Introduction
Early Stage Gold Prospect
Detour Trend Project, Quebec
- Property covers over 20 kilometres of the Detour/Sunday Lake deformation zone which hosts the 15+ million ounce Detour Gold Mine located 11 kilometres to the west in Ontario.
- Also covers over 13 kilometres of the gold bearing Lower Detour deformation zone
- Over 20 gold occurrences, including the advanced Lynx and Rambo prospects are known property wide
- Balmoral holds a 100% interest in the majority of the Detour East Property; 18 claims are held in a 69%/31% participatory joint venture with Encana Ltd. for which Balmoral acts as the operator.
- The southern portion of the Detour East Property, south and east of the Turgeon River, can be reached by a bush road and historic logging trails. The northern portion of the property can be accessed via winter road or via helicopter year round.
- The southern portion of the Detour East Property lays within the same geological domain which hosted the now mined out world class Selbaie Cu-Zn-Ag-Au deposit and potential for similar VMS style mineralization exists on the Property.
In late 2010 Balmoral entered into an option agreement to earn an initial interest in the Detour East Property. In 2012 the Company earned an initial 51% interest in the Property and then completed a purchase of the remaining 49% interest to hold a 100% undivided interest in the Property save for the previously mentioned JV grounds. Balmoral granted a 2% NSR to the vendor, Radisson Mining Resources Inc., which the Company may purchase at any time in its entirety.
Gold Potential
Mesothermal Gold Mineralization
The Detour East Property traces two major regional deformation zones (the Sunday Lake and Lower Detour deformation zones) for over 33 kilometres in an east-west direction across the Property. The Sunday Lake deformation zone is host to what, at design capacity, would be Canada’s largest gold mine – the Detour Gold Mine located 11 kilometres to the east in the province of Ontario. This large deposit outlines the potential of this regional fault system to focus and fix large volumes of gold mineralization. Across the Detour East Property the Sunday Lake and its related structures are sparsely tested and have not been well understood historically due to the heavy overburden cover. Initial work by Balmoral has identified two major structural corridors on the northern portion of the Detour East property, both of which have produced anomalous gold intercepts and are priority targets for follow-up work.
To the south gold bearing intercepts have been returned for over 13 kilometres along a parallel fault zone known as the Lower Detour Deformation Zone. Two advanced prospects, the Lynx and Rambo discoveries (see section on Gold Mineralization) are known along this trend. A number of other occurrences along this trend have seen very limited drill testing and warrant further investigation.
A review of geophysical data suggests the presence of a third, virtually untested, deformation zone on the Property and several secondary structures which splay off of the major regional structures. Historic overburden drilling along this third east-west trending structure returned anomalous gold mineralization suggesting some potential for an Eleanore type, sediment hosted gold system in this area, a target type which virtually untested throughout the Detour Trend.
Base Metal Potential
Volcanogenic Cu-Zn-Ag-Au Massive Sulphide Mineralization
The southern portion of the Detour East Property, south of the Lower Detour deformation zone, covers a portion of a mixed mafic-felsic volcanic sequence which 20 kilometres to the east hosted the now mined out world-class Selbaie Cu-Zn-Ag-Au VMS deposit. Airborne geophysical work has identified an extensive suite of EM conductors throughout this package similar in scale and intensity to that which was associated with and led to the discovery of Selbaie. The majority of these features remain to be tested and anomalous Cu-Zn-Ag-Au intercepts have been reported from sulphide zones on the property immediately to the east of the Detour East Property associated with this same sequence of rocks.