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Project Summary
In January 2006, the Company acquired General Gold Corporation and its primary asset, The Independence Mine, located in the Battle Mountain Gold District of northern Nevada. General Metals now controls 100% of The Independence Mine.
The Independence Mine forms an island in Newmont Gold's Phoenix Mine. (See photo).
General Gold Corporation, a Nevada Corporation, announced on April 29, 2005 the acquisition of a 20-year lease with option to purchase all assets of the Wilson Independence (Independence Mine) unpatented gold mining claims from Gold Range Company, LLC.
Robert Carrington, Geologist, and Managing Member of Gold Range, LLC states the Wilson Independence Property covers a mineralized zone more than 7,000 feet long within the prolific, Battle Mountain Mining Distirct. The Indpendence mineralization is related to the nearby world class Fortitude / Phoenix Gold Deposits. "The claims are completely surrounded by Newmont Mining's holdings in the Battle Mountain-Eureka Gold Trend of Northern Nevada," said Carrington.
Newmont's Phoenix Project which commenced production in mid 2006, operates on three sides of the Independence claims.
The Independence Mine - General Metals
The Independence mine is predominately a silver mine that produced intermittently from 1938 through 1987. Reported historic production by the various operators totaled 750,200 ounces silver and 11,029 ounces gold. The average recovered grade of all recorded production was 0.17 and 11.53 ounces of gold and silver per ton respectively.
According to Akright in his 1997 report, "the gold resource potential of the Independence property occurs in two distinct categories: a shallow open pit mineable target, suitable for heap leach and a deep underground target. Insufficient drilling has been done to calculate a proven or probable reserve for the shallow target. However, mineralized material containing 235,000 ounces of gold and 2,500,000 ounces of silver have been estimated by Carrington (1997) ... the deep target ... could contain mineralized material with 1.4 million ounces of gold." The deep target will be pursued in a Phase 2 drilling program, while the shallow target is our focus for near term development leading to early cash flow.
Shallow Target:
Measured & Indicated 207,500 oz. gold, 3.6 million oz. silver
Plus Inferred containing 65,500 oz. of gold, 268,000 oz of silver. GNMT's 2006 exploration drilling campaign was designed to bring the shallow target into a resource category as defined in Canadian National Instrument 43-101. The Company is in the final stages of completing a NI 43-101 formatted Technical Report. This report will contain resource estimates based on historic drilling and the Company's 84 drill completed during its 2006 - 2007 drill drill program. The Company has recently completed an addtional 44 drill holes to increase drill hole density in the area known as the Hill Zone. This drilling is designed to provide sufficient drill density to permit better modeling of high grade zones in the Hill Zone and to establish continuity of that higher grade mineralization. Recent metallurgical test work completed by McClelland Laboratories of Sparks Nevada strongly supports managements opinion that the Independence Shallow mineralization will be ameanable to cost efficient, heap leach technoloby. A 1.9 ton column test on this ore yeilded 91.45 % on material crushed to 80% passing 4 inches. By comparison it is common for many heap leach mines to crush ores to one inch or smaller and to only achieve 70% to 75% extraction of the contained gold. Record gold and silver prices of over $1100 and $17 per ounce respectively have encouraged rapid development of the Independence Mine.
Independence Skarn Target: 796,200 ounces of gold
This target is hosted in fractured skarn altered sediments of the Antler Peak, Edna Mountain and Battle Formations, the same rocks that host the historic Fortitude Deposit and much of the mineralization at the present and past producing mines in the Battle Mountain mineral complex. Thin and polished sections of ore show gold occurs as the last mineral phase as minute grains of free gold deposited on micro fractures independent of pre-existing mineral species. More than 25,000 feet of historic core has been re-logged and original pulps from Noranda Exploration and Great Basin Gold were re-analyzed with using modern "best practices" with Certified Reference Materials (CRM's), duplicates and blanks.
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