Engineer Gold Mines ramps up exploration

Engineer Gold Mines Ltd. July 31 announced that it has hired Whitehorse-based DeCoors Mining Corp. to carry out a mobile metal ion (MMI) soil geochemical survey on the historic Engineer Gold Mine property about 32 kilometers (20 miles) west of Atlin, in northwestern British Columbia.

MMI soil sampling, which detects metal ions released from mineralized material and travel upward toward the surface, has proven to be very effective in delineating near-surface, narrow, high-grade gold veins and broader, gold-silver-arsenic-antimony exploration targets at Engineer.

This year's MMI survey, scheduled to begin in mid-August, will expand the current survey area to the north and south, covering the Engineer Gold Mine mineralizing system.

In the meantime, crews are working on re-assembling a Caterpillar D6 dozer and excavator on the property and positioning a surface drill rig for drill testing of the high-grade Boulder-Governor, Shaft and Jersey Lilly gold veins immediately north and east of the historic Engineer Gold Mine underground workings.

Once operational, the bull dozer and excavator will be utilized to develop and re-open existing roads, trench soil geochemical anomalies and construct drill pads.

Engineer Mine produced 18,000 ounces gold and 9,000 oz silver from ore averaging 39 grams per metric ton gold and 18 g/t silver during the 1920s.

Since that time, there have been various hand mining and bulk sampling operations on the property. In 2011, BCGold Corp. refurbished a 30-ton-per-day mill delivered to Engineer in 1994 and ran a 246 metric ton sample that averaged 16.9 g/t gold.

In January, Blind Creek published a technical report that outlined 10,400 metric tons of inferred resource in the Engineer vein averaging 60 g/t (20,100 oz) gold.

Blind Creek has now spun the property out into Engineer Gold Mines Ltd., which plans to carry out an active exploration, drilling, mine-dewatering, test mining and milling campaign in 2018 and 2019.

–SHANE LASLEY