Noranda hits base metals along Wollaston U belt in northern

A 3,700-metre winter drill program in the Foster Lake area of northern Saskatchewan has yielded significant zinc and copper values for Noranda Exploration, a division of Noranda (TSE).

At Hewetson Lake, about 125 km north of La Ronge, Noranda hit 40 metres grading 2.5% zinc in a shale-sandstone sequence. About 15 km further northwest at Sito Lake, the same host rock yielded 40 metres grading 1.9% zinc.

On a third target, the base metal producer intersected 33 metres of Proterozoic conglomerate grading 0.77% copper at a depth of between 49 and 82 metres.

All three shallow zones were found by testing geophysical anomalies up-ice from high-grade (up to 10% zinc and 3.9% copper) boulder trains. They occur within the Wollaston Domain, a sedimentary belt better known for its rich uranium deposits at Key Lake and Rabbit Lake.

“The widths are there but not the grades,” says John Harvey, president of Noranda Exploration. “We’d like to find the source of the high-grade boulders.”

To this end, Noranda will spend another $2 million this year on prospecting and geophysical surveys within the 120,000-hectare land package that was quietly staked by Noranda employees in March and April. A drilling budget has yet to be drawn up.

“This is definitely one of our top projects in Canada,” says Harvey. He says the copper mineralization, which occurs as native copper as well as chalcocite, compares with that of the Upper Peninsula of Northern Michigan, where Metall Mining’s Copper Range mine yields more than 100 million lb. of copper cathode per year.

The sphalerite (zinc) mineralization resembles the lead-zinc deposits of the western U.S.

Infrastructure in the area is reported to be fairly well-established. “I think it’s a promising play, a new attitude toward the belt,” says resident geologist Andrew Gracie. Although both Falconbridge and Cominco have investigated the belt for its sediment-hosted base metal potential, Noranda used a new model to come up with the recent finds.

Base metal mineralization was first recorded along the Wollaston belt in 1953, when prospector Simon Eninew found a large meta-arkose boulder in the Foster Lake area, which assayed more than 2% copper. Later, a quartzite boulder grading 16% lead was found at Wathaman River. Since then, several small copper and lead-zinc occurrences have been investigated.