Ximen Mining (CVE:XIM) has begun its exploration programme at the high-grade Gold Drop project, in south-east British Columbia.

The purpose of the programme is to define the veins with the highest grades so that drilling can be planned in the future.

Exploration work has already found abundant visible gold in one surface exposure in part of the North Star - Gold Drop vein, the company revealed.

Prospecting is also planned in the north-west region of the project in an area of six documented gold occurrences including Amandy, Lakeview and Moonlight.

"This year's exploration programme at Gold Drop is designed to move the Gold Drop property toward a drilling decision. Our other project at Brett will continue to receive our highest exploration priority this year as it holds some very high grade gold intervals in several veins," said Chris Anderson, Ximen's chief executive officer.

Earlier this year Ximen raised C$1mln through the issue of 7mln flow-through units to finance its drilling programmes.

The flagship Brett property lies in the country surrounding the southern British Columbia town of Vernon, and has had an enormous amount of work done on it since it was first identified as a discovery in 1983.

Over the years that discovery was followed up with more than 15,000 metres of diamond drilling in 131 holes and almost 3,000 metres of reverse circulation drilling in 53 holes. The project was also the subject of over 4,000 soil samples completed over 15 square metres, many of which returned anomalous results.

Armed with all this historic data, Ximen duly started drilling of its own towards the latter part of 2014, and delivered 13 holes over a combined 3,000 metres of drilling.

The results showed extensive mineralisation. Among the highlights were 7.2 metres grading 2.85 grams per tonne gold and 7.73 grams silver, 0.9 metres at 34.18 grams gold and 6.66 grams silver, and 31 metres at 1.77 grams gold and 2.13 grams silver.