By Ian Ross
A Kirkland Lake provincial geologist believes there is a yet-to-be discovered gold camp in the Lake Abitibi area that is strikingly similar to deposits found in Timmins and Kirkland Lake.
Gerhard Meyer, the regional resident geologist with the Ontario Geological Survey, made his case to the mining and prospecting community at the Northeastern Ontario Mineral Symposium in Sudbury on April 17.
He suspects a 300-kilometre-long sedimentary belt running west to east across the region into Quebec may be the next new source of gold. In particular, he is concentrating his focus of study on a fault known as the Lake Abitibi deformation zone.
Gold deposits have been known to be in the area for more than 20 years, but Meyer says prospectors have been searching in the wrong places and believes further exploration is warranted in a previously untapped section north and northeast of the lake.
"There is good potential here all the way to Quebec," says Meyer, who has written extensively on the subject and created a table of known gold deposits close to deformation zones across northeastern Ontario which may apply to the Lake Abitibi area. He theorizes there could be a major gold find just north of the Lake Abitibi zone based on some promising indicators and the overall geological case history of the region.
Meyer says the distribution of gold deposits is comparable to other known gold-producing centres such as Timmins and Kirkland Lake. In both areas, more than a million ounces of gold per ton were found north of their respective deformation zones. Two of the three largest gold mines in the Timmins area, the McIntyre and Hollinger Mines, were a little more than five kilometres north of the Porcupine-Destor zone.
Meyer maintains there could be major deposits within a five to five-and-a-half kilometre range north of the zone, especially in Bowyer Township on the lake's north end.
There have been no significant finds to date because of the heavy cover of clay, swamp and lake water, which makes conventional prospecting methods difficult.
"The lake was much larger at one point, but over time it's been draining and much of what was previously under water is now exposed and you get these clay deposits." Meyer says.
Some of the giant quartz boulders clustered in the southwest corner of the lake have contained fine gold grains. The average grade of a sample being .328 ounces of gold per ton, with some as high as .6 ounces per ton in some areas. And gold can easily be panned at various places along three eskers.
Although there is no mining activity in the area, nine companies over the years have completed 473 reverse drilling holes spread out over the area. But there has been little follow-up exploration.
