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By Resource Intelligence · February 15, 2010 · 1:15 pm · Leave a Comment

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Evolving Gold Anticipates First Resource Estimate on Rattlesnake by April

When we last spoke to Evolving Gold in February 2009, CEO Bob Barker told us what the company had planned for the year, a plan that included 15,000 meters of drilling to pave the way for a much anticipated resource estimate. By the end of the year, the company had drilled almost 30,000 metres in 78 drill holes on its Rattlesnake Hills property in Wyoming. Investors like a company that makes a plan and sticks to it, and Evolving Gold is clearly one of those. This year the plan is for more drilling at Rattlesnake Hills and by second quarter, a resource estimate. President Quinton Hennigh explains how the plan will unfold.

Resource Intelligence: Lets talk about your Rattlesnake Hills project in Wyoming. I think a lot of your company’s perceived value comes from this project. Why is that?

Quinton Hennigh: The Rattlesnake Hills project is one of the more recent notable gold discoveries in recent years. There has been a real shortage gold discoveries globally, so we’re very proud to have made it and investors are clearly reacting to the grades we’re finding, the broad widths, and they are anticipating a solid resource estimate from us.

RI: Last year you completed a total of 30,000 meters of drilling. What did you learn from that?

QH: What we see is the footprint of the hydrothermal system that originally deposited gold on the property. The gold footprint we see on property is actually much larger than we previously believed and that is very encouraging.

RI: And that explains the big jump in July that took you from $0.50 up to $1.50 per share. That coincided within a few days of your press release that announced excellent intercepts at better than 10 grams per tonne. Can you tell us about that?

QH: We had an interval that we announced in mid-July that was about 67 meters of over 10 grams per tonne. That was our first news release for Rattlesnake for the season and it really gave us a lot of confidence in the project. We started to see the things that we felt were very important to see.

RI: You’ve had recent news as well, talking about over 100 meters at about 1.3 g/t Au. Can you put that into context for us?

QH: This is an unusual gold system compared to many. It’s an alkaline gold system that has similarities to a number of alkaline gold systems up in the Rocky Mountains, particularly Cripple Creek and some up in Montana. Almost all alkaline gold systems have two components. They have a very large bulk style component which is lower grade and they have a higher grade component as well. Usually in structures.

RI: You’re about 300km from Cripple Creek. How does Rattlesnake Hills compare to Cripple Creek’s grades and size?

QH: Cripple Creek is a diatreme complex, much like the one we have at Rattlesnake. The diatreme at Cripple Creek is about 3 km wide and about 6 or 7 km long. Our diatreme complex is about 4 km long and about 1 to 3 km wide. Rattlesnake Hills is not quite as big but it’s still very sizable. Keep in mind that we are at a very early stage here; Cripple Creek has had about 120 years mining history where we’ve had 2 years drilling. If you compare it in terms of its vertical extent and the footprint of the size of the system, it is comparable.

Cripple Creek was discovered in 1894 towards the tail end of the Colorado gold rush. It has been mined nearly continuously and has given up over 20 million ounces over a 50 year period from high grade veins.

We see mineralization at Rattlesnake that extends easily 300 meters plus. We have holes as deep as 700 meters with very significant gold values. If an old timer were to magically pop up today he would probably ask us why we are drilling so many holes? But today we look at things in more technical terms and we have to drill things out and meet certain standards and investor expectations.

RI: Lets try to put the size of this into perspective. You have mineralized drill holes deeper than 100 meters deep. One hundred metres is about the height of a 30 storey condominium. That’s a very deep open pit.

QH: That is correct. But some of the more recent drill holes that we’ve done that were released last week demonstrate that the core of mineralization extends to in excess of 300 meters below surface. So that would be more like a 90 storey condo. And we’re still open to depth and to the east and west. Right now the halo zone is about 500 meters strike length. The high grade core has a strike length that looks like it’s going to be over 300 meters.

RI: You’ve done some work recently in going to depth and what you’ve started to find is a porphyry system as well that may be attached to this?

QH: That is correct. A porphyry is an intrusive body, magma that came up and cooled at shallow depth. Sometimes it injects as small dykes which we have seen numerously in our drilling.

Many of these are over significant widths, 10 to 30 meters wide. They have significant gold mineralization which is quite encouraging because it tells us that there is a magma at depth that was driving the system and it could be a potential target for us.

RI: You’re a technical guy. You’re a doctor of geology and you’re also the president of the company. How does being a doctor of geology and a president allow you to make choices that you might not be able to make as just a geologist, for example?

QH: The work I’ve done with Evolving Gold has truly been a geologist’s dream. I came into the junior sector about three years ago after leaving Newmont. This has been a tremendous opportunity to test many ideas that I have had over the years, Rattlesnake being one of them. I’ve wanted to test this target for about six years and now here we are doing it. Two years ago this was a geologic anomaly and now it is a discovery.

A lot of geologists working for large mining companies in this day and age have limited funds, don’t have a lot of support and are handicapped in what they can do in exploration. We have been very fortunate at Evolving Gold. We have raised quite a bit of money and we’ve been able to test Rattlesnake thoroughly. We’ve also got our Carlin project in Nevada which also is showing great promise.

RI: How much money have you raised?

QH: Last year we raised about $11 million in the fall. We presently have about $18 million in the bank. Plenty of money to advance Rattlesnake in a very technically sound way. We feel that is very important. In terms of our burn rate, during the drill season for this coming year we are looking at a burn rate of about $1 million dollars a month and during the off season we’re looking at about $100,000 per month. The drill program runs from about May until the end of October, so we’ll have plenty of funds to complete at least 20,000 meters this year.

RI: According to the Fraser Institute, Wyoming is the second best place on earth to mine. Why is that?

QH: Wyoming is a remarkable place. The people in Wyoming have a very good outlook towards resource development. There is a huge coal industry, oil and gas industry and also uranium. You have people who are skilled in these jobs. The environmental jurisdiction is quite amenable to mining. We have worked very closely with both the Bureau of Land Management at the federal level, as well as the Department of Developmental Quality, which is at the state level and they have been very supportive of us and our project and we feel very confident that we can put this thing into production. The other aspect of Wyoming is that it has great infrastructure. We’ve got railheads and two rail lines within 60 km of the property. We have power plants over in Casper and the gridline comes a few miles south of the property. There is year round access. It is an idyllic spot for gold mining.

RI: You’ve accomplished an incredible amount of work in the last year—30,000 meters, plus you’ve got more drilling coming up. When can we expect a resource estimate and more from you?

QH: We are presently working towards updating the 43-101. We anticipate completion in April. It is done independently, so we don’t have an idea of what kind of numbers might come out. We are still in the early stage of exploration really, with five new targets and 93 holes in them and a lot more drilling to come this year. So I think investors should expect a lot out of this property in the next year.

Company: Evolving Gold
Symbol: EVG
Exchange: TSX VENTURE
Name: Evolving Gold Corp
Shares outstanding: 92,152,000
Country: Canada
Province: British Columbia
City: Vancouver
Address: 1980 – 1075 West Georgia St.
Postal code: V6E 3C9
Phone number: 604-685-6375
Fax number: 604-909-1163
Email address: info@evolvinggold.com