Nickel-Cobalt PGM Discovery

The Company announced a new discovery in April 2022  a Nickel-Cobalt PGM zone. This is the first reported nickel showing in the Yellowknife Gold Belt.

Crews mobilized to the Mon Property in late June 2022 and commenced mapping and sampling the Nickel-Cobalt zone, 1.5 km southeast of the mine site.  The original discovery was noted in 2021 with a prospector’s grab sample returning >1% nickel, 0.18% cobalt, and 0.429 gpt gold.   Follow-up grab samples during the winter in early 2022 confirmed 0.31% nickel, 0.022% cobalt, 0.124 gpt gold plus very elevated platinum and palladium values.

Over 1.5 km of strike-length was mapped revealing poorly exposed outcrops.  Mapping and sampling confirms the gabbro sill to be a very large hydrothermally-altered intrusion generally showing dimensionally-aligned poikilitic amphiboles up to 20 mm long +/- phlogopite-biotite after pyroxene with a groundmass of plagioclase.  In places compositional banding can be observed.

Recent work (2022) has defined the 3.2 km by 0.6 km alteration zone on its Mon Property as an Iron Oxide Copper Gold (IOCG) deposit.  Petrographic work on a sample from the coincident large magnetic low and intensely hydrothermally altered rocks, together with a comprehensive review of the geochemistry of samples collected from this unit, characterizes the target.  Petrographic work on a sample from the coincident large magnetic low and intensely hydrothermally altered rocks, together with a comprehensive review of the geochemistry of samples collected from this unit, characterizes the target.

This discovery adds a very valuable and sought-after target class to our company.  Iron oxide-copper-gold (IOCG) systems are among the world’s richest and largest mineral deposits.  In addition to potentially economic nickel, cobalt, gold, platinum, palladium (see Table 1, below), by-product strategic elements may include uranium, phosphorus, and rare earth elements (REE) which add to its attractiveness.  This is a virgin, grass-roots discovery outlining a very large prospective target that was discovered by the Company’s team using standard exploration methodology.  Additional geophysical and geochemical targets remain untested and will be reviewed  by the Company.  The Comapny anticipates finding other potentially economic zones within the large target area.  The metals identified in this IOCG discovery include many of the battery or critical elements (BE, or CE) being sought territorially, and by federal governments around the world.

Mapping and prospecting of a 1.5 km portion of the zone reveals that the very large hydrothermally-altered unit had been incorrectly identified as a gabbro by government and company geologists over the past 80 years.  Petrographic report by Ultra Petrography and Geoscience Inc. on a sample submitted this year shows it to be to be a strongly altered unit composed of xenoblastic albite with quartz and hematite with accessory minerals including chlorite, biotite, and minor sulphides and oxides (each <0.5%).  This albitite has a geochemistry that has P₂O₅ values up to 5.91% (average 3.02%), Na₂O values up to 4.26% (average 2.90%) with total rare earth oxides (TREO) of 0.09%.

Table 1.  Selected analyses from all of the January 2022 grab samples from the discovery outcrop.

Grab samples are selective and do not represent average grades of the showing.  The 31958xx series of samples were collected through snow cover in January of this year.  They were prepared and analysed by ALS Global, an independent certified laboratory using High-grade four acid digestion (MEICP61a) and ICP AES analysis. Blanks and standards reported acceptable results.

Additional targeted mapping and prospecting will examine other exposures of this IOCG target, focused by our 2018 Geotech VTEM Plus © survey.