Nickel for Diamonds North

Diamonds North Resources (DDN-V, DDNFF-O) is in the nickel.

The company that is making its name via diamond exploration in the far north has returned positive nickel results from a recently discovered prospective zone.

Drilling at the Tunerq property which lies within its Amaruk project in Nunavut hit the base metal with four drill holes.

In Toronto on June 16, the Vancouver-based company’s shares were up 26% or 25 to $1.22 on roughly 813,000 shares traded.

Highlights from those holes include:

• Hole 1 — intersected 1.20% nickel, 0.26% copper and 0.03% cobalt over 12.2 metres within a 22.9 metre zone containing 0.83% nickel and 0.19% copper.
• Hole 2 — intersected 2.49% nickel, 0.56% copper and 0.05% cobalt over 9.1 metres within a 34.8 metre zone containing 1.05% nickel and 0.26% copper.
• Hole 4 — intersected 1.86% nickel, 0.36% copper and 0.04% cobalt over 5.8 metres within a 7.3 metre zone containing 1.50% nickel and 0.29% copper.

Diamonds North first realized it had nickel prospective land at Amaruk back in 2007 when it stumbled upon an outcrop containing an oxidized, sulfide rich zone within gabbro while prospecting for diamonds.

While it is still early days at Tunerq, Diamonds North says the host rock appears open and extends at least 400 to 500 metres from the discovery outcrop.

Targets for the program were chosen by their vicinity to the outcrop rather than geophysics but, the company says, geophysical surveying will get underway soon with more drilling planned for later this summer.

The nickel sulphide zones have thus far been tested over about 70 metres in a north-south direction and 75 metres in an east-west direction.

“This is one of the best series of early stage drill holes that I have seen in nickel exploration,” Bernard Kahlert, a director of Diamonds North said in a statement. “The fact that a relatively thin sequence of mafic rocks is so strongly mineralized infers that it has been injected from a nearby larger differentiated gabbroic body which will be the future target of exploration at Tunerq.”