Wenot Pit
The Wenot past-producing mine is a long and narrow pit, with the long axis almost 1.8 km in length by about 500 meters maximum width. Wenot produced 1.4 million ounces at an average grade of 1.5 gpt.
Although separated from the Fennell pit by only 400 metres, the geology of Wenot is quite different. Whereas Fennell is an intrusive “plug” or stock, Wenot gold mineralization is hosted within a 150- 300 meter wide deformation zone or shear corridor. This long corridor, straddles a major lithologic contact between volcanic rocks on the north and sedimentary rocks on the south.
This shear corridor was the focus of several phases of crustal deformation that resulted in multiple sub-vertical shears that were subsequently intruded by dikes, deformed again with more dikes intruded, possibly multiple times. The dikes proved more susceptible to brittle fracturing and shearing along the margins during some of the successive deformation events.
During some of these deformation events gold-rich fluids preferentially flowed into the brittle fractured dikes and sheared margins leaving gold mineralization within quartz-ankerite veins and veinlets as well as in the sericite altered, sulphidized halos around the veins. These are a series of these gold mineralized near-vertical shears within the broader Wenot Shear Corridor and our 2021 drilling has successfully confirmed that they continue to at least 200 meters below the previous pit bottom.
Our drilling in 2021 has focused on drill testing the Wenot shear corridor at depth below the past producing pit. All holes drilled to date have confirmed that the shear corridor continues to depths of at least 100 to 225 meters below the pit bottom and that the multiple shears still host gold mineralization.
Gold was discovered at Wenot in February 1989, while drill testing a coincidental gold geochemical anomaly and a high magnetic geophysical signature. Gold was previously known to exist in the overlying saprolite at Wenot, as a German syndicate had a placer mining operation there during the 19th century.
