The Cruz quartz-calcite veins represent a classic epithermal gold-silver system.

Drusy cavities, colloform banding, and cockade structures are common. Individual veins

range up to 6.5m in true thickness; the system most commonly consists of narrower veins,

up to 1.0-1.5m in thickness, within sheeted, anastomosing zones 10-30m wide. Narrower

veins less than 30 cm wide tend to be recessive, so the system does not outcrop strongly

unless thick veins are present. The vein system, which dips steeply to the SW, has been

mapped and sampled along 3 km of strike.

Chip samples from the natural Cruz vein outcrops typically return gold values in the

1.0-2.0 g/t gold range. The best sample from the initial program returned 3.82 g/t gold and

12.0 g/t silver over a true width of 5.0m. Trench samples returned gold grades of up to 44.7

g/t from narrow intervals and indicated that average values of 0.5 g/t were present over

widths of 100m in strongly veined sections. A drill program, targeting potentially bulk

mineable mineralization in the area of densest veining in the SE section of the vein system,

was conducted in April-May 1997. Gold assays from this program include 6m of 2.31 g/t

from hole CB-01, 6m of 2.96 g/t from CB-03 (including 1.75m at 7.45 g/t), 1.5m of 22.68

g/t from CB-05, 9.5m at 8.09 g/t from CB-17 (including 1.5m of 35.84 g/t), 10.8m at 2.4 g/t

from CB-21, and 1.2m of 6.95 g/t from CB-22. Wall rock gold grades are weakly

anomalous and consistent, reflecting low densities of mineralized microveinlets for some

tens of metres outward from the main veins. The drill assay results show marked

improvement in both tenor and consistency to the SE.