It’s tough to imagine the discovery hole of Great Bear Resources (GBR.V) was announced just over 13 months ago as the company has made a lot of progress in those past 13 months. The drill rigs just continued to run and rather than continuing to focus on the same zones, GBR wasn’t too scared to chase elephants by drilling some serious step-out holes. While stepping out for a few hundred meters would already be considered a success in the Red Lake District, Great Bear has now already confirmed gold mineralization over 3.2 kilometers of the LP fault, north of the Hinge Zone and Limb zone.
Along a 3.2 kilometer strike length, Great Bear completed 14 drill fences, with each fence consisting of 1-3 holes (depending on the location), and it’s remarkable to see the company was able to confirm excellent geological continuity by encountering gold mineralization in all holes. And it doesn’t look like the mineralization will remain limited to the currently known 3.2 kilometer long zone, as Great Bear confirmed the mineralization appears to continue along strike (on both sides of the currently known zone) and at depth.
Those 14 drill fences are giving Great Bear invaluable information on how the gold mineralization appears to be structured, and the company is now able to categorize gold mineralization along the LP fault into two types: disseminated zones with lower grade gold values surrounding the higher grade zones that appear to be near-vertical. The continuity of the mineralization also has an important implication. Whereas Great Bear interpreted the Yuma, Auro and Bear-Rimini zones to be three distinct mineralized areas, it looks like everything is intertwined now and these three zones belong to the same mineralized corridor.
Great Bear also disclosed detailed assay results from two holes that were drilled on the Auro zone, and these holes have now expanded the strike length to 300 meters while gold mineralization was encountered at a vertical depth of in excess of 420 meters. These characteristics are similar to the encountered mineralization on the Yuma zone, strengthening GBR’s thesis the three zones are actually part of one large system, especially as the gold zone at Auro appears to be open in all directions.
62,000 meters have now been drilled, which means Great Bear has around 28,000 meters to go as part of its ongoing 90,000 meter drill program. However, with almost C$20M in cash on the bank, we wouldn’t be surprised if Great Bear would just continue to drill while its geological team figures out the interpretation of the structure.
Disclosure: The author has a long position in Great Bear. Great Bear Resources is a sponsor of the website.
