Mar 8 2016
Group Ten Metals Inc. (the "Company" or "Group Ten") announces completion of drill targeting work based on a detailed review of historic drill core on its Drayton-Black Lake high-grade gold project, located 10 kilometers south of Sioux Lookout and 70 kilometers east of Dryden in northwest Ontario.
The work was completed by Dr. E. Max Baker who will be joining Group Ten as Project Manager and Qualified Person for the project. Permits are in place for the recommended exploration program which includes a 20-hole 2,000 meter drill program targeting high-grade mineralized shoots, among other work.
Project Overview
The Drayton-Black Lake project is located in the Abrams‐Minnitaki Lake greenstone belt, situated along the northern margin of the Archean Wabigoon sub-province. The more than 25-kilometer-long group of claims comprising the Drayton-Black Lake project are situated within the same gold belt that hosts the Goliath, Goldlund and Rainy River projects, all of which have grown substantially as a result of recent exploration efforts (see Treasury Metals, Tamaka Gold and New Gold, respectively).
The Abrams‐Minnitaki Lake greenstone belt is south of and parallel to the Birch-Uchi belt, a world-class archean greenstone belt that is home to some of the world's most profitable gold producers including Goldcorp's Red Lake mines, among others. Despite its proximity to the Red Lake area and the Birch-Uchi belt, the Abrams-Minnitaki greenstone belt remained underexplored into the 1990s due to persistent ground cover and limited road access. In the past decade new roads and improved exploration techniques have led to the delineation of significant high-grade gold reserves on multiple projects in the belt.
The Drayton-Black Lake project covers over 7,968 hectares and includes a historic database with multiple high-grade bulk samples and over 120 drill holes, in addition to geological, geochemical and geophysical data. While 43% of past drill holes intercepted gold or copper mineralization, they did not adequately test the mineralized zones which are now better understood in the area.
New Targets
A recent review of the Drayton-Black Lake exploration data by Dr. Baker has led to a reinterpretation of the relative age and structural setting of the gold mineralization. The mineralization is tightly folded and boudinaged, and is distributed sub-parallel to the layering and early foliation in isoclinally folded host-rocks, suggesting a pre- or syn-deformation age of mineralization rather than being related to a younger stage of northeast-trending shears as some previous workers had assumed. Much of the mineralization is spatially associated with pre-mineral quartz feldspar porphyry dykes, indicating a likely genetic relationship to early magmatism.
Early exploration in the Black Lake area, between 1938 and the early 1990's, identified gold mineralization at the Moretti area in the northeast and Dragfold, Bonanza and Clamshell to the southwest. Cameco carried out geochemical and geophysical surveys and targeted drilling in 1999. Cameco's diamond holes include hole BKL99‐14 in the Moretti area, which yielded an assay of 190.7 g/t Au over 0.24 meters. The historic drilling was too widely spaced to have effectively tested the steeply plunging mineralized shoots, which are characteristic of the mineralization in the Drayton and Black Lake projects.
Trench mapping and surface sampling in the Moretti area demonstrate clearly that the higher grade mineralization is localized within steeply plunging shoots averaging less than 30 meters in length and 10 meters in thickness. The dimensions of these shoots are similar in size to those delineated by closely spaced drilling at the Goliath project, where shoots have been traced down plunge for as much as several hundred meters. Therefore, a program of 20 drill holes, spaced approximately 20 meters apart, is proposed to test two of the high-grade shoots delineated by surface sampling at Moretti. In addition to testing the Moretti area, additional reconnaissance mapping and sampling is recommended in the Bonanza, Dragfold and Clamshell areas where a Placer Dome soil survey delineated a three-kilometer-long semi-continuous gold anomaly, which remains inadequately explored.
Group Ten CEO Michael Rowley commented: "We are very pleased to have Dr. Baker join our team and lead the project. His work has confirmed that the geological model seen at the adjacent Goliath and Goldlund projects applies to our Drayton-Black Lake project. We look forward to advancing the project and completing his recommended drill program."
Readers are invited to view the updated corporate presentation at http://grouptenmetals.com for more information, or to visit the Company at the Zimtu Capital booth #2819 at PDAC March 6 to 9.
About Dr. Baker
Dr. Baker is an exploration geologist with over 35 years international exploration experience in the Americas, Asia, Australia, and Europe. Most recently, he served as President and CEO of Gunpoint Exploration. Previous roles included Director of Exploration for Oriel Resources PLC, Chief Geologist for Newcrest Mining Ltd., and Chief Geologist (South America) for MIM Holdings Ltd. Dr. Baker has also held senior technical and managerial positions with several junior mining companies, and his experience ranges from grass-roots exploration to the resource definition and the early-stages of project development. He completed his B.Sc. (Honors) and Ph.D. at James Cook University of North Queensland.