Brian Testo's Grizzly Diamonds Ltd.. is drilling its fourth hole of a 10-hole program in the Buffalo Hills district of Alberta. The company already has two new kimberlites in its first three tries, and the company is still unsure of its first miss. The new finds are over 200 metres in diameter and they have an excellent kimberlite address to go with their promotable size. Grizzly's shares moved into a better neighbourhood as well, cresting at $1.35 following the discovery news.

The Drilling
Mr. Testo said Grizzly would drill another target on the Smoky the Bear property before moving northwest to test up to five anomalies on the Grand Cub Aidan property. The Smoky the Bear claims lie immediately south and east of where Ashton Mining of Canada Inc. discovered about 40 pipes. The Grand Cub Aidan claims are immediately north of the Buffalo Hills property, which Diamondex Resources Ltd. and Shore Gold Inc. now control

Grizzly's other properties in the area nearly surround the Diamondex and Shore block, but the company has no drill plans set for the Grand Cub Parker, Kodiak, or White Bear blocks. Mr. Testo has a thing for bears; friends in his hometown of Hinton nicknamed him Grizzly following a well-lubricated teenagers' rite of passage.

Grizzly's drillers will be fighting the warming weather. Ashton traditionally hauled its crews out of the field by mid-March, when milder temperatures and the sun's stronger rays start turning the frozen ground to a swampy bog and make dirt roads impassable. Mr. Testo said he hoped to extend his drilling into the latter half of March. He may need the extra time to complete the final few holes at Grand Cub Aidan.

Grizzly is also fighting a thick layer of overburden that takes more time. The company's drill had to chew through about 125 metres of material before reaching the top of the kimberlites. The area is oil and gas country and Grizzly's drill permit allows a maximum depth of 150 metres, leaving it with just 25 metres of kimberlite core for processing. About 100 kilograms of core would be enough to reveal the Diamond possibilities of the new finds.

If the new finds do produce diamonds, Grizzly could go back and collect larger and deeper samples this summer. The ground would be drier then, and at least one of the new finds lies on higher terrain. Mr. Testo said that Grizzly could get permission to drill beyond 150 metres, if the results are encouraging.

The Encouragement
Grizzly's BE-1 and BE-2 pipes are within four kilometres of each other on ground Grizzly grabbed from Ashton while it was trying to fend off Stornoway's unwanted advances. The new pipes are about 35 kilometres east of the K-14, K-91, K-252 and K-6 pipes, which produced the best Diamond grades in the district. Several lesser finds are within five kilometres to the east, although the BM-2, BM-3, BM-16 and LL-8 contained few diamonds at best.

Ashton did have better luck near Grizzly's pipes. The K-11 pipe is within 10 kilometres to the north of the new finds, and it produced enough microdiamonds to warrant a mini-bulk test. Ashton collected 22 tonnes of kimberlite and recovered about one carat of gems, for a grade of 0.045 carat per tonne. That result is especially encouraging, as the richer Buffalo Hills pipes lie in lines running from north to south.

That was the case to the west of Grizzly's new finds. Diamondex and Shore Gold think the Buffalo Hills district is comparable with the Fort a la Corne play in Saskatchewan, a theory supported by the grades from K-14 and K-91. The richest pipe in the area, K-252 has a grade of over one-half carat per tonne, well above anything in Saskatchewan.

Grizzly closed unchanged at $1.13 Friday on 17,100 shares.