Blind Creek Resources Ltd. June 1 completed an arrangement to spin its Engineer gold mine project into Engineer Gold Mines Ltd., a Toronto Venture Exchange listed subsidiary that will advance exploration and development of the high-grade gold mine project in northwestern British Columbia.

Located about 32 kilometers (20 miles) southwest of Atlin, the historic 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 outline 10,400 metric tons of inferred resource in the Engineer vein averaging 60 g/t (20,100 oz) gold.

As a subsidiary of Blind Creek Resources, Engineer Gold Mines Ltd. is planning to conduct a significant exploration, mine dewatering and test-mining and milling program on the high-grade gold property this year.

As a result of the spinout, Blind Creek shareholders are entitled to receive one Engineer Gold Mines share for each Blind Creek share held.

With the Engineer gold mine moved into a separate company, Blind Creek will focus on exploration of its Blende zinc-lead-silver project, which is located north of ATAC Resources Ltd's Rau project in the Yukon and AB zinc-lead property in the Mackenzie Mountains of western Northwest Territories.

Blende hosts 3.65 million metric tons of indicated resource average 1.98 percent (159 million pounds) zinc, 1.95 percent (157 million lb) lead and 35.7 g/t (4.2 million oz) silver; and 32.98 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 5.03 percent (1.5 billion lb) zinc, 1.88 percent (1.4 billion lb) lead and 32 g/t (34 million oz) silver.

Blind Creek plans to complete 5,000 meters of infill and expansion drilling with the objective of complete preliminary economic assessment early in 2019.

AB is an earlier staged project with high-grade zinc-lead potential indicated by historical drilling, as well as coincidental geochemical and geophysical anomalies.

The company plans to complete 2,500 meters of drilling to test these anomalies this year.

–SHANE LASLEY