The Colomac and Indin Lake Story - Realizing Opportunity in an Underexplored Archean Gold Camp
Dr. Michael J. Byron - PRESIDENT & CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, DIRECTOR
Dr. Michael Byron has thirty years of field work, research, and senior management experience in gold, base-metal, magmatic nickel & PGE, diamond, and gemstone exploration, spanning employment within the mineral exploration industry and government. In 2008, he joined Nighthawk Gold Corp. and began developing projects in the Northwest Territories. As Director and Chief Geologist he supervised the acquisition and advancement of the former producing Colomac Gold mine into a new multi-million ounce opportunity.
Nighthawk Gold Corp. is a Canadian based mineral exploration company currently focused on advancing its Indin Lake Gold Property, a 222,203-acre land package located 200 kilometres north of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories within the Indin Lake Gold Camp.
An Inferred Mineral Resource estimate of 2.101 million oz gold at a 1.64 g/t gold average grade (0.6 g/t gold cut-off) is defined at its flagship Colomac Gold Project. Only a small portion of the mineralized Colomac and Goldcrest intrusions are captured by this 2013 estimate, leaving an underexplored and highly prospective deposit that hosts several newly discovered extensive, high-grade gold zones, and broad domains of lower grade mineralization.
Nighthawk’s model for gold mineralization, as shown by geochemical studies on Colomac drill core sampled during its 2012 and 2014 exploration programs, is after that of the Golden Mile dolerite gold deposits, Kalgoorlie, Western Australia; all are hosted by differentiated mafic sills of similar age with a more sodic, siliceous, and brittle, upper portion (fine to medium-grained quartz diorite) amenable to fracturing during regional structural deformation, fluid transport, and mineral deposition, and within which gold is preferentially concentrated. This contrasts with the ductile behavior of the (gabbroic) lower portion of the sill and the surrounding mafic volcanic rocks. The identification of hydrothermal breccias within the quartz diorite is consistent with Nighthawk’s observations at other Colomac Zones and is further visual evidence of hydro-fracturing and the (precursor to) mineralization proposed by Nighthawk for Colomac.
Differentiated mafic intrusions are known to contain significant gold deposits, and Kalgoorlie’s Golden Mile dolerite is one of the world’s largest with production more than 60 million ounces of gold to date. It also hosts higher grade gold zones, but at Colomac the existence of similar distinct zones had not been documented until Nighthawk’s discovery of Zone 1.5 in 2014, a well constrained, high-grade domain targeted based on the Kalgoorlie model. Nighthawk has identified similar bodies at Zone 3.5 and Zone 2.0, and other possibilities along strike.
Results of Nighthawk’s 2017 drill program have extended the near surface dimensions of the high-grade core to Zone 1.5 to be upwards of 300 metres long, 30 to 50 metres in true width, extending from surface to 350 metres, and open to depth. While the latest drilling to depth, has expanded Zone 1.5 by an additional 250 metres to a vertical depth of 600 metres, and delivered a three-fold expansion of the mineralized true width of Zone 1.5 to over 150 metres suggesting the sill expands to depth, opening vast new areas for exploration. Better 2016-17 results from Zone 1.5 include 72.65 metres (50 metres true width) of 5.58 g/t gold, including 17.80 metres of 17.72 g/t gold, and C17-08, which returned 55.35 m (51.00 m true width) of 3.00 g/t gold, including 19.50 m of 5.58 g/t gold, and 6.80 m of 10.45 g/t gold.
Ongoing regional exploration continues to illustrate the potential of this underexplored gold camp.
Thanks to Nighthawk Gold Corp. for sponsoring the networking reception following the presentation!
