Pele Mountain celebrates new diamonds at Festival

Pele Mountain Resources (YPN-V) has uncovered another new diamond occurrence on its Festival property, 25 km north of Wawa, Ont.

The new discovery is dubbed Pol Roger. It lies in the central part of the property and brings the total number of new diamond discoveries during the 2001 field season to nine. It brings to 12 the number of areas in which diamonds have been found at Festival.

An 8-kg sample of heterolithic, ultramafic breccia was collected from bedrock at the occurrence. It yielded 37 diamonds from caustic fusion processing at the laboratory of Saskatchewan Research Council.

Twenty-seven of the stones exceeded a sieve size of 106 microns. The largest stone measured more than 300 microns in at least one dimension.

Compilation work, including the nine new diamond discoveries, and geological and structural mapping (completed by the Ontario Geological Survey) indicate that a cluster of diamond-bearing maar volcanic complexes erupted through Archean-age mafic volcanics. Archean-age folding overturned and metamorphosed the rock sequence. Subsequent thrusting, faulting and erosion then exposed “corridors” of diamond-bearing rocks across the property.

The Pol Roger occurrence indicates a previously unknown northern “corridor”. The compilation work has so far identified at least five separate maar volcanic complexes, which have returned commercial-size and “gem-quality” diamonds.

The latest discovery comes on the heels of the discovery, earlier this summer, of the Dom Perignon occurrence on the western shoreline of Perch Lake at Festival.

A 100.4-kg composite sample of breccia there returned 434 diamonds, including 12 macrodiamonds (stones exceeding 0.5 mm in at least one dimension). This was the highest diamond count from Festival so far. The largest stone recovered measured 1.16 mm by 0.67 mm by 0.56 mm.

The composite sample was collected from bedrock across a width of 90 metres. The occurrence remains open in both directions. Diamonds were recovered from each of the 8-kg, sub-samples comprising the composite.

Pele says the Dom Perignon occurrence indicates that a volcanic diatreme, discovered along strike from Area E in early May, appears to be much larger than initially believed.