Great Bear’s Dixie project poised to make magic happen

Anticipation is building as Great Bear Resources (TSX: GBR) works feverishly to deliver its first resource estimate in the New Year on the Dixie project in northwestern Ontario — one of the most important Canadian gold discoveries in modern history.

Great Bear’s flagship property is the 100% owned Dixie project, consisting of 9,140 hectares of contiguous claims extending over 22 kilometres. The project is accessible year-round by highway and is close to significant infrastructure, including paved roads, electricity and a natural gas pipeline provided by the town of Red Lake, about 25 km to the northwest.

From 2017 to 2019, Great Bear’s primary focus was on the Dixie Limb and Hinge zones. This work resulted in discovering the Hinge Zone and several high-grade intercepts being drilled within both targets.

The company has also verified the gold continuity in these targets.

The story got fascinating in 2019, when Great Bear made several new high-grade gold discoveries, the Bear-Rimini, Yuma, Auro, Yauro, Viggo and Gap zones. These discovery areas have since been confirmed through drilling to entail a large, continuous zone of gold mineralization, now known as the LP Fault zone.

June marked the second anniversary of the discovery of the LP Fault, which has now been tested with over400 drill holes.

The Dixie project hosts two main styles of gold mineralization, including high-grade gold in quartz veins and silica-sulphide replacement zones hosted by mafic volcanic rocks and localized near regional-scale D2 fold axes.

According to Great Bear’s president and CEO Chris Taylor, these mineralization styles represent those observed in the Dixie Limb and Hinge zones. They are also typical of the significant mined deposits of the Red Lake district.

The other style of mineralization comprises high-grade disseminated gold with broad moderate to lower grade envelopes that have been drilled along strike for over 4 kilometres in the LP Fault zone.

Taylor explains the high-grade gold mineralization is controlled by structural and geological contacts, and moderate to lower-grade disseminated gold surrounds and flanks the high-grade intervals. The dominant gold-hosting stratigraphy consists of felsic volcanic and sedimentary rocks.

“Great Bear’s 2021 exploration program runs year-round with an annual budget of $45 million in support field exploration on the Dixie project as well at Great Bear’s regional projects, Pakwash, Sobel and Red Lake North,” said Taylor on a recent sponsored site visit.

The main exploration focus remains firmly on the Dixie project. The work entails infill drilling along with the extent of the LP Fault; testing the vertical extents of mineralization within the LP Fault, requiring both shallow and deep drilling; testing the regional dimensions of the LP Fault; and investigating high-priority regional targets.

Great Bear has to date, thrown substantial cash at the ongoing drilling program. As of September 30, Great Bear has completed 478 drill holes over 235,000 metres into the LP Fault target as part of its 4 km long by a 450-metre-deep grid drill program.

“Over 80% of the company’s drill holes into the LP Fault, Dixie Limb and Hinge zones have been noted to contain visible gold, which mostly occurs as free gold, neither bound to nor within sulphide minerals. Core logging of oriented drill core has identified over 64,000 structural measurements used for geological interpretation and modelling, and the team has documented the presence of 10 rock types on the property,” Taylor said.

In the broader project scale, Great Bear has to date drilled a total of 670 holes over 300,000 metres

According to Taylor, the Auro Zone looks to be the ‘honey pot,’ presenting higher-grade upside. Analysts estimate Auro 2 alone could hold between 700,000 to 800,000 ounces gold grading on average 20 grams per tonne. “There is nothing in Canada with this ‘horsepower’ based on size,” said Taylor.

In the nine months to September, Great Bear drilled more than 100,000 metres, which was lower than drilled metres budgeted due to a temporary disruption caused by forest fires close to Red Lake.

In addition to drilling, geology crews undertook summer field exploration activities, including detailed mapping and channel sampling of surface bedrock. The focus for this work includes identifying sites where mineralization from the LP Fault may be exposed at the surface and conducting a detailed structural analysis of outcrops to further understand plunges and trends to mineralization.

Phase 1 drilling was completed in July. The results added mineralization to the LP Fault gold zone at both ends of the drill grid. In the northwest, the company reported highlight intercepts such as 28.18 grams gold per tonne over 4.8 metres within a broader 3.83 grams per tonne intercept over 43.1 metres. In the southeast, drilling returned 64.3 grams gold per tonne over 0.55 metre, within 5.9 grams gold per tonne over 8.25 metres. The work also served to confirm the mineralization controls.

The ongoing Phase 2 drill program continues to deliver results. Among the infill portion of the program are intercepts such as 13.1 metres grading 10.5 grams per tonne gold from 313.2 to 326.3 metres depth, including 3.7 metres grading 33.56 grams per tonne.

Shallow drilling has also returned highlight intercepts such as 15.5 metres grading 29.17 grams per tonne from 41.8 to 57.3 metres depth, among numerous other interesting intercepts.

Meanwhile, the limited deep drilling has also returned strong gold grades. Deeper drilling holds the potential for underground mine development in the future.

Notably, mineralization intercepted in BR-260 doubled the vertical extent of the LP Fault at depth to about 800 vertical metres.

“Within the LP Fault, detailed geological modelling using lithologies recorded during drill logging, geochemistry, oriented structural data and 3D modelling software has resulted in the interpretation of 23 high-grade gold domains along the 4 kilometres of the central LP Fault zone,” says Taylor.

The size of the LP Fault is something to marvel at. It is already about double the size of Barrick Gold’s (TSX: ABX; NYSE: GOLD) Hemlo mine. According to Taylor, the mineralization is continuous, enough to fit either Central Park in New York or the Canadian Malartic gold mine — Canada’s largest open-pit operation, to fit comfortably inside. Taylor says the continuity of the mineralization is highly uncharacteristic of the Red Lake mining district. “We have not hit a dead hole in the LP Fault yet,” he said.

These interpreted high-grade domains are enveloped by and intersect a larger lower-grade bulk tonnage style halo of gold mineralization. “Most drill holes intersect both bulk tonnage mineralization and high-grade domains in the LP Fault,” said Taylor.

On October 25, Great Bear reported on preliminary LP Fault metallurgical tests, confirming that non-refractory, free gold dominates domains tested. A total of ten one-kilogram representative samples were analyzed at Blue Coast Research, showing the ability to recover a very high percentage of total gold within a four percent range from 95.2% to 99.2%.

While high-grade gold samples recovered the highest percentage of total gold during cyanidation, sub-gram low-grade gold mineralization achieved high recoveries of greater than 95%. The company has now completed preliminary metallurgical studies on the LP Fault, Dixie Limb and Hinge zones.

The company is working on its first mineral resource estimate modelling of the first 450 metres of mineralization from the surface of the LP Fault, which is expected to be published no later than March 2022.

Phase 2 drilling is now underway and will comprise ongoing expansion drilling of the LP Fault below 450 metres depth and along strike; any additional infill drilling of the upper 450 metres of the LP Fault that may be required after review; expansion and infill drilling of the Hinge, Limb and Arrow zones, and testing new regional targets at the Dixie project.

In addition to Phase 2 drill results and the maiden resource statement, deliverables for 2022, a preliminary economic assessment of the LP Fault zone; and a mineral resource update which will include deeper drill results from the LP Fault, plus maiden mineral resource estimates for the Dixie Limb and Hinge zones.

Great Bear only has about 61.75 million shares out on a fully diluted basis. Shares last traded on the TSX at $22.10, capitalizing the company at $1.3 billion.