In July 2022, the Company completed the acquisition of Golden Horizon Exploration Corp. (“Golden Horizon”) and through this, an option to acquire 100% interest in the Gregory River Property. On December 7th, 2022, two additional key licences were added to the Property, further consolidating Golden Spike’s land position. On June 22, 2023 the Company announced that it has completed the terms of the option and now holds 100% interest in Gregory River. The Company how holds the majority of the Gregory River VMS-trend and several high-priority copper-gold targets, along with a cluster of high-grade copper-gold vein-type structures that occur just east of the VMS-trend.
The Gregory River Property is comprised of 17 mostly contiguous mineral licences covering approximately 3,425 hectares located on the west coast of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador, 42 km north northwest of the city of Corner Brook, and 53 km west of the city of Deer Lake. Access to the coastal town of Trout River from Deer Lake is very good, along paved highways and from there the property can be accessed along a network of unmaintained 4-wheel drive roads, ATV trails and footpaths. Alternatively, access is available by helicopter from the town of Pasadena, approximately 50 kilometers to the southeast.
The Property lies approximately 27 kilometres north-northeast of the York Harbour deposit, a Cyprus-type, copper-zinc-silver VMS deposit, which was historically in small-scale production during the early part of the 1900’s and is currently being explored by York Harbour Metals. The Gregory River Property occurs along the same trend of prospective VMS-style mineralization as the York Harbour deposit and is hosted in the northern continuation of the same Bay of Islands ophiolitic sequence of basaltic, gabbroic, and ultramafic rocks with their fragmental equivalents.
Mineralization hosted on adjacent and/or nearby properties is not necessarily indicative of mineralization hosted on the Company’s Property.
The Gregory River Property is located on the western margin of Newfoundland hosted within the Bay of Islands Ophiolite Complex, within the Humber Arm Allochthon of the Humber Laurentia Zone. The property is centered over an approximately 11-kilometer-long stretch of the Gregory River volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) belt, a north-northeast trending corridor of very prospective ground for precious and base metal mineralization. In addition, the Property hosts a cluster of high-grade copper-gold vein structures that occur just east of the VMS-belt.
The geology of the property is underlain by a faulted and variably deformed, north-northeast trending sequence of ultramafic to mafic intrusive rocks, including dunites, pyroxenites, gabbros, sheeted diabase dikes, basaltic pillow lavas and narrow zones of sedimentary rocks of the Lower Ordovician Bay of Islands Ophiolite Complex. A broad, regional north-northeast trending, gently plunging synform is interpreted to run through the southern portion of the property, with associated local anticlinal fold pairs, and possibly continuing further north. The north-northeast trending Gregory River Fault transects the western portion of the property along with numerous associated fault splays and localized zones of shearing and brecciation. The Gregory River fault and several cross-cutting structures appear to be spatially associated with many of the VMS and lode-style prospects on the property.
The VMS-style prospects at Gregory River are believed to be Cyprus-type deposits and are mostly hosted within basaltic units close to the contact with gabbro and are generally located to the east of the Gregory River Fault. VMS prospects identified on the Property include Lode 9, Gregory River, Moose Brook/Camp Brook*, and Steep Brook/Deep Brook prospects.
Intermittent historical exploration over the property, and within the district, has been carried out by numerous companies since high-grade copper mineralization was first discovered in the early 1920’s. Historical work consisted of prospecting, geological mapping and sampling, stream sediment and soil sampling, airborne and ground geophysical surveys. In the 1950’s two small exploration adits, approximately 30 and 90 metres in length, were excavated at the Mitchell and Palmer prospects, respectively. Subsequent exploration, until the 1970’s, mainly focused on vein-style mineralization and led to the discovery of multiple, high-grade, copper ± gold veins and structures at the Court A, B, & C, Hall, Palmer, Lodes 2, 6, & 7, and Mitchell prospects.
In the northeast quadrant of the property there are several south-easterly to north-easterly-trending high-grade copper mineralized veins and structures which include the Hall, Palmer, Lodes 6 & 7, Court A, B, & C and Mitchell prospects. These sulphide-rich veins are generally 0.5 metres to 2 metres in width, but locally as wide as 5 to 6 meters. Historical surface sampling, diamond drilling and two underground exploration adits have traced these structures for distances ranging from several meters to more than 350 metres along strike, along which copper grades generally average around 2% to 5% but are often in excess of 10% copper. Historically, gold was not consistently assayed, but indications are that anomalous gold grades in the range of 0.1 g/t to 3.0 g/t are locally associated with the copper mineralization, along with anomalous silver, zinc and cobalt. Historical sampling generally focused on the highest-grade portion of the vein and potential exists for wider mineralized haloes to surround the main veins and for the discovery of new veins hidden below the extensive surface soil and till cover.
Starting in the early 1980’s companies continued to evaluate the potential of the veins, but also started focusing more on the potential for stratabound, Cyprus-type, VMS copper-zinc-silver-gold mineralization on the property and in the district, with the most comprehensive programs by Riocanex (Rio Tinto; 1981 to 1982), Duval (1981 to 1985), Noranda (1991 to 1992) and Playfair Mining (2005 to 2008). Their work led to the discovery of several VMS-style mineralized showings and prospects, both on and adjacent to the property.
Since acquiring the Property, Golden Spike has been reviewing and digitizing all of the historical information, dating back to the 1920’s to assist with target delineation and planning for follow-on exploration. This includes downloading and indexing dozens of exploration files from the Newfoundland and Labrador Government’s GeoAtlas, including geological reports, diamond drilling and soils/till sampling logs and assay results, detailed geological maps, geochemical sampling results and geophysical survey data.
The Property has not seen any significant activity since 2008 and still remains largely underexplored.
Approximately 38 shallow core holes, averaging less than 100 meters in length were drilled to test the vein-style targets at the Court A (17 holes) and Hall/Palmer (11 holes) prospects. In addition, 10 core holes, averaging just over 100 meters in length were drilled to test VMS targets at Camp Brook/Moose Brook (5 holes*), Lode 9 (4 holes) and Steep Brook (2 holes). Three of the VMS targeted holes, one from each target, were abandoned at fairly shallow depths due to drilling problems.
Select significant historical down-hole drill results from Noranda’s 1991 drilling at Lode 9, Duval’s 1984 drilling at Steep Brook, and Playfair Mining’s 2006 drilling at Camp Brook/Steep Brook*, include:
*The Camp Brook/Moose Brook prospect straddles the west boundary of one of the licences on the Property and portions of the mineralization may occur on an adjacent property. Insufficient drilling has been done to estimate the true widths of the drilled intervals.
Select historical down-hole drill results* from the 1950’s drilling at the Court A Vein Prospect are shown below:
Documentation of most of the historical drill holes is very limited, especially for the pre-1950’s holes drilled at the vein-type prospects. Historical sampling of much of the drill core from these holes was very selective and only the highest-grade sulphide mineralization was assayed. In many holes only one or two samples were collected per hole, even though drill logs indicate the presence of narrow chalcopyrite stringers adjacent to the main veins in several of the holes. In addition, no assay data exists for some of the holes and very few of the historical drill holes have been kept.
*Gold was not analyzed for these holes. True widths are estimated to be approximately 60% of drilled widths
Since very little of the historical core has been kept, the QP is not able to validate all of the historical drill results. Historical core from hole CC-2 is stored in a government of Newfoundland core shed and representative portions have been re-sampled by the Company returning an approximate similar range of copper grades. Since the companies that collected the historical drilling data were mid-size to large, reputable companies that would have had sampling methodologies and quality control processes in place that were considered industry-standard for that time, the QP feels that it is reasonable to report these results as historical and provide a use guide for future exploration at these prospects.
In March 2022 Golden Horizon completed an airborne magnetic survey over the Property, as well as target-focused prospecting and sampling. This magnetic survey has been very useful in the on-going interpretation of the mineral potential of the Property and especially the delineation of lithologies, structures/faults and folds and other potentially mineralization hosting structures on the Property.
Shortly after acquiring the Property Golden Spike initiated a prospecting and sampling program at selected target areas in the northern half of the Property (Golden spike Announces Reconnaissance Sampling Results).
Program highlights include:
A program of wide-spaced soil sampling was completed over an approximate 1.6-kilometre by 2.0-kilometre grid at the Vein Zone (Golden Spike Announces Soil Sampling Results and Receipt of Exploration Permits). The survey comprised of 203 soil samples, collected at 200-metre line spacing and 50-metre sample spacing, targeting the B-horizon soil layer. Due to difficult weather conditions and the boggy terrain overlying much of the Vein Zone, several of the proposed soil sample locations were not successfully collected leaving occasional data gaps in the grid.
The range of analytical values received for each significant element from the Vein Zone soil survey are as follows:
The soil sampling highlights are as follows:
Golden Spike completed an Induced Polarization/Resistivity (“IP”) Survey at the Lode 9 Target during April 2023 (Golden Spike Announces IP Survey Results over the Gregory River Property).
The Lode 9 grid comprised of 11, east-west oriented, 100-metre spaced lines, each ranging between 400m and 950m in length and together totaling approximately 7.75 line-kilometres. The lines were surveyed using a pole-dipole configuration with “A”-spacing (electrode intervals) of 50m and “N” (“depth”) values from 1 to 6. The survey was performed on newly cut and chained grid lines and all electrode stations were subsequently measured with differential GPS positioning for greater accuracy.
The survey was designed to outline potential chargeable and resistive features that could indicate the presence of VMS-style alteration and associated sulphide mineralization, and to identify new drill targets. The survey results are very encouraging and resulted in several moderate intensity chargeability anomalies, coincident with areas of higher resistivity, and in some cases historically explored prospects. The survey data remains to be further evaluated thorough inversions, which can generate a more accurate representation of the resistivity and chargeability distributions at deeper levels and better define drilling targets.
The survey revealed three main chargeability anomalies:
In addition, a potential “Southeast” anomaly occurs on the edge of survey area, but remains poorly defined. A rock sample collected by Golden Spike in 2022 over the IP anomaly assayed 1.22% Cu, 0.10% zinc, 1,350 ppm cobalt in silicified and chloritized volcanics with multiple sulphide bearing quartz veins.
With Gregory River as the Company’s flagship exploration property, Golden Spike intends to continue its systematic exploration for both VMS-style copper-gold-zinc-silver mineralization and high-grade vein-hosted copper-gold mineralization.
Upcoming phases of exploration at Gregory River include: