There be gold in Lac La Hache- or at least the promise of substantial deposits, according to EnGold Mines Ltd.
EnGold is a mineral exploration company that’s primary Cariboo asset is a 27,000 hectare property just north of Lac La Hache where for the last several years they’ve been conducting exploratory drilling and surveying the land. They’ve discovered several promising deposits of copper and evidence of mineable gold, including the recent discovery of a brand new deposit.
David H. Brett, president and CEO of EnGold since 2014, said their recent findings are built upon the work they have done over the last five years, which focuses on a 10-kilometre “perspective trend” near Spout Lake with a copper scarn dubbed the Spout Copper Deposit. In 2017, south of the deposit, they found the G-1 Copper Zone which has a similar mineral composition to the first one and it’s in this area they’ve been doing some drilling recently.
“When you make an initial discovery your goal is to eventually delineate the deposit, in other words, drill it to the extent where you can actually calculate the tonnage rate of the deposit, so we’re at the stage with the Spout and G-1 deposits. Part of our work this year is to engage a consulting company called SRK Consulting to do a resource calculation on those two deposits with the goal of seeing those deposits as underground mines,” Brett said.
READ MORE: EnGold discovers visible gold at two Lac la Hache sites
What’s been very interesting, he added, that in addition to the copper deposits the company has found evidence of potentially mineable gold in their drilling. Several kilometres south of Spout Lake is Aurizon Gold Deposit where they’ve discovered a series of “high-grade quartz veins” that suggest a substantial concentration of gold.
Their estimate, based upon numbers crunched by an independent geologist, says there are about a million tones in Aurizon with a rating of 3.6 grams of gold per tonne.
Meanwhile just this month, Brett said they announced the discovery of another potential gold deposit called the Road Gold Zone, which they believe could be as big or bigger than the Aurizon deposit, located halfway between it and the Spout Copper Deposit. Brett said that these discoveries have kept EnGold busy chasing down where the quartz veins on the property go and determining their viability for mining.
“Given what’s happening with gold prices now a gram of gold, two grams or three grams of gold is worth a significant amount of money,” Brett said.
When they were drilling in 2020 at Road Gold Zone to determine if it was similar to Aurizon, Brett said the composition of the rock and soil kept making their drill head jam so they were unable to get to their targeted depth. However, the area above their target zone had a “significant mineral composition,” which is a good sign it is similar.
“There’s strong potential but at this point, we don’t know what’s there. That’s kind of what makes the project still exciting after all these years of drilling it. It’s significant we’re still finding new things, that’s impressive I think.”
EnGold has been working on the property in one way or the other since 1987 when it was still known as GWR. A public company, they currently are purely exploratory in nature and don’t derive any profits from their operations and instead rely on backing from their investors as they explore the property.
