Portal Earthworks Commence At Starvation Canyon Underground Mine

 

VANCOUVER - Yukon-Nevada Gold Corp. reported the commencement of earthworks for the establishment of the Starvation Canyon portal face located in the southern portion of Jerritt Canyon in Elko County, Nevada.

Permitting activities with the State of Nevada were completed in 2011 allowing the Company to begin advancing Starvation Canyon to an underground mine project. The current plan is to have 150 feet of portal development in place before winter starts.

Ore production from the Starvation Canyon mine will commence in 2013 at a targeted rate of 300 to 600 ore tons per day. The Company will use underground mining contractors for the initial phase while evaluating equipment purchase options in the interim.

The 2011 surface exploration program at Starvation Canyon produced: TJ-366 intersected 28.97 meters at 18.86 g/t gold; TJ-364A intersected 9.15 meters at 7.68 g/t gold; and TJ-367 intersected 7.63 meters at 6.31 g/t gold.

The Starvation Canyon Measured and Indicated resource including reserves as of December 31, 2011 is 5.9 kt averaging 0.294 opt containing 1,700 ounces and 519.4kt averaging 0.25 opt containing 130,000 ounces, respectively. Randy Reichert, CEO and President, said, "This is an exciting milestone that we have achieved at Jerritt Canyon. We are looking forward to adding Starvation Canyon gold production to our pipeline which includes production from our two existing mines; the Smith and SSX/Steer mines."

The last previous major underground mine development at Jerritt Canyon was the Steer Mine which started in 2004.

Additional activities in the south part of the Jerritt Canyon district will include exploration drilling at the West Starvation target later this year.  The drilling will test several anomalies identified from last year's Titan-24 direct current induced-polarization magnetotelluric (DC-IP-MT) ground survey.