Chance drilling pays off for Dolly Varden

Dolly Varden Silver Corp. Aug. 7 reported that it continues to cut very high-grade silver at the Chance discovery on the company's namesake property in northwestern British Columbia.

The Dolly Varden property hosts four historic gold mines – Torbrit, Dolly Varden, Wolf and North Star – that date back to the early 20th century.

Drilling by Dolly Varden has outlined deposits associated with these mines that host 3.42 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 299.8 grams per metric ton (32.93 million oz) silver; plus 1.29 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 277 g/t (11.48 million oz) silver.

Drilling this year is focused on testing targets outside of the area that encompass the deposits. The first such area tested is Chance, which is about 4,000 meters north of the Torbrit deposit.

The first hole reported from Chance, DV19-165, cut 26.5 meters averaging 385.4 g/t silver, along with small amounts of zinc and lead, including five meters of 1,606.5 g/t silver.

The latest batch of drill results continue to cut wide zones of high-grade silver at Chance.

Hole DV19-173 cut 15.2 meters averaging 488.3 g/t silver, including 5.6 meters of 1,043.8 g/t silver.

DV19-169, another hole drilled in the area, intersected what appears to be a splay of the Chance vein, with lower-grade material between the splays.

This hole 8.7 meters of 265.2 g/t silver in the north splay of the Chance vein and 12.5 meters of 340.7 g/t silver, including three meters of 700 g/t in the main splay of the vein.

The Chance target was known from shallow surface diamond drilling in the 1960s. The drilling Dolly Varden has completed at Chance thus far has identified a low angle fault at the base of the historically known mineralization, as well as the offset of that mineralization below the fault.

"Our understanding of the structural setting of silver mineralization in the Chance target area continues to improve with the 2019 drilling program," said Dolly Varden Silver President and CEO Gary Cope. "The reinterpretation of historic data and drill testing of the resulting geological model have yielded a new discovery of high-grade silver outside of known mineralization and the current 2019 mineral resource estimate."

Based on the initial results, the company has added several holes to the 2019 Chance drilling program.

Chance is not the only target outside the resource area for the company to test in the future.

"In viewing the Dolly Varden property as a whole, it should be noted that there are multiple silver deposits and high-grade silver targets within a five-kilometer (5,000 meters) radius."

Ace-Galena, which lies about 1,000 meters northwest of Chance, is another historical target area beyond the known deposits.

–SHANE LASLEY