| | |
| | | |
| | | ||||||||
|
| | Summary The Assean Lake gold property is located about 125 kilometers by road north east of the town of Thompson, Manitoba, a major nickel mining center. The property currently consists of 58 claims covering 9,598 hectares. In 2000, Strider Resources Ltd., the owner of the claims, optioned the property to Rare Earth Metals Corp., whereby Rare Earth could earn a 100% interest in the claims, subject to a 3% NSR royalty on production. On March 8, 2001, Canadian Gold Hunter Corp. (at that time named International Curator Resources Ltd.) entered into an option agreement with Rare Earth to earn a 60% interest in the property over a four-year period by making cash payments and exploration expenditures aggregating $1.25 million. Gold Hunter became vested in the option effective February 15, 2002 and the two companies formed a 60-40 joint venture to continue exploration on the claims. In March 2005, all work and payment obligations of the joint venture to Strider were met and the joint venture acquired a 100% interest in the claims, owned as to 60% by Canadian Gold Hunter Corp. and 40% by Rare Earth Metals Corp. Canadian Gold Hunter is the operator. Strider entered into an option agreement in 2000 to earn a 70% interest in the adjacent Tex claims held by Hudson Bay Exploration & Development Co. The Tex claims formed a separate Rare Earth purchase option agreement with Strider. The Tex option became part of the Gold Hunter $1.25 million earn-in agreement with Rare Earth dated March 08, 2001, whereby Gold Hunter could earn a 70% interest in Rare Earth's interest in the Tex claims - that is, a net 49% to Gold Hunter's account. The Tex option agreement was terminated by Gold Hunter and Rare Earth in March 2003. Canadian Gold Hunter has no remaining obligations or interests with respect to the Tex claims. In February 2002, the joint venture entered into a purchase option agreement with Hornby Bay Exploration Limited to acquire a 100% interest in the Ace claim, adjacent to the Assean Lake property. After conducting one exploration program on the claim, the joint venture relinquished its right to acquire the Ace property in February 2003. The Assean Lake property lies within the northeastern extension of the Thompson Nickel Belt, a zone marking the collisional margin of the Early Proterozoic Churchill Province to the north west against the Archean Superior Province to the south east during the Trans-Hudson orogeny. The contact between the two provinces is known as the Superior Boundary Zone, a zone of extreme, multi-stage deformation with a major bounding fault(s) and characterized by high-grade metamorphism. The geology of the Assean Lake property is poorly understood due to an extensive cover of lacustrine clay, silt, sand and basal till up to 20 meters in thickness. Based on limited outcrops and core from diamond drilling, the area is underlain by gneiss and schist of varied derivation and Archean (+ 2.7 billion years) to early Proterozoic in age. On the claims, a sequence of metamorphosed and isoclinally folded supracrustal rocks of sedimentary origin and probably of early Proterozoic age, is intruded by pegmatite and foliated granodiorite. Swarms of gabbroic dikes are strongly isoclinally folded within the sequence of cover rocks. The succession is comparable to, and possibly correlative with, the lower Proterozoic Ospwagan Group (2.1 to 1.9 billion years), which hosts several important nickel deposits near Thompson, 120 kilometers to the southwest. The Assean Lake gold prospects have similar characteristics to many shear-hosted deposits found in the prolific gold belts of the Precambrian shield in eastern and northern Canada. Precambrian shear-hosted gold deposits range in size from a few thousand metric tons to over 50 million metric tons and constitute a significant source of global gold production. The region around Assean Lake has been explored periodically since the 1930's, when prospectors first discovered the Lindal, Dunbrack and Galena Island gold showings along the lake's shore. Sherritt Gordon Mines Ltd. drilled some short holes on the Dunbrack showing in 1938 and Westfield Minerals drilled two holes in 1959. In 1964, Hudson Bay Exploration & Development carried out a regional airborne electro-magnetic (EM) survey over the area, which led to the subsequent drill discovery of the small Tex zinc prospect in 1965. Arbor Resources, Nor-Acme Gold Mines and Homestake Mineral development explored in the vicinity of the Assean Lake property in the 1980's. Arbor and Nor-Acme jointly drilled 11 core holes on the Dunbrack and Lindal showings. Homestake flew a large helicopter magnetic and EM survey in 1985 and followed up with 10 shallow core holes on the Lindal Zone. Drill results indicate that the Lindal, Dunbrack and Galena Island showings are all small, narrow vein-gold occurrences. Strider Resources Limited conducted orientation geochemical surveys in 1994 and optioned the claims to CopperQuest Inc., who drilled six short core holes in 1998. Rare Earth Metals Corp. optioned the claims from Strider in 2000 and completed a program of soil geochemistry using the mobile-metal-ion (MMI) analytical procedure. From February 2001 to April 2005, Canadian Gold Hunter, later jointly with Rare Earth Metals, funded and carried out nine major programs during the intervening summer and winter field seasons. Total project expenditures by Gold Hunter have amounted to about $2,164,000. These campaigns included significant line cutting, MMI geochemistry, ground magnetic surveys, induced polarization (IP) surveys, ground electro-magnetic (EM) surveys and the drilling of 183 core holes amounting to 28,566 meters. The various programs resulted in the discovery of a number of gold occurrences at Assean Lake, including the Hunt Zone and the BIF (banded iron formation) Zone among others. The Hunt Zone is a mineralized shear reaching a width of almost 10 meters and extending over a strike length of 700 meters. The shear zone is parallel to the penetrative 060°-065° foliation strike direction developed in the isoclinally folded host rocks and dips steeply south. It has been tested by 57 diamond drill holes (14,058 meters). The most favorable host rock is a discontinuous, sheared and altered metagabbro, enclosed by schist and gneiss. Considerable fine visible gold within the Hunt Zone occurs in a high-grade shoot where grades reach as high as 27.22 g/t Au over 4.27 meters (about 3.60 meters true width). The shoot has a strike length of about 100 meters and plunges within the broader zone at about -45° to the WSW. A second gold zone, the Hunt B Zone, occurs erratically 30-40 meters below the structural footwall of the Hunt Zone. The Hunt B locally contains some free gold but typically is rich in arsenopyrite and is very strongly silicified. This zone is spotty in distribution and poorly understood. The Hunt Zone has been traced by drilling to a depth of 250-275 meters. At that depth, the zone is disrupted by a complex, steeply dipping, fault-breccia zone. Seven deep drill holes below the fault breccia zone failed to intersect the high-grade Hunt Zone. The Hunt Zone remains open to the west above the fault breccia but grades are low. The BIF Zone is a sulphide-bearing iron formation underlying a strike length of some 1,000 meters immediately east of the Hunt Zone. The zone has been tested by 15 core holes up to a depth of 200 meters. Gold in the BIF Zone is not visible to the naked eye and is associated with pyrite and pyrrhotite introduced into magnetite iron formation. Gold grades are generally low and erratic, typically ranging from 0.50 to 4.25 g/t over two to seven meters. Given the close spatial relationship of the BIF and Hunt gold systems, the two zones are probably part of the same mineralizing event. No independent estimate of mineral resources compliant with NI 43-101 has yet been made.
| | | |||||
| | | ||||||||
| | | ||
| |
| | |
| | | ||
| | Home Investors Projects News Contact |  | |
)
)
)
