizing exploration risk. Miranda has ongoing partnerships with Barrick Gold Exploration Inc., Newcrest Resources Inc., the Cortez Joint Venture, the Buckhorn Joint Venture, Piedmont Mining Company Inc., White Bear Resources Inc., Queensgate Resources Corporation and CMQ Resources Inc.
