The search for a Sullivan Mine-style SEDEX deposit near Fort Steele will continue this year with three more drill holes.
Drilling is an expensive proposition, but a newly formed company, Kootenay Zinc Corp. has gathered the required funds. Kootenay Zinc was born when Oceanside Capital Corp. entered into an option agreement with Gravitas Metals Corp., the company that ran the test program on the Sully project last year.
Nick Ayling from Kootenay Zinc says that there is a team on the ground right now. That team includes geologist Paul Ransom, who has been involved in many of the previous projects that have tried to locate a lead, zinc deposit that theory has it sheared off from the Sullivan Mine deposit.
“The results from last year’s drilling on the Sully project are encouraging enough,” Ayling said. “Right now the east target geophysics are being defined.”
Last year’s program got close to, but did not intersect, a large mass. It is hoped that this mass is a SEDEX deposit, a big mass of zinc, lead and silver.
“But you don’t know what’s there until you drill through it,” Ayling said. “We haven’t hit through the body of it yet. But the gravity anomaly is so massive. Soil samples on the surface lead us to believe there’s something there. All we have to do is drill.”
The soil samples include lead and zinc.
Ayling says that right below surface there is likely a fault that cut off the deposit. The drill holes are likely to encounter the mass at approximately 600 metres.
“The last drill hole didn’t go through the deposit, but when we put a temperature reading down the drill hole it got hotter near the deposit and the magnetic pull was stronger. That’s the theory, but the risk is it’s a big gabbro rock, which is not really much interest to us.”
Three drill holes are planned with a cost of about $500,000. It is hoped drilling can start before the new year, subject to weather.