Altair Ventures Kena Gold

Richard (Rick) Mills

Ahead of the Herd

As a general rule, the most successful man in life is the man who has the best information

A couple of times a year I come across a company that gives Ahead of the Herd members, and readers of my articles, a chance to get into an excellent play well ahead of the retail herd.

Altair Ventures Inc TSX.V – AVX

Altair has recently optioned the Kena project (7,609 hectares) from Sultan Minerals and can earn up to a 75% interest. The Kena project is located in the Province of British Columbia, Canada near Nelson (located in the bottom east corner of the province).

Infrastructure is excellent as there’s power, rail and a major highway on the property. A well developed network of logging roads is used to access the rest of the property. Exploration and development work on the project can be done during most of the year, cell phones work and you can also access the internet from the project area. This is an extremely receptive to mining area with Nelson being a major supply center for the resource extraction industry.

Resource

The Kena project currently has a 2004 NI 43-101 compliant mineral resource, based on over 150 drill holes and using a .30 gram a tonne (g/t) cutoff, of Measured and Indicated (M&I) resources totaling 541,000 ounces (ozs) gold and Inferred (I) resources totaling 557,000 ounces gold for a combined total of 1,098,000 ozs gold.

Measured and Indicated:

• The Gold Mountain Zone – 10.18 million tonnes averaging 0.736g/t Au measuring 241,000 ozs gold
• The Kena Gold Zone – 14.68 million tonnes averaging 0.635g/t Au measuring 300,000 ozs gold

Inferred:

• Gold Mountain Zone – 22.0 million tonnes averaging 0.668g/t Au measuring 472,000 ozs gold
• The Kena Gold Zone – 3.8 million tonnes averaging 0.699g/t Au measuring 85,000 ozs gold

Gold Mountain Zone

The Gold Mountain Zone is a unique bi-modal gold system, containing bulk tonnage porphyry style gold mineralization and narrower, very high-grade gold shoots.

In 2000, six trenches that were dug near the centre of the Gold Mountain Zone uncovered a significant and new (within the Silver King intrusive) style of gold porphyry mineralization. The six trenches covered an area of 120 x 95 meters and averaged 1.43 g/t gold (1.43g/t @ $1643 oz gold = $75.54 tonne rock) over their entire 182 meter combined length. Assays were as high as 11.38 g/t gold over a three meter chip sample.

Results from diamond and reverse circulation drilling programs conducted from 2001 to 2003 confirmed the depth extension of the widespread, porphyry style gold mineralization – many of the drill holes had intersections of 100 meters plus grading better than 1 gram a tonne (g/t) gold (1g/t @ $1643 oz gold = $52.82 tonne rock). Narrower, bonanza (very high grade intervals) were also intersected – 172 g/t gold over 2 meters in hole 01GM-08 and 240 g/t gold over 1.23 meters in hole 01GM-03.

Kena Gold Zone

The Kena Gold Zone lies 500 meters southeast of the Gold Mountain Zone. In 1999 and 2000, a core sampling program was done on previously un-assayed core and like the Gold Mountain Zone high-grade gold intervals are found within wide zones of lower grade gold mineralization.

The best historical drill hole LK86-20, returned 1.55 g/t gold (1.55g/t @ $1643 oz gold = $81.88 tonne rock) over a 53.5 meter intersection while 04KGX-01 returned 120m at .99g/t ($52.30) from surface to 121.01m and 04KGX-02 returned .75g/t ($39.62) from 1.95m to 143m.

South Gold Zone

The South Gold zone is a strong, 1000 x 250 meter gold in soils geochemical anomaly and has been tested by a 2002 four hole diamond drill program. Results indicate the South Gold Zone has the potential to host a third large area of bulk tonnage style gold mineralization on the Kena property.

Hole 02SG-04 returned 90 meters of 0.9 g/t gold, including a narrower high grade shoot which assayed 12.86 g/t gold over 2 meters. The alteration and mineralization seen at the South Gold Zone is similar in style and intensity to that seen in the Gold Mountain and Kena Gold Zones.

 

drill hole locations

Kena Copper King Zone

Kena Copper King Zone – widespread copper-gold mineralization that may be of a porphyry style lies within an Induced Polarization (IP) anomaly that is 6,000 meters long by 900 meters wide

Additional Showings

The large Kena Property hosts a number of historic past producers – the largest of these is the former Silver King Mine which produced 243,000 tonnes grading 665 g/t silver and 3.3% copper.

The remainder of the past producers were high grade gold vein type deposits and their production records state:

• Athabasca – 20,000 tonnes of 31.2 g/t Au and 10 g/t Ag
• Euphrates – 307 tonnes of 46.9 g/t Au and 249 g/t Ag
• Great Western – 34 tonnes of 52.2 g/t Au
• Starlight – 21 tonnes of 27.7 g/t Au

Good exploration targets exist along strike and to depth at all of these historic workings.

