It’s a three-hour drive to camp – mining camp, that is.
The Advertiser was invited to visit Mountain Lake Resources’ camp in the heart of the forest, well past the end of Red Indian Lake, near where the company has been drilling for gold since 2009.
It is hardly as glamourous as some movies might portray.
“Even if people can be educated that hard rock mines do not mine gold
nuggets, that would be a big step forward,” said Gary Woods.
He’s the president and CEO of Mountain Lake Resources, a Nova Scotia-based junior exploration company drilling for gold in the Valentine Lake area.
Perhaps the public may become more interested when they learn more about mining companies who’ve stepped up their exploration effects in central Newfoundland.
It’s not a case of the California or Klondike gold rushes, where people panned and dug in the hopes of finding fabulous gold nuggets. Instead, if you look at the core samples brought up by the two drills on the exploration site, you can see flecks of gold.
“This is a very aggressive program, but we’ve been getting very good results." - Sherry Dunsworth
“This is a very aggressive program, but we’ve been getting very good results.,” said geologist and project manager Sherry Dunsworth of Marathon PGM. “We’re up to 100 holes. They’re very close-spaced, but you get good results and you build your resource this way.”
While Mountain Lake and Marathon PGM – the first is in charge of the drilling, the second is responsible for operating – have only been actively exploring the area since 2009, various companies have had interest in the region since the early 1990s. The original owners of the property were British Petroleum (BP); Noranda Mines later acquired it. They passed it on to other companies and eventually Mountain Lake went 50-50 with Marathon.
This property has a reserve – so far – of 443,000 ounces.
This part of Newfoundland is known as the central volcanic belt, and for good reason.
Much of central Newfoundland’s rocks are associated with volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) deposits, the results of ancient submarine volcanoes from more than 300 million years ago.
Gold resources are not infrequently associated with VMS deposits. However, as Mr. Woods explained, there are some granites in the exploration are which are much older – 550 million years old or more – and the challenge for geologists is puzzle out the process which ended relocating older granites to places where they are surrounded by their younger “cousins.”
At any rate, the extreme heat would have “freed” gold deposits to relocate and precipitate, as salt or sugar mixed in a jar eventually collects in the bottom, in the host younger rocks.
Mountain Lake and Marathon are among the companies exploring for gold in the central volcanic belt. Others, such as Crosshair Exploration, are not as far along the game, though they are planning a bulk trenching sample operation on their Golden Promise property near Badger.
Mountain Lake has already set up their camp by Victoria Lake, near the Valentine Lake property. They have a team of approximately 12 workers, including drillers, two geologists and even a husband-and-wife team of camp cooks. All are working 24-7: drillers, for example, do shift work, operating the drills throughout the night.
If a gold mine eventually becomes a reality – and the partners involved hope it will –Valentine Lake is being put into a new company called Marathon Gold which is supposed to be formed and trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange later this fall.
Fifty per cent of Valentine Lake will be owned by Mountain Lake and the other 50 per cent by Marathon Gold, which will be the operator.
World class results
“Clasts. Sedimentary deposits. Volcanogenic mineralization sulpide deposits, Telluric, stratigraphic, hanging walls, fault lines, tectonic plates …”
When one is tagging along with a pair of experienced geologists and listening to them talk about the rock formations, it can be overwhelming for the uninitiated, whose command of the jargon largely consists of “that black rock over there, that’s basalt, right?” or “it’s a beautiful white colour, must be quartz.”
It is essentially a foreign language, in one sense, one that explains the kinds of rocks and structures in the area, the age, and how they may be formed.
In another sense, it is the oldest language in the world, the language of the Earth.
Here in this part of central Newfoundland, remmants of this language is more than 550 million years old. On the geological time scale, it fits into the Precambrian era.
“There were various intercepts we got this year that were just amazing,” said Mr. Woods. “They were just world class, such as 38 grams per tonne over nine metres.”
At nearby Victoria Lake is Leprechaun Pond (named by original owners British Petroleum), actually is also a flooded bog.
The water is only about a metre deep, but the bottom is not soil or rocks, but soft mud more than nine metres deep.
A different technique was needed: a special barge with a drill on it. Then Springdale Forestry, who operates the drills, set up the apparatus on the pond. In addition to holes drilled from the barge, the holes around the pond are showing the region as the first defined gold resource within the Valentine Lake property. One of the hole cores, when assayed, demonstrated a value of 506 grams per tonne. That means a tonne of rock could produce at least half a kilogram of gold. For comparison, that all the gold that has been mined since the Bronze Age would fit in a large room – approximately 28 tonnes.
It can be said that the little bog pond really has a “heart of gold.” The company recently reported the latest results from the ongoing drilling on Leprechaun Pond: 23.98 grams per tonne over four metres.
.Mountain Lake and Marathon are drilling more holes as part of the current program to be completed in October.
https://www.gfwadvertiser.ca/News/2010-09-13/article-1744228/A-heart-of-gold/1