Omineca Mining and Metals Ltd. (TSXV: OMM) (OTCQB: OMMSF) has announced the discovery of a hard rock (“lode”) gold zone from the 2025 winter drill program at its Wingdam gold exploration project in the Cariboo Mining District of south-central British Columbia. The initial gold intercepts, drilled 500 meters west of and at depths lower than the elevation of the Wingdam underground paleoplacer gold project, validate the company's assertion of a proximal lode source for the rich paleoplacer gold found beneath Lightning Creek.
The discovery comes 165 years after placer gold was first found in the Lightning Creek valley. The results coincide with recent empirical evidence in the underground placer workings indicating that Lightning Creek flowed from west to east (opposite its present direction) when the gold was eroded into the valley, suggesting the source lies downstream of the placer deposits. Omineca’s ongoing exploration program will focus on expanding the footprint of this discovery, with details to be announced once finalized.
Highlights from the drill program include WD25-41, which returned 4.84 g/t gold from 158.98-160.05 meters (1.07 meters), and WD25-42, which returned 1.25 g/t gold from 345.00-347.00 meters (2.0 meters). The highest grade intercept was found in a section of amygdaloidal basalt associated with the Slide Mountain Terrane, which is dominant in ophiolites—ancient seafloor thrust upward. These ultramafic oceanic crustal rocks are affiliated with many of British Columbia’s orogenic gold camps, including the Barkerville Gold camp 30 kilometers east of Wingdam, the Cassiar gold camp, the historic Bralorne mining camp, and the Greenwood Mining District, all structurally associated with ophiolitic seafloor rocks.
The Company’s exploration thesis is based on evident changes in watershed flow direction caused by isostatic depression of the crust under the weight of the Cordilleran glacial ice sheet. This weight pushed down the area to the west of Wingdam enough to cause the Fraser River to switch from northerly flow to its present southern course some 760,000 years ago and later, approximately 200,000 years ago, Lightning Creek to change from flowing east to flowing west. These forces, combined with potential re-activation and subsidence of the Eureka Thrust Fault, explain why the recently identified lode source is located downstream (west) at depths equivalent to and below the level of the Wingdam underground placer workings, where 173.4 ounces of placer gold was recovered from a single 2.4-meter-wide, 2.4-meter-high, and 23.5-meter-long crosscut sample in 2012.
The reversed water flow thesis has been confirmed in Omineca’s underground workings. The opening of Crosscut #2 shows imbrication in the brown gravel layer indicating water flow was left to right (west to east) along the Lightning Creek valley, opposite to the present flow direction west.
The 2025 drill program completed 3,091.9 meters in 6 NQ diamond drill holes, following up on mineralization found in the 2024 program. WD25-41 was a downdip follow-up of WD24-37, which had intersected anomalous gold concentrations in a brecciated and faulted ultramafic amygdular basalt. WD25-41 intersected the most anomalous gold result on the property to date, displaying localized fracturing and containing calcite-quartz veins and disseminated pyrite. WD25-42 targeted the magnetic high outlined by the 2024 UAV Magnetic survey and intersected mineralization deeper, in a lithic wacke containing minor quartz veinlets and disseminated pyrrhotite and pyrite.
Drilling confirmed the presence of high-grade gold mineralization on the southeastern side of Lightning Creek associated with ultramafic rocks and quartz-calcite veining. With the discovery of lode gold in close proximity to the underground paleoplacer, Omineca will ramp up investigation of hydrothermal gold mineralization associated with the Eureka Thrust Fault. The next phase of exploration will focus on the immediate vicinity of this discovery.
