North of 60 Mining News - The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North

Silver Range Resources Ltd. March 20 said it has staked two highly prospective gold properties - Yandle and Noomut - in the eastern Nunavut greenstone belt that hosts Agnico Eagle's Meliadine gold mine project.

The Yandle property covers the Yandle and Aruat showings which were explored from the early 1990s until 2003. Numerous gold-bearing grab samples were collected along a 4,500-meter-long zone of arsenopyrite and pyrite bearing schist.

The best samples collected along this contact zone were 25 grams per metric ton gold at Yandle and 59 g/t gold at Aruat.

Comaplex Resources Ltd., which completed much of the historical work at Yandle, carried out ground geophysical surveys, and detailed prospecting and mapping over a wide area prior to drilling their portion of the zone in 2002.

This nine-hole program cut low gold values in the overlying rhyolitic volcanic rocks. Drilling in the contact zone, however, cut three meters averaging 11 g/t gold.

The property was subsequently optioned to Placer Dome, which drilled 12 holes at Yandle in 2003. One hole drilled cut 1.25 meters averaging 17.5 g/t gold and 2.8 meters of 2.5 g/t gold.

The Aruat zone remains un-drilled.

The Noomut property, which is 15 kilometers (nine miles) southwest of Yandle, covers a 1,900-meter-long zone of gold mineralization which has returned historical surface grab samples to 89 g/t gold.

Silver Range intends to conduct community consultations in the Kivalliq region this spring and apply for land use permits to conduct drill programs at the Hard Cash, another gold project in the region, and Yandle properties thereafter.

-SHANE LASLEY