There are also targets on the Kena Property which have not yet been tested or remain under explored:

• High Grade Corridor – a deformation zone containing high grade gold mineralization
• A significant gap exists between the Gold Mountain and Kena Gold Zones that is essentially untested and could join the two areas of mineralization

Metallurgy

During the 2001 field program on the Kena Property, several major mining companies visited the property. Two of the companies obtained samples in order to conduct metallurgical tests. The preliminary metallurgical results were favorable for both gravity and cyanide leach tests.

Management

Fayyaz Alimohamed, President, Chief Executive Officer & Director

Mr. Alimohamed has a B.Sc. (Hons.) degree in Economics from the London School of Economics (University of London) and is a Certified General Accountant (CGA). Fayyaz has over 20 years experience in investment management, finance and consultancy.

Robert A. Archer, P.Geo., B.Sc., Chairman of the Board of Directors

Bob has spent more than 15 years with major mining companies including Newmont Exploration Canada Ltd., Rio Algom Exploration Inc., Placer Dome Canada Ltd., and Noranda Exploration Inc.

Currently Bob is President and Chief Executive Officer of Great Panther Silver Limited.

Shehzad Bharmal, Director

Mr. Bharmal has a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of British Columbia. Shehzad has over 15 years of experience in the mining industry with operating experience at mines and smelters. Currently Shehzad is Director, Business Improvement, at Teck Resources Limited.

Tony M. Ricci, Chief Financial Officer & Corporate Secretary

Tony is a Chartered Accountant with over 20 years of practice experience, mainly with public companies listed on Canadian and U.S. stock exchanges. Mr. Ricci was a Senior Accountant at KPMG and worked at AMEC Engineering Inc.

Warner Gruenwald, P. Geo., BsC., VP, Exploration

Mr. Gruenwald has 35 years exploration experience ranging from the management of grassroots to advanced stage exploration programs focused on precious and base metals. Mr. Gruenwald has operated as an independent consultant since 1985 and is the president of Geoquest Consulting Ltd. and is a Qualified Person (QP) as defined by National Instrument 43-101.

Share Structure

Shares Outstanding: 43,816,383

Warrants Outstanding: 5,958,586

Options Outstanding: 3,650,000

Total Shares Fully Diluted: 53,424,969

Institutional shareholders hold approximately 13% of total shares issued.

Conclusion

Of course, at this time, some might have concerns regarding the overall market for precious metals. This author believes the gold price is taking a short term rest and will soon continue higher in what is a bull market for precious metals, a bull market with many years left to run.

And in what will be a resumption of gold’s bull market Altair will be well positioned to take advantage of increasing investors interest in the sector.

It’s this authors belief that the modeling for targets on the Kena property has always been for smallish high grade showings and that no one has ever tried to connect the dots regarding lower grade, bulk tonnage gold or gold/copper targets. When comparing the price of gold and copper back in 1999 – 2003 to today we can see the idea possesses significant merit.

With a 43-101 compliant resource to build on, and preliminary metallurgy results favorable, an investment in Altair has seen considerable de-risking. Altair is in the enviable position of shortly being able to go to work and put together a consecutive string of news releases regarding results which should build upon the Kena’s current substantial resource and possibly advance the bulk tonnage models in other areas of the property.

The current Kena gold resource has the very real potential to double or triple in size.

The Kena has seen very little work since 2004, but considering the fact the Kena is obviously a property with the propensity to give off discoveries, maybe Altair, with its current Kena gold and new target models, should be on every ones radar screen. Is it on yours?

If not, maybe it should be.

Richard (Rick) Mills

rick@aheadoftheherd.com

www.aheadoftheherd.com

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Richard is host of Aheadoftheherd.com and invests in the junior resource sector. His articles have been published on over 300 websites, including: Wall Street Journal, SafeHaven, Market Oracle, USAToday, National Post, Stockhouse, Lewrockwell, Uranium Miner, Casey Research, 24hgold, Vancouver Sun, SilverBearCafe, Infomine, Huffington Post, Mineweb, 321Gold, Kitco, Gold-Eagle, The Gold/Energy Reports, Calgary Herald, Resource Investor, Mining.com, Forbes, FNArena, Uraniumseek, and Financial Sense.

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Legal Notice / Disclaimer

This document is not and should not be construed as an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to purchase or subscribe for any investment.

Richard Mills has based this document on information obtained from sources he believes to be reliable but which has not been independently verified; Richard Mills makes no guarantee, representation or warranty and accepts no responsibility or liability as to its accuracy or completeness. Expressions of opinion are those of Richard Mills only and are subject to change without notice. Richard Mills assumes no warranty, liability or guarantee for the current relevance, correctness or completeness of any information provided within this Report and will not be held liable for the consequence of reliance upon any opinion or statement contained herein or any omission.

Furthermore, I, Richard Mills, assume no liability for any direct or indirect loss or damage or, in particular, for lost profit, which you may incur as a result of the use and existence of the information provided within this Report.

Richard has warrants from an earlier Altair Ventures TSX.V – AVX financing.

Altair Ventures TSX.V – AVX is a sponsor of Richards website, aheadoftheherd.com