By Nick Stewart
Two previously undiscovered mineralized gold zones have been revealed at the Wilkinson Lake Gold Beardmore-Geraldton area properties.
“Early results from this project are really, really encouraging,” says William Chornobay, president and CEO of Vancouver based-Kodiak Exploration Ltd.
“We’re very optimistic about what we’re seeing out there. It’s delivered some pretty good results early on.”
The Penelton and Yellow Brick Road zones, located 100 kilometres northwest of Hemlo, represent a significant development for the company. The two zones are connected to the Wilkinson Lake Gold (WLG) zone in a 1.2-kilometre northwesterly system within a 400-metre-wide shear.
The company has spent $400,000 to date on exploration and development on the Hercules site stripping the area of overburden.
Up to 80 per cent of Canada’s gold production is discovered in shear-hosted gold reserves, Chornobay says. The substantially-sized shear represents a real boon for Kodiak.
“It appears that we’ve exposed a small part of a very large system, and being that it’s that large is what has us most excited,” he says. “Hopefully, the gold values we see can be repeated along strike, and hopefully the drill holes will give us further encouragement.”
Located 200 metres west of its WLG zone, the Penelton zone assayed a gold-bearing quartz vein reaching up to five metres thick. Grab samples across this newly discovered vein have turned up results ranging from 0.12 grams to 37.07 grams (g/t) of gold per tonne, with an average of 7.91 g/t of gold over 9.5 metres.
The Yellow Brick Road zone is a steeply dipping gold-bearing zone with grab samples containing 5.85 g/t of gold. A channel sample evidenced 2.60 g/t of gold and 60.72 g/t of silver over 1.51 metres.
As a whole, the zone has been exposed over a strike length of 250 metres, and is up to 3.50 metres wide on surface.
These discoveries complement Chornobay’s optimism regarding phase one drill results from the known WLG zone, which were released Nov. 11. Over a strike length of 240 metres, Chornobay says, it has an average width of 10.3 metres. One of the stronger results of the 14-hole drill program has intersected bonanza grades of 51.65 g/t of gold over 4.85 metres within a 16.60 metre interval grading 15.59 g/t of gold. An additional two holes returned gold values of 10 g/t greater across multi-metre intervals.
Potential remains for this system to extend even further. Phase two drilling began in November with eight holes to be drilled down 50 to 130 metres.
“There’s still a lot to look at, we’ve barely scratched the surface out there. The contact between the stock and the volcanics goes for 16 kilometres, and there’s other showings along that contact we haven’t spent time on yet. There’s a lot of work to do.”
The company recently expanded its land package from 220 claim units to 600, spanning across 300 square kilometres.
Chornobay says five people are constantly at the site running various tasks, from drilling to line-cutting to geophyiscal analysis. Up to 70 per cent of the work being performed by workers from Northern Ontario under the supervision of various Ontario-based contractors.
This work is slated to become heavier as increasingly positive results roll in, Chornobay says.
“Northern Ontario is a great place for mining, and we’re enthusiastic about being there. We think there’s a lot of potential there and we hope we’re right.”
