Drilling activity paying off in Timmins

The opening weeks of 1999 have seen a series of discoveries in the Timmins and Matheson areas of northeastern Ontario.

Drilling by Pentland Firth Ventures (PFO-T) at the Ludgate property in Michaud Twp., 30 km east of Matheson, has significantly expanded the property’s Noel gold zone. Of 14 holes drilled in the fall and early winter, 11 intersected gold mineralization, expanding the zone to a strike length of 650 metres and to a vertical depth of 150 metres.

The down-core lengths of the intersections ranged from 3.1 to 40.9 metres and showed gold contents of 0.1-4.2 grams per tonne. The zone, about 200 metres south of the main, east-striking Ludgate gold zone, is in a syenite porphyry that has been strongly hematized and pyritized. Mineralization appears to be controlled by a northeasterly striking structure that obliquely intersects the Ludgate shear.

Pentland also drilled six holes into the Jasper zone, a second oblique structure, north of the Ludgate. Grades ranged from 0.1 to 1.2 grams gold per tonne over widths of 0.7 to 12 metres.

At a third zone oblique to the Ludgate shear, about 200 metres east of the intersection with the Noel, three more drill holes extended the known strike length to 150 metres, intersecting gold grades of 0.1-1.1 grams over core lengths of 6.6-10 metres.

The Ludgate mineralization has a preliminary resource estimated at 462,000 tonnes grading 5.9 grams gold per tonne. Pentland has a 60% interest in the project; Toronto-based QSR (QSR-T) has 40%.

• In Hoyle Twp., about 15 km northeast of Timmins, Pentland Firth has completed eight drill holes on the Wetmore property, 1.5 km south of the Bell Creek mine of Kinross Gold (K-T). Five holes on the Wetmore East prospect all cut gold mineralization over significant lengths.

  Hole PW-24 encountered a 33.4-metre zone that carried an average of 3.8 grams gold per tonne, including narrower intervals of 9.5 grams and 12.2 grams. A 13.9-metre intersection in hole PW-26 averaged 7.8 grams gold, including a 1.2-metre length that ran 45.6 grams. The three other holes cut mineralized zones of 0.9 metre grading 2.2 grams, 4.5 metres grading 2 grams, and 15 metres grading 1.4 grams.

• Having completed a drill program at its Bristol Twp. property, Holmer Gold Mines (HGM-T) plans to recalculate the deposit’s resource estimate. The property was last estimated to contain 1.35 million tonnes grading an average of 9.2 grams gold per tonne.

  Two holes were drilled as 25-metre stepouts from hole 98-07, which, as reported in December, intersected 6.1 metres grading 20 grams gold per tonne. The stepout hole to the east, hole 98-14, encountered two zones of mineralization, one of which graded 95.2 grams over 0.7 metre, while the other returned 16.3 grams over 0.6 metre.

  The stepout hole to the west, 98-10, intersected two intervals: the first, of 0.65 metre, graded 22 grams gold per tonne. The second, 0.85 metre long, graded 16.1 grams.

  The program tested for wide mineralized bodies near where the deposit’s three zones reach the surface of the bedrock. A fence of holes drilled on 25-to-50-metre centres tested the zones to a vertical depth of about 100 metres. Eight holes, including the two stepouts, cut significant gold grades, defining a near-surface zone about 250 metres long.

• Five more holes drilled at the Fuller property of Vedron Gold (VDGI-C) indicate that a wide zone of mineralization, encountered during underground development in 1988, could be on the same level as the ML zone, discovered during surface drilling in 1997. Drill hole 98-83 intersected a 28.1-metre zone grading 4.4 grams gold per tonne, including an 11-metre interval that carried 7.5 grams.

  The four other holes ranged from 4.1 to 14.3 grams over core lengths of 2.9 to 6.6 metres.

• Exploration for base metals has been largely concentrated northwest of Timmins, where Moneta Porcupine Mines (ME-T) and Blackstone Resources(BZZ-A) are exploring in Godfrey and Jamieson twps., near the Kam-Kotia mine, a former copper and zinc producer. The partners drilled a deep hole to test a chargeable zone detected by real-section induced-polarization (IP). The 580-metre hole intersected a felsic breccia, with disseminated pyrite and pyrrhotite, and with some sulphide clasts and veinlets.

  Moneta and Blackstone have finished a down-hole electromagnetic (EM) survey, and are doing further IP to define another drill target. Also, on their Jamieson Twp. property, the companies drilled an EM conductor, which was found to be a graphitic argillite bed.

• Falconbridge (FL-T) is drilling on a property west of its Kidd Creek mine to test a target defined by the Spectrem airborne EM system. Hudson Bay Mining & Smelting’s exploration subsidiary, Hudson Bay Exploration & Development, which developed the Spectrem system, has a 40% interest in the property, and Prospectors Alliance (pall-c) and associated private company Explorers Alliance each have 10%. Falconbridge drilled six holes in late 1998, one of which encountered strongly altered volcanic rocks with elevated zinc values.
• Prospectors Alliance is earning a half-interest in a Falconbridge property at Gunther Lake in Carscallen Twp., 25 km west of Timmins. There, drilling has intersected sulphide mineralization near the top of a felsic volcanic sequence, with what the company describes as “anomalous” concentrations of copper, zinc, lead, silver and gold.