Kintavar says it has found a near-surface and folded sedimentary system in the eastern portion of the property that can be traced for kilometre after kilometre, and displays characteristics that suggest the presence of a sediment-hosted stratiform copper type deposit.
“Instead of following the skarn model, we said we’ll trench the whole thing and open it up and see what’s there,” says Kintavar’s president and CEO, Kiril Mugerman. “Once we trenched it, we realized we weren’t dealing with a skarn but with a sedimentary system like those in the DRC.”
But unlike the deep sediment-hosted stratiform copper deposits in the DRC, Mugerman says, copper mineralization at Mitchi is near-surface and shallow dipping, which means, in theory at least, that it could be mined as an open-pit one day.
“Stratiform copper deposits are usually deep underground — none of them are exposed in an open-pit,” he says. “But ours is flat and shallow, it’s almost like a coal seam, long and continuous.”
A large mineralized trench at the Mitchi copper project in Quebec. Two people for scale can be seen in the northeast corner. Credit: Kintavar Exploration.
In Mitchi’s case, it was high-grade metamorphism and folding of the Grenville rocks that brought the mineralization to surface. (The property is in the north-western portion of the Central Metasedimentary Belt of the Grenville geological province.)
“Where we are, the unit is fairly thick by itself and folded, and because of the folding you have structural enrichment,” Mugerman explains. “Think of it as a piece of paper that is folded several times and when you cut it you intercept the paper several times.”
Initial surface work found copper and silver mineralization for over 20 km along three corridors — Watson, Sherlock, and Nasigon — with grades ranging from 0.5% copper to 1% copper. Each corridor is roughly 10-plus kilometres of favourable sedimentary units that are roughly 5-7 km apart.
“The volume potential is huge,” Mugerman says in a telephone interview from Montreal.
Last year, channel samples from Watson yielded 13.6 metres grading 0.54% copper, 5.29 grams silver per tonne and 0.57% manganese, and 3 metres of 0.61% copper, 6.02 grams silver and 0.53% manganese. At Sherlock, a channel sample returned 21.4 metres of 0.49% copper and 5.5 grams silver, and at Nasigon, 10 metres of 1.1% copper and 3.4 grams silver.
This year, Kintavar is undertaking a 10,000-metre drill program, and early results seem encouraging. Drilling in the Sherlock corridor has intersected over 100 metres of copper mineralization in four of twelve drill holes.