Go big or go home.
In a somewhat lacklustre market for bullion prices, gold exploration companies have to swing for the fences to have any chance of lighting up their share prices.
Great Bear Resources Ltd. (TSX: V.GBR, GTBDF, Forum) is one such company. And it’s a bold strategy that has already been paying off with high-grade drill results within an expansively mineralized gold system.
So far, the Vancouver-based company has enjoyed some early-stage success in validating its geological model while “elephant hunting” among some of Canada’s richest gold fields.
More specifically, Great Bear is exploring in the famous Red Lake Mining District in Ontario. This is where nearly 30 million ounces of high-grade gold have historically been produced among no less than two dozen or so mines.
This reality speaks to the fact that the Red Lake area has always proven to be geologically very fertile for important gold discoveries, including recent ones.
The company’s expansive exploration concessions, which cover nearly 10,000 hectares, are also located in close proximity to a handful of world-class gold mines – ones that benefit from high mining grades while also capitalizing on low operational costs due to the abundance of mining infrastructure in this storied gold camp.
Building on Initial Drill-Bit-Driven Success
With a second round of drilling about to probe multiple gold targets, it is worth contemplating management’s high hopes for its winter drill program.
In fact, management is cautiously confident of encountering more lustrous drill results like last year’s batch of high-grade intercepts at the project area’s ground zero, Dixie Lake.
Management believe the company has discovered the strike extensions of the main mineralized system at the heart of the property where plunging gold shoots have been identified.
What cannot be overstated is that Great Bear’s 2017 drill results offer plenty of encouragement that the company’s geological detective work to date is beginning to pay off.
In other words, the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle are now coming together as Great Bear’s accomplished team of savvy geologists zero-in on the richest concentrations of gold at the core of this under-explored property.
Before elaborating on this breakthrough development, let me first offer up some of the best intercepts among the first five holes to be assayed.
Highlights include:
·
Hole DL-005 intersected 10.40 metres of 16.84 grams per tonne gold, including 1.05 m of 130.10 g/t gold.
· Hole DL-004 intersected 6.30 m of 5.56 g/t gold, including 1.0 m of 8.33 g/t gold.
· Hole DL-001 intersected 4.60 m of 4.07 g/t gold, including 0.50 m of 10.50 g/t gold.
· Hole DL-003 intersected 13.75 m of 2.11 g/t gold, including 1.5 m of 5.42 g/t gold.
What to Expect as the Stakes Get Higher
To date, Great Bear has identified a multi-kilometre mineralized trend that overlies the length of the property for more than 20 kilometers.
This includes an initial 2.5-kilometer-long stretch of mostly continuous gold mineralization which has been the focus of most of the current and historic exploration work on the property. In fact, this is where multiple high-grade, near-surface gold zones have been identified and which will be aggressively drilled this year.
The key revelation here is that the company’s past drilling blows apart the previously-held view by past project operators that the known high-grade systems on the property are too inconsistently endowed with gold to constitute a viable gold deposit.
Among the most promising finds to date is the Hinge discovery zone, where up to several ounces per tonne of gold per tonne have been encountered in historic assaying. Accordingly, Great Bear will be targeting these apparently richly-mineralized intervals with upcoming drilling.
Company President and CEO Chris Taylor, elaborates:
“Our focus this year will be to prove up the high-grade gold in our initial Dixie Lake discovery zone. This is where the project area has already proved to be robust, and continuously mineralized across more than 70 drill holes.
Of equal importance, we want to test new areas of interest. They include the Hinge and South Limb Zones, where the system appears to fold back on itself. If our folded interpretation is correct there is the prospect of doubling the mineralized strike length of our initial targeted area while including the high-grade historically drilled Hinge Zone mineralization that we are about to drill ourselves”.
Building on a Core Gold Asset
At the project’s main discovery area (to date) – known as Dixie Lake – Taylor believes his company may already have a tiger by the tail. He explains:
“Dixie Lake is where we have encountered high-grade, near-surface gold, where there exists the potential for new high-grade discoveries that could benefit from the established mining experience and infrastructure of the Red Lake district.
In fact, we’re seeing the emergence of a large mineralized zone at Dixie Lake that has the potential to span at least two to three kilometres of strike length, and more than 20 kilometres of associated geophysically defined gold-hosting structure that we will explore with the goal of finding additional gold zones.”
Now the challenge lies with offering up the proof in the pudding at Dixie Lake. But Taylor says he’s confident the upcoming drill program will go a long way towards achieving this key benchmark development.
“Most importantly, this time around we will be able to demonstrate to our investors the actual size and scope of this emerging gold discovery zone at Dixie Lake.
And we have a wealth of 30 years of historic exploration and development data. This even includes over 160 drill holes, mostly in the Dixie Lake area, defining several areas of gold mineralization. These historic drill results include intercepts as rich as 2.2 metres of 17.2 grams per tonne of gold and 12.34 metres of 7.54 grams per tonne of gold.
All of this past geological modelling will inform and guide our upcoming January drill program. So, assuming we succeed in replicating historic gold results and continue to build upon our own initial drill results at Dixie Lake, we anticipate that some very nice gold numbers could be generated by this round of drilling.
We also benefit from year-round access to our project area and drilling is comparatively inexpensive in this part of the world.”
Strength through Diversification
Great Bear also has a double shot at success in the Red Lake Mining District with its 2,725-hectare West Madsen Project, which encompasses the strike extension of the geology that hosts Pure Gold Mining’s nearby Madsen gold discovery.
Situated a mere three kilometres from Pure Gold’s discovery zone, West Madsen is also located in proximity to the historic Madsen and Starratt Olsen mines, with which it shares very similar geological characteristics.
If Pure Gold’s stellar drill results are any indicator of things to come, then Great Bear can look forward to an exciting drill season at West Madsen. Highlights from Pure Gold include 126.6 g/t over 3.7 metres, 34 g/t over 11 metres, 25.4 g/t over 8 metres and 76 g/t over 2.1 metres.
Investment Summary
To date, Great Bear has made great strides already in advancing exploration at its flagship Dixie Lake Project on an expedited timeline. Most importantly, the ‘big picture’ potential for one or more world-class gold discoveries is shaping up very nicely.
Taylor explains:
“Others before us have failed to solve the geological puzzle as to where all the high-grade gold is most densely concentration within this extensive mineralized system.
But now what’s most exciting is that our geological interpretations are validating our decision to pick up what’s turning out to be a great project and we did it during the depths of the last mining recession.
Now we’ve consolidated a large land package for the first time ever on these projects, and made sure that there are no royalties owed to any outside parties, so that we have a clear runway to benefit our shareholders. We are fortunate to have had the foresight to be able to seize upon the rare opportunity to acquire what we believe have the potential to be world-class, high-grade gold projects in one of Canada’s best mining districts.”
Consequently, Great Bear may be well on its way to drill-defining a major new gold discovery among some of the world’s richest gold fields and in a mining camp with excellent infrastructure.
All told, Great Bear really does have an opportunity to hit the ball out of the park.
On a technical note, the company has approximately 17.6 million shares outstanding (24.6 million fully diluted) after its last $1 million financing. Such a tight share structure, matched with positive news flow, typically acts as a powerful catalyst to higher share price valuations.
About the Author: Marc Davis has a deep background in the capital markets spanning 25 years. He is also a longstanding financial journalist, having worked for leading digital financial news agencies in North America and in London’s financial centre. He is also a former business reporter for CBC Television.
Over the years, his articles have also appeared in dozens of digital publications worldwide. They include USA Today, CBS Money Watch, Investors’ Business Daily, the Financial Post, Reuters, National Post, Google News, Barron’s, China Daily, Huffington Post and AOL.
Full Disclosure: Great Bear Resources Ltd. is a paid client of Stockhouse Publishing.