Quest Lake, Northwest Territories 1
The Quest Lake property is located 85 km east of Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories. The property consists of 16 contiguous mineral claims totaling 2424.6 Hectares.
Accessibility, Climate, Local Resources and Infrastructure
The Quest Lake property is accessible by charter aircraft available from Yellowknife. All services necessary for mineral exploration and production are available in Yellowknife, which is serviced by several scheduled daily flights from Edmonton and Calgary, Alberta.
The property lies on the western margin of the Canadian Shield and has topography typical of Precambrian terrain. About 30% of the property area is water-covered, and of the remaining land area, over half consists of bedrock outcrop. Muskeg flats, glacial deposits and covered talus slopes comprise the intervening covered material.
The maximum elevation on the property is 300 m above sea-level and the average hills rise to about 100 m above the levels of the larger lakes. In general, the region may be described as a rolling country, sloping gently from the granitic uplands towards the larger lake basins.
The ice on the Quest Lake property generally breaks up early in June. The latter part of June, all of July, and first part of August are characterized by spells of hot humid weather, when temperatures often exceed 25oC at midday. Towards the latter part of August, cooler weather prevails for most of the time. Rainfall is light, consisting mainly of local thunder showers during the early part of July. The climate is typical of continental sub-Arctic regions, with long, cold winters.
There is sufficient water and land available to design a conventional mine, mill and tailings disposal containment; however, no power is currently available in the immediate area. Personnel for mining, milling and support services may be available in the nearby towns such as Yellowknife.
The working season is dependent upon what type of work is being completed. Access can be year round by air or by a combination of air and land. There is limited daylight during winter, which limits flights. Ground transportation by foot can be year round, and snow machines operate best once the ground is frozen and lakes have attained reasonable ice thicknesses.
History
The Quest Lake property has undergone several periods of exploration since the late 1930’s. Numerous quartz veins have been reported as being developed (found and exploited) within the Yellowknife metasediments and it appears that mineralization is hosted within such veins. Over the years the property has been prospected and drilled.
Regional Geology
The Quest Lake property is entirely underlain by rocks of the Archean (2.66 Ga) Burwash Formation of the Yellowknife Supergroup.
The Yellowknife Supergroup is represented by a sequence comprising quartzite and banded iron formations (2800 Ma), a thick dominantly tholeiitic greenstone sequence (2700 Ma), younger arc-like sequences (2690-2660 Ma), extensive turbidite blankets (ca. 2680-2620 Ma), and finally syn-orogenic conglomerates (ca. 2600 Ma). After 2680 Ma, much of the Slave craton became overlain by the Burwash Basin, one of the largest and best preserved Archean turbidite basins in the world. During orogenesis, supracrustal sequences were telescoped, thickened, and folded between ca. 2650 and 2580 Ma, with a peak in crustal anatexis between 2595 and 2585 Ma. Numerous orogenic gold deposits formed throughout the Slave craton, either as shear- or vein-hosted deposits in deformed greenstones or within the chemical traps provided by banded iron formations in the turbidites. Proterozoic rift-related magmatic suites and arcs around the margins of the craton host a variety of mineral deposits.
Burwash Formation rocks consist predominantly of interbedded greywacke-mudstone turbidites. Bed thicknesses range from millimeter laminations to 8 m thick massive greywacke units.
Due to its relatively incompetent nature, the Burwash Formation is structurally complex and is typically strongly folded and faulted. Hydrothermal alteration including silicification, quartz veining and silica flooding is a prominent feature within the Burwash Formation. Quartz veins are known to concentrate in areas of significant to subtle changes in large scale regional structural trends. Gold mineralization within the region is associated with shear zones and quartz silica flooding with local concentrations of arsenopyrite, pyrite, chalcopyrite, pyrrhotite and galena.
A number of Proterozoic mafic dykes occur within the area of the Quest Lake (Diabase, Gabbro, and Diorite). Aside from offsetting faults and fractures, these bodies are undeformed with primary mineralogy and textures well preserved.
Exploration History
The Quest Lake property hosts multiple gold-bearing quartz vein systems in shear zones in the Archean Burwash Formation, a sedimentary unit comprising a portion of the Yellowknife Supergroup. Six main vein systems have been delineated and worked on with much of this exploration occurring in the 1930’s to 1940’s, the 1960’s, and the 1980’s. Considerable drilling took place in the 1940’s though much of that data is lost, including locations of the drill holes and assays and there is no remaining core from those campaigns. Historic records show approximately 90 holes totaling 7,267 metres were completed by previous operators. The best results of that work were 3.22 ounces per ton gold over 6 inches.
WPC acquired the property in 2007 and completed a surface rock sampling program consisting of 54 samples taken from trenches. In 2008 a 420 line-kilometre airborne magnetic and electromagnetic survey was flown over the property. The rock sampling program was completed by a local prospector from Yellowknife and focused on sampling quartz veins the historic trenches. The work returned some spectacular results, including 463.9 g/t gold from a grab sample and numerous other samples returned results in excess of 10 g/t gold.
In the spring of 2010 WPC did a quick examination of the property to assess the historic trenches, collect additional rock samples, and find a location for an exploration camp. During that visit 12 rock grab and chip samples were taken from trenches on the east, west and south sides of Quest Lake. The veins exposed in the trenches ranged from a few centimeters up to 1 metre with an average width of 20-25 centimeters. The veins strike northwesterly and dip very steeply to the northeast, at 80-85 degrees to vertical. Grab samples returned results up to 46.2 g/t gold and a 0.12 metre chip across a vein assayed 10.15 g/t gold. WPC also examined a series of trenches on the west side of Leader Lake. The vein was traced on surface for 150 metres and 8 rock chip and grab samples were collected. The best result was 11.1 g/t gold from a 1.5 meter chip sample across a shear zone containing quartz veinlets in greywacke. Another shear zone assayed 6.61 g/t gold over 1.5 metres.
In the fall of 2010 WPC completed a short drilling campaign testing the A vein at the south end of Quest Lake. Seven BQ-size drill holes totaling 556.39 metres were completed from two drill set-ups. All the holes successfully intersected the vein and it showed considerable differences in thickness, ranging from 0.3 to nearly 10 metres. The thicker intersections are not pure quartz veins but are comprised of intervals of quartz veining and quartz flooding in sheared greywacke and argillite. The veins contain trace-4% pyrite, trace-2% arsenopyrite and traces of chalcopyrite and sphalerite. The results varied from approximately 1 g/t gold to a high of 16 g/t over 0.32 metres. While the results are not as spectacular as some of the historic samples the much thicker vein zone intersections are very encouraging. Shear hosted vein systems commonly have structural complications such as folding or en-echelon stacking of the vein upon itself and this can create much thicker veining. WPC has now located an area where the vein thickens dramatically and plans to further drill test this area. No surface prospecting or sampling can be done in this area as the intersection lies beneath the east end of Quest Lake. Numerous additional vein targets have not been drill tested by the Company, further sampling and mapping will be completed prior to testing those targets.
1 The Quest Lake – North West Territories, Canada “Technical Report on the Quest Lake Property , Located 112046 W- 620 25’ N NTS Map Sheet 85I7, Northwest Territories Canada” Dated January 25th 2009 authored by Derrick Strickland a “qualified person” for the purposes of NI 43-101.”
