AB Property
The 3992 ha AB Property is located in the Mackenzie Mountains of the NWT, 263 km west of Norman Wells. Prospective for Mississippi Valley-Type (“MVT”) Pb-Zn deposition, exploration has located coincident geological, geochemical and geophysical features that may represent large buried mineralized systems. Access to the property is by helicopter from a nearby exploration camp serviced by twin engine float planes.
Project Highlights
- >$4.4M in past expenditures in the district ($0.9M on the AB Property)
- Numerous mineralized occurrences
- Excellent geology favourable for carbonate-hosted MVT base-metal deposits
- Untested high-priority coincident geochemical and geophysical targets associated with favourable geology
- Potential for World Class Deposit
- Encouraging exploration results to date with extensive rock/silt/soil geochemical database
Geology
Two large E-W trending faults, 2 km apart, occur on the property. The more northern fault located near the center of the property appears to be an important conduit for mineralizing fluids. Many of the mineral showings are located near or on smaller faults splaying off and bounded by the two.
It appears that both structure and stratigraphy are very important mineralization controls at the property. The AB-Main Showing occurs close to deep-seated structures that may have transported scavenged metals from a vast area and concentrated them in receptive units closer to the surface.
History
1974 to 1977 -- The Arctic Red JV discovers the Zn-Pb AB-Main Showing, drilling intersects 30 m of disseminated sphalerite including 3 m of 12% Zn. The AB-C Zone is discovered and trenching returns 69 m of 10% Zn while drilling reveals that all facies of the Sekwi dolostone are found to be mineralized to some extent.
Eagle Plains Exploration
The AB Claims were staked in 2005 after verification of target types and realization of the area potential. The next year 5700 regional stream sediment samples from a historical Rio Tinto program were acquired and anylysed using modern techniques, providing targets for follow up field work. In 2008, 14 new mineral showings were discovered. Geochemical and geophysical surveys located several significant, coincident and open anomalous zones. At the AB-C geophysics delineated two extensive anomalies, one appearing to be stratigraphically controlled over 500 m strike and the other appears structurally controlled over 1 km strike from the AB-C Zone to the Link Showing.
Future Work
An 8000 m diamond-drill program is recommended to test the mineralized horizons and showings of a prospective layer in the stratigraphy and additional geophysics, geochemistry and prospecting over showings that did not have previous coverage.
Additional mapping and prospecting in the Franklin Mountain Formation on high-grade showings characterized by white sphalerite is recommended..