The Solomon Pillars property is a gold property optioned recently by Metalcorp during the fall of 2011. It is comprised of 26 claims, including 22 leased and 4 staked claims incorporating the combined King Solomon Pillars and the Pillars properties currently held by Sage Gold.
On September 30th, 2011, Metalcorp Limited signed an option agreement with Sage Gold Inc. giving Metalcorp the right to acquire an interest in the Solomon Pillars property. Under the terms of the agreement, MetalCorp can acquire 70% of the property over the next 3 years by paying $145,000 in cash, $145,000 worth of stock and incurring exploration expenditures totaling $1,750,000. Parts of the property are subject to existing royalties – 1% on 4 leases and 3% for precious metals on 18 leases (which can be reduced to 2% on payment of $1,500,000). Annual advance royalty payments of $25,000 per year are required.
Gold was discovered on the original property by Dumond Mining and Exploration in 1934. During 1936, Oremond Gold Mines Limited acquired the ground and installed a 3-compartment shaft to a depth of 300 feet (91.4 metres). Two levels were developed at approximately 150 feet (45 metres) and 275 feet (84 metres). A total of 489 feet (149 metres) of drifting and 274 feet (84 metres) of crosscutting was completed on the 45 metre level and 95 feet (29 metres) of drifting and 118 feet (36 metres) of crosscutting was completed on the 84 metre level (Mackasey, 1976). A mine dump was established by the shaft but no production was reported. The shaft is currently capped.
By 1965 the gold bearing zone was extended to a length of 1,850 feet (563 metres), open at both the east and west ends, up to width of 21 feet (6.4 metres) and depth of 300 feet (91.4 metres). The best assay reported from that time period is 1.42 ounces gold per ton, located 381 metres west of the shaft. Significant exploration work was later completed on the property by Canadian Nickel Company Ltd (Canico) between 1969 and 1988 including approximately 7,300 metres of drilling, which led to recognition of 3 mineralized zones, West, Main (shaft area) and East zones, and a company calculated resource estimate of 275,892 tons at 4.32 grams per tonne gold (0.126 opt Au) for the Main and West zones (Canico, 1986). Inco reportedly relinquished the property when the company dissolved its gold division at about 1988. Subsequent and most recent work on the property includes geology and geochemistry surveys, mechanical stripping, airborne and ground geophysical surveys and drilling by Kodiak Exploration Limited (Kodiak) and/or Sage Gold Inc. (Sage), over their respective parts of the current property during 2008 and 2009. Best assays reported from this work include 5.7 gpt Au / 5.2m (Including 17.3 gpt Au / 0.98m) within Sage drill hole 090S12 (Sage Gold Inc. news release, November 12, 2009). Highlights of Sage channel sampling results include 892.6 gpt Au over 0.55m in channel #13 from the Royal Crown zone; 19.3 gpt Au over 0.4 m in channel 108 from the Golden Sceptre Zone, and 13.5 gpt Au and 12.6 gpt Au over 0.30 and 0.35 m, respectively in channel 144 from the Throne Zone (Therriault, 2009). Free gold was noted in several sites on the Golden Sceptre Zone returning assays of 154.1, 90.8 and 80.8 gpt gold (Therriault, 2009).
The Solomon Pillars property is located within Walters and Leduc Townships between Beardmore and Geraldton, approximately 25 kilometers east of Beardmore and about 6 kilometers west of Jellicoe. The eastern half of the property is readily accessed via a seasonal road off Highway 11 at the Trans Canada Pipeline compressor station about 28.5 kilometers east of Beardmore. Road 801 which runs north from Hwy 11 to Auden, and drill trails off Road 801 provide access into the western portion of the property.
Solomon Pillars is situated within the Southern Metasedimentary Sub-belt of the Beardmore – Geraldton Greenstone Belt. The Beardmore-Geraldton belt is situated within an east-trending isoclinally folded metavolcanic-metasedimentary sequence belonging to the southern portion of the eastern Marmion Domain.
Lithologic units have been tectonically transposed into a series of alternating slices of metavolcanics and metasediments within a wench or mega-shear zone (Mason and White 1986). Metavolcanics of the southern sub-belt are composed of iron and magnesium tholeiites forming an east trending narrow unit. Metasedimentary rocks typically consist of arkose, wacke, siltstone, conglomerate and significant amounts of inter-bedded oxide-facies, banded iron formation (Devaney and Williams 1989). The iron formation ranges up to 25 metres thick in the shaft area and is fine grained, laminated to thinly bedded red hematite, and black magnetite with minor amounts of chert.
Structurally, favourable areas of the Beardmore-Geraldton belt for gold mineralization include fracture zones, fold noses, contacts between rock types and axial planes (Mason and White 1986). Drag folds and ore bearing structures along this belt typically plunge westward at 25° to 40° (Speed and Craig 1992). The gold-bearing mineralized shoot at the shaft (Main) zone on the Solomon Pillars property is reported to plunge eastward at 15° (Canico 1987).
The southern metasedimentary sub-belt hosts 11 past-producing gold mines and 95% of the approximately 4.1 million ounces of gold produced from this greenstone belt (Mason and McConnell 1983). Two of the larger producing gold mines include the Leitch Mine near Beardmore (one of the richest gold producers in Canada having produced 861,982 ounces of gold at an average grade of 0.92 ounces per ton) and the MacLeod‐ Cockshutt mine near Geraldton at 1,516,980 oz gold at 0.14 ounces per ton (Speed and Craig 1992).
Gold mineralization within the belt occurs primarily as fracture filling quartz veins and pyritic replacement in iron formation. Gold occurs in quartz+/-carbonate veins as free gold or as fine microinclusions associated with arsenopyrite, pyrite, pyrrhotite and in places, scheelite. Sulphides, including arsenopyrite, pyrite, pyrrhotite and chalcopyrite, occur as vein-related replacement minerals within quartz veins or within bedded chert-magnetite iron formation hosted in wacke-siltstone-argillite sequences of the southern metasedimentary sub-belt (Speed and Craig 1992).
Minimal work that has been completed by Metalcorp on the property to date includes data acquisition and compilation, with limited field work. Field work included limited twinning of Kodiak/ Sage channel cuts to verify reported assay results from the iron formation in the vicinity of the shaft, GPS mapping of the mechanically-stripped zones and ground truthing of recently discovered gold occurrences reported by Sage Gold, physical location of drill hole casings and historical gridding, and a preliminary structural geology examination of the property. Confirmation channel sampling results included 8.92 gpt Au over 4.9 m (SPC-11-01) and 11.52 gpt Au over 6.0 metres (SPC-11-02) from the iron formation, confirming previously reported gold assays. Results of this work were presented in a news release dated November 23, 2011.
Plans for the remainder of 2012 include an exploration program of line-cutting to rehabilitate and re-establish existing grids on the property, continued ground truthing of previous work, ground and airborne geophysical surveys followed by diamond drilling to verify previous results and test new targets. Plans going forward include sufficient drilling to upgrade the historic gold resource estimate to meet current NI 43-101 standards.
Canadian Nickel Company Limited 1986, Un-authored and undated report on Solomon Pillars, Ontario Gold Property, NTS 42E12, prefaced by a letter by Perry, J. dated Feb 14, 1986; 20p
Canadian Nickel Company Limited, March 1987, Volume 1 Second Work Program Report, Canico – Pronto Joint Venture, Solomon’s Pillars Gold Property, Walters and Leduc Townships, Ontario, NTS: 42E12; unpublished report, 20p
Devaney, J.R. and Williams, H.R. 1989, Evolution of an Archean Subprovince boundary: a sedimentological and structural study of part of the Wabigoon-Quetico boundary in northern Ontario; Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, v.26,p1013-1026.
Mackasey, W.O. 1976, Geology of Walters and Leduc Townships, District of Thunder Bay, Ontario Division of Mines, Report 149, 58p. Accompanied by Map 2356, scale 1:31,680
Mason, J.K. and McConnell, C.D. 1983, Gold Mineralization in the Beardmore-Geraldton area; in The Geology of Gold in Ontario, Ontario Geological Survey, Miscellaneous Paper 110, p84-97
Mason, J. And White, G. 1986, Gold Occurrences, Prospects, and Deposits of the Beardmore-Geraldton Area, District of Thunder Bay and Cochrane; Ontario Geological Survey, Open File Report 5630, 680p., 21 figures, 11 tables, and 1 map in back pocket.
Speed, A.A. and Craig