West Red Lake Gold Mines Ltd. (TSXV: WRLG) (OTCQB: WRLGF) announced its 2024 strategy for regional exploration activities across the 100% owned Madsen and Rowan Properties, both located in the Red Lake Gold District of Northwestern Ontario, Canada.
Highlights
- Regional mapping and geochemical sampling at Madsen with a focus on the Confederation Assemblage of rocks, which has seen very little exploration work since 2014 (Figures 1 & 2).
- Expected to commence in May 2024.
- Up to 15,000m of surface drilling to be completed at the Rowan Mine deposit with focus on growth and expansion on the existing high-grade mineral resource (Figure 4) – as previously announced on April 26, 2024.
- This drill program is fully funded up to C$4.5M and is expected to commence in early June.
- Regional mapping and geochemical sampling across Rowan property to start generating new targets for potential future drill testing.
- Expected to commence in June 2024.
Figure 1: Plan map showing density of surface sampling data collected during 2014-2022 across the Madsen property
Discussion
Most historic exploration work and drilling across the Madsen property, and within the greater Red Lake district, has been almost exclusively focused on the Balmer Assemblage of rocks. The Confederation rock package was mostly ignored and considered non-prospective for hosting significant gold mineralization. The discovery of the LP Fault and Hinge Zones at Dixie Lake in 2016 (24km SSE of Madsen) forced the geologic community to re-evaluate this narrative, and the WRLG exploration team is taking full advantage of the exploration potential that still exists within the Confederation rocks at Madsen – which cover approximately 50% of the 47 square kilometer (“sq. km.”) land package and remain mostly unexplored.
A full-scale regional program over the Confederation rocks has been planned for the 2024 field season which will include detailed geologic mapping and geochemical sampling to begin unlocking the full exploration potential of the entire Madsen property (Figure 2). Mapping and sampling within the Confederation will be focused on three main areas:
- North Shore
- Poorly mapped area in highly favorable geologic setting between Russet Lake ultramafic and Balmer-Confederation unconformity.
- South of this zone, multiple mineralized shears crosscut stratigraphy (eg. Austin Zones, Starratt, Wedge, Fork, etc.).
- Focus will be on exploration for additional similar shear zones.
- Confederation North
- This area remains mostly untested.
- Hosts some known mineral occurrences such as the high-grade #1 Vein, which was the original area being mined at Madsen before discovery of the surface expression of the Austin Zone.
- Objective will be to search for manifestation of known shear zones in the Balmer (eg. Starratt, Madsen, Derlak, etc.) projected into favorable contacts and geologic settings within the Confederation.
- Confederation South
- Hosts some known occurrences such as historic Faulkenham shaft.
- Focus will be on mafic-felsic contact areas.
This strategy is representative of WRLG’s systematic and disciplined approach to exploration and target generation.
Figure 2: Plan map showing the proposed layout of soil sampling and reconnaissance grids at Madsen
At the Rowan property, there has been very little regional exploration work completed since the 1980’s and early 1990’s when Goldquest Exploration, Inc. (which eventually amalgamated with Goldcorp, Inc.) conducted a number of regional exploration campaigns that included mapping, sampling, dozer stripping and drilling. Since that time, most of the work completed on the property has consisted of various drill programs at the Rowan Mine, Mount Jamie Mine, Red Summit Mine and along the NT Zone.
WRLG completed a preliminary orientation till sampling survey at Rowan in 2023 that consisted of 334 till samples collected on 50m spaced north-south lines, and 100m spaced east-west lines (Figure 3). Samples were collected using “Dutch” style hand augers with a maximum 2m sampling depth possible. OREAS 46 certified reference material (CRM) and duplicate field samples were inserted into the sequence at a 5% rate for each QA/QC sample type in the field. Post-field collection, samples were transported to ALS Vancouver for preparation and analysis. All samples were dried to 60°C to reduce loss of volatile mercury and arsenic, sieved to -180 +63 micron (µm) and -63 µm fraction data subsets before undergoing AR_ICP-MS digestion and analysis.
Review of assay data shows both datasets returned high quality, usable data, with the -63 µm dataset returning a preferential return in quality based on cumulative frequency probability plots and Tukey plotting of gold and pathfinders in parts per million (ppm) values. Exploratory Data Analysis via PCA was conducted on both data subsets and the components display both geochemical associations that reflect local geology and also zones of exploration potential. Glacial drift is proposed to be in the magnitude of 100m to 300m towards south by southwest across the Property based on the geological associations shown in the PCA compared to mapped lithologies. Based on the positive results of the initial 2023 soil sampling survey, the grid will be expanded in 2024 to cover more prospective areas across the Rowan property.
For more information on the exploration history at the Rowan Property please refer to the technical report entitled “Updated Mineral Resource Estimate for the Rowan Property, Ontario, Canada” dated April 26, 2024 prepared for WRLG by Sims Resources, LLC.
Figure 3: Thematic map showing Au-in-till results from 2023 orientation till sampling program at Rowan.
Figure 4: Rowan Deposit longitudinal section showing high-priority expansion target areas for 2024 drill program.
Drill intercepts shown in this figure have been composited to 2m intervals.1 Mineral Resources are estimated at a cut-off grade of 3.8 g/t Au and using a gold price of US$1,800/oz. Please refer to the technical report entitled “Updated Mineral Resource Estimate for the Rowan Property, Ontario, Canada” dated April 26, 2024 prepared for WRLG by Sims Resources, LLC.
Quality Assurance / Quality Control
The technical information presented in this news release has been reviewed and approved by Will Robinson, P.Geo., Vice President of Exploration for West Red Lake Gold and the Qualified Person for exploration at the West Red Lake Project, as defined by NI 43-101 “Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects”.
West Red Lake Gold is a market awareness client of Capital 10X. For more information, including potential conflicts of interest please see our Content Disclaimer.
