Project Overview
The Isabella Pearl Project is located in Nevada's Walker Mineral Lane gold belt and is an open-pit heap leach project that began production in April 2019, only ten months after breaking ground with commercial production commencing shortly after in October 2019. The property hosts significant exploration potential along its area of approximately 9,000 acres, with the Scarlet zone being the recipient of most of the latest exploration work, delivering promising results throughout 2021 with intercepts such as:
IPRC-254: 19.81m of 1.56 g/t gold
IPRC-257: 16.76m of 2.23 g/t gold
IPRC-262: 24.38m of 1.60 g/t gold
On March 1, 2022, Fortitude Gold announced the overperformance of the Isabella Pearl mine due to higher-than-expected grade with a mined average gold grade of 3.76 grams per tonne gold. In the same release Fortitude Gold states that after reconciling ore tonnes mined to date, Isabella Pearl shows higher grade of gold compared to the reserve model, which resulted in an increased life of mine from mid-2024 to 2025-2026 at a rate of 40,000 gold ounces per year.
Additionally, Fortitude Gold has stated further drilling planned for 2022 in the Crimson, Scarlet South, and Silica Knob zones, which will be used to update mineral reserve estimates and update the mine plan to incorporate any new mineral reserves.