Location and History

The Golden Edge property is located about 50 km east of the city of Winnemucca, in Humboldt County, north central Nevada. The property is located about 26 km SSE of Barrick's Turquoise Ridge Mine and 8 km NNE of Newmont Gold Lone Tree Gold mine. The property is also 14 km north of the Marigold deposit owned by Goldcorp Inc.

Exploration was carried-out in this area jointly through a syndicate formed in 1999 of three exploration companies. In June 2003, the partners decided to dissolve the syndicate and Franc- Or Resources was granted 100% ownership of the mineral lode claims at Humboldt Springs, the sole surviving property, subject to a 3% NSR royalty to one of the partners. Between October 2003 and May 2004, a portion of these claims were under an option agreement with Placer Dome US Inc. Placer terminated the agreement after drilling three reverse circulation holes on the property.

Geological context

The Golden Edge property is located within the Battle Mountain Eureka trend; a linear feature defined by the presence of Gold + Silver Mines and occurrences. In this "trend" there is a variety of stratabound / stratiform replacement orebodies that are associated with the Paleozoic aged Antler Peak limestone. The gold, silver and base metal mineralization in this trend varies from massive sulphides at the old Fortitude Mine in the Cortez district to distal gold dissemination in carbonaceous rocks (Marigold deposit).

All of the gold and base metals deposits are intimately associated with structures (figure 2) and more importantly, areas of intersecting structures. South of the Golden Edge property, the Lone Tree gold deposit is associated with a north south fracture zone called the Valmy fault zone, that is about 90 metres wide and dips to the west at 75o. This fault zone continues northward into the western portion of the Golden Edge property and can be identified the regional mag. It is in turn displaced by younger NE trending faults.

The Marigold is formed of disseminated gold with little sulphides and is related to the intersection of high angle NS faults with the low angle Golconda thrust fault. To the north the Turquoise Hill deposit is associated with the intersection of a high angle NS fault with low-angle structures.

There are several structures intersecting on the Golden Edge property that also align with other gold deposits i.e. Hollister located 38 km to the east. This fault aligns with where Placer Dome conducted their soil geochem survey and subsequent reverse circulation holes.

Exploration work conducted on the property

The property lies in a flat area covered with Quaternary to Tertiary aged alluvium and volcanic rock. The Palaeozoic aged Valmy formation lies between 200 and 500 metres depth under this cover. Presumably below this formation there is carbonate bearing Lower Palaeozoic rocks and Upper Palaeozoic aged Antler sequence.

The following exploration work was conducted on the property;

• CSAMT survey lines in November 2001 and April 2002 conducted by Zonge Geoscience Inc. The conclusions were that the depth to pre-Tertiary bedrock is likely to be at its shallowest beneath the eastern end of all lines (180 to 240 m). It is interpreted to increase to 450m or more beneath the western end of all lines. The presence of clay-rich lacustrine deposits in the upper 30 meters may cause some problems with the interpretation. There is a high angle structure identified on lines 75800N to line 78800N but is not present on line 81100N where it may have been displaced by a NE trending fault.
• Reflection seismic exploration was conducted over 3 lines; RCHE, RCHN and RCHS for a total of 3.035 line-km of surveys. The 3 lines are oriented east-west and had the objective of determining at what depth the Palaeozoic strata rocks were located. These lines depict the depth to potential host rocks ranging from 240 to 555 metres. There is a very slight downward slope from East to west indicating that a favourable Paleozoic stratum is deeper to the west. On the RCHE line (figure 4) several interpreted structures appear to be capped by a leached zone in the area between holes HS2 and 3.
• Soil Geochemistry.
  • MMI was conducted over 5 lines located in the central portion of the property. Coincident Au and Ag anomalies were obtained in several samples the most interesting one on the most southerly line and on the NE lines 4 and 5.
  • Placer Dome conducted soil survey in the south eastern portion of the property they had optioned from Cordex. There is no detail on the type of survey conducted. Several coincident Au and Ag anomalies in western portion of survey.
• Drilling.
  • A total of 3 reverse circulation holes (1062.22 metres) were drilled by Cordex in 2002. Holes HS-02 and 03 targeted false anomalies on the seismic profile because of an error in interpretation stemming from giving too much importance on very high refraction velocities measured near surface without conducting more detailed testing (Cooksley geophysics report). Both HS-02 and 03 never reached the favourable fractured bedrock (figure 5). Hole HS-01 seemingly had been drilled prior to the survey and a full sonic log was obtained prior to the survey, this one was angled 75 to the east.
  • In 2003 and 2004 Placer Dome drilled 3 reverse circulation holes for a total of 678.18 metres, all 3 holes were vertical. Hole HP-06 may have encountered the Valmy Quartzite at a depth of 246 meters; hole HP-09 intersected Antler Sequence rocks (Edna Mountain formation sandstone & siltstone) of Pennsylvanian age at 169 metres similar to the unit intersected at the bottom of hole HS-01 no carbonate rocks however and hole HP-08 did not intersect Palaeozoic rocks. Hole HP-06 also showed a steady increase in gold in water from 2.04 ppt at 54 metres to 89.95 ppt at 251 metres. Only five cuttings samples from these RC holes, each over five-foot intervals, were taken in total from the three holes. These samples show low gold values that range from 9 to 13 ppb.
• In 1980's Santa Fe Pacific Gold. According to Royles 2002 report the 4 CSAMT lines were done at that time. They also drilled 3 RC holes within the property limits.

Maps & Sections