Another junior miner is entering the gold exploration fray near Pickle Lake.
Vancouver’s Commander Resources has claimed two properties in northwestern Ontario through online staking.
The 5,500-hectare First Loon Property is in the Pickle Lake gold belt, close to a cluster of former mines – the Pickle Crow, Central Patricia and Dona Lake – that collectively produced 2.3 million ounces of gold.
The property is considered underexplored but companies like Union Miniere Explorations and Mining Corporation (UMEX), Placer Dome and Kerr Addison did some limited drilling.
Commander’s second property, the 801-hectare Staunton Property, 120 kilometres south of Pickle Lake, has shown “elevated gold values” in the lake sediment dating back to 2003.
They hold a valuable database of old exploration files compiled by UMEX in the late 1980s.
UMEX explored for gold and base metals in the greenbelts around Pickle Lake and Sturgeon Lake, and also operated the Thierry Nickel Mine in Pickle Lake.
Commander’s other property in the Pickle Lake area is the Sabin VMS Project, a 9,870-hectare property.
UMEX worked the land in 1977 and outlined a 123,000-tonnes resource of zinc, copper, silver and gold. The property was last explored in 1980’s.
Commander recently completed a geophysical survey and identified “numerous conductors” in the areas previously explored and unexplored. The company sampled high gold and silver values there last summer.
Commander, which bills itself as a “project generator,” has projects and royalty deals on gold and base metal properties in British Columbia, Yukon, Nunavut, Quebec, New Brunswick, Newfoundland-Labrador and Mexico.
