The Calgary-based company said the lease was not far from its existing Palisades and Moberly Creek coal projects, covering 5244 hectares (about 12,950 acres) near Grande Cache, Alberta.

Altitude has a total land position in the area of 22,000ha.

“We have been working on consolidating additional local coking coal opportunities and we have found favourable historical geological coal structure information for the Altitude North property,” president and chief executive officer Andrew Wusaty said.

“We will be looking at putting together a field program for Altitude North in 2013."

At the same time, the company has wrapped up its preliminary field assessment program for both Palisades and Moberly Creek near Hinton thanks to assistance from consultant Dahrouge.

During the exploration program held last year, it discovered two undocumented coal seams within Palisades, and an additional three undocumented coal seams at Moberly Creek.

All of the coal was found to be low-vol bituminous.

Wusaty said the company was pleased with the outcome of the assessment.

“It significantly improves our knowledge of the Altitude properties,” he said.

“We have identified several new outcrops on Moberly Creek and the Palisades Extension and furthermore, all the work done in this initial phase will provide the plans and access requirements for the drilling, coal quality and exploration programs which will follow in the second-third quarter 2013."

Altitude Resources, incorporated on August 19, 2010, just began trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange on February 14 under ALI.