Valley Lake
Location and Access
The Valley Lake property consists of 42 claim units located in the Wabikoba Lake area of the Thunder Bay Mining District. The claims are located approximately 10 km northwest of the Hemlo gold deposit and can be accessed by travelling 24 km down the Swede Lake forest access road, which turns off Highway 614 approximately 26 km south of the town of Manitouwadge.
Regional Geology
The property is located within the Archean Schreiber-Hemlo Greenstone Belt that is part of the Abitibi-Wawa-Shebandowan Subprovince of the Superior Province. More specifically, it is situated on the western end of the north limb of the Hemlo synform and is dominated by south-west/north-east striking sequences of metavolcanic and metasedimentary rocks bounded to the north by the Gowan Lake Pluton. The supracrustal rocks consist principally of tholeiitic basaltic flows and subordinate turfs, intercalated with epiclastic arkosic wacke and siltstone. Feldspar porphyry dykes and sills intrude both volcanics and sediments.
Property Geology
Reconnaissance geological mapping was conducted in 1964 and 1965 (Milne, 1968) at 1:31680. The only other work recorded is in 1984 (Kemp, 1984) at 1:5000 and in 1988 (Hamilton, 1989) at 1:5000. From compiling assessment work data, the property can be shown to be underlain by a package of volcanic and sedimentary rocks. From the monzonite contact southward, a thin, less than 150 meter section, of foliated mafic volcanics is in sharp contact with mudstones which are in contact with a thin felsic pyroclastic unit which grades into laminated sediments and conglomerates. The Kusins Occurrence occurs at the contact of the mudstones and the felsic tuffs. The property is cross-cutted by diabase dykes and the Bullring Lake Fault.
Previous Exploration
The property covers the western portion of a pyritic, silicified sericite horizon that hosts the high-grade Kusins occurrence (10.7% zinc, 8.9% lead and 77.8 grams/ton silver) which W.T. Kusins discovered in 1962. Kusins put down four small pits on the occurrence in 1964 before he optioned his claims to Cominco in 1965 who drilled 6 shallow holes on the occurrence in 1965. Pryme Energy staked the occurrence in 1983 during the Hemlo rush and optioned it to Noranda Exploration who conducted geological mapping and soil sampling. In 1988 Dolphin Explorations and Corona Corp performed additional geological mapping and soil sampling. In 1991 and 1992, prospectors Saunders and Simoneau performed stripping, trenching, mapping, soil sampling and geophysical surveys around the zinc occurrence. The property containing the showing was allowed to lapse and re-staked by Hemlo North Shore Inc in 2007. In April 2008, Harte Gold Corp acquired the property from Hemlo North Shore Inc but allowed the claims to lapse. Kaminak Gold Corp holds a large block of claims in the area but have done little exploration to date.
A two hole (654 meter) diamond drill program was carried out by Battle Mountain Canada in March 1996 in the central part of the Valley Lake property. The diamond drilling tested the horizon that hosts the Kusins occurrence as well as two separate I.P. chargeability anomalies situated on either side of this horizon. In general, the I.P. anomalies are associated with a wide package of altered metasediments. The horizon has the appearance of a silicified quartz-eye bearing sediment, or possibly a reworked felsic ash to lapilli tuff. Although only background gold values were obtained in drilling the sediments display moderate to strong pervasive and fracture-controlled silicification and feldspathization as well as local disseminations of molybdenum. In addition the unit displays up to 3% quartz-eyes, weak pervasive sericite alteration and is associated with a zone of intense fracturing and brecciation.
In 1994, Mick Stares, a prospector from Thunder Bay, found a piece of float that assayed 16.2 g/t gold 400 meters west of the Valley Lake property in a mafic volcanic unit containing 20% pyrite. The mafic unit is stratigraphically above the zinc-bearing horizon. The source for this float has not been found.
Recent Exploration
The existing claim block was expanded in size by adding 20 units in March, 2010 and 10 more units in April, 2010. The expansion captured the SW and NE trend of the sericite horizon which hosts the Kusins Occurrence. Two traverses in the SW part of the property uncovered only one area of outcrop. This part of the property will require soil geochemistry, geophysics and/or drilling to determine the attitude and metal component of the favourable horizon. The NE part of the property has more outcrop available and will lend itself to more productive results from prospecting. While staking the NE claims, stakers grabbed a sample near the Black River which assayed anomalous lead (0.16%) and zinc (0.26%). This sample lies 1.2 kilometers along strike from the Kusins Occurrence.
Conclusions
The Valley Lake property covers 4.5 kilometers of a favourable horizon for silver, lead, zinc and gold mineralization and requires more detailed exploration. The gold float (16.2 g/t) found by M. Stares just 400 meters west of the property suggests that the mafic volcanics which overlie this felsic horizon may be enriched in gold. Prospecting by Simoneau in 1993 in an area 150 meters north of the Kusins Occurrence showed a brecciated intrusive texture at the contact with foliated mafic rocks and the Gowan Lake (monzonite) Pluton. This may be a widespread feature and could be significant. The property is currently available for option.
