Endurance eyes ‘big-picture’ prospects

Despite high gold prices, grassroots exploration is a tough sell these days, with most juniors preferring projects with existing resources or near-term production potential. One company keeping the art of early-stage exploration alive is Endurance Gold (EDG-V), a newly listed junior searching for deposit models that are out of the ordinary, if not unique, at least in a Canadian context.

The company’s most advanced, and most conventional project is the Nechako gold property, a low-sulphidation epithermal gold prospect located 75 km west of Quesnel, in central British Columbia.

A previous operator (Lac Minerals) identified a widespread epithermal halo measuring more than 1,000 metres by 750 metres, with anomalous gold and associated pathfinder elements and alteration. Lac’s holes were shallow, above 150 metres, and largely confined to the anomaly hosted in flat-lying conglomerates.

Duncan McIvor, president of Endurance, says the project offers potential for new discoveries, even though Lac drilled 39 holes that failed to return ore-grade mineralization.

“This is a large system that hasn’t been adequately tested,” McIvor adds. “Our first goal is to look for higher-grade feeders at depth.”

A 6-hole drilling program totalling 1,100 metres was planned for late this year, but because of unfavourable weather, only three holes were drilled to test induced-polarization (IP) anomalies in the southwestern portion of the property. All three holes intersected argillites that were variably graphitic, which explains the anomalies. The company was not able to drill-test its primary target — the downdip potential of the anomalous zone previously identified by Lac Minerals. This target will be tested in an expanded program planned for next spring.

Endurance can earn a 60% interest in the Nechako property from Amarc Resources (AHR-V, AXREF-O), a Hunter-Dickinson Group company, by issuing 250,000 shares and spending $250,000 on exploration over three years.

Farther north, near Smithers, B.C., Endurance holds an option to acquire 100% of the BQ property, which covers a polymetallic prospect that hasn’t been drilled or evaluated in detail.

“This is a new discovery that’s very exciting, but early-stage,” McIvor says. “The geochemical footprint is very similar to Eskay Creek.”

The project isn’t within the Eskay Creek/Iskut gold camp which was extensively explored in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but is located farther south, about 50 km northwest of Smithers.

Grab samples from sulphide stringer zones returned values of up to 1.4 grams gold, 550 grams silver, and more than 1% lead, zinc, arsenic and antimony.

The company’s most unique project to date is the newly acquired 13-sq.-km Pardo property, 65 km northeast of Sudbury, Ont. The road-accessible property covers a sequence of Proterozoic-aged rocks of the Mississagi Formation, a basal unit of the Huronian Supergroup sedimentary assemblage that forms the 15,000-sq.-km Cobalt Embayment.

McIvor says the project, which covers the southern flank of the large Proterozoic sedimentary basin, “is analogous in many ways to the Witwatersrand Basin in South Africa.”

Similarities were noted with respect to size, stratigraphy and depositional environment, though some differences were noted too, including the much older age of the Wits basin.

The project area has seen only minimal exploration for gold. In the late 1990s, two juniors identified widespread low-grade gold mineralization hosted within a basal conglomerate, located immediately at the unconformity. Gold mineralization is associated with pyritized portions of the conglomerate, which has been defined over a north-south strike length of more than 5 metres.

Intrigued by the project’s potential, Endurance added to its holdings in the region by staking the 768-hectare Turner property, 40 km north-northwest of Pardo, and covering a similar geological environment.

Endurance also owns 100% of the Dogpaw project in Ontario, though other projects are considered priorities at this time. Dogpaw covers a large portion of the Kakagi Lake-Rowan Lake greenstone belt and hosts at least 13 historic gold occurrences. The project area surrounds high-grade gold discoveries reported by Metalore Resources in the 1980s.

Endurance has identified four main areas of interest at Dogpaw, with several tested in recent programs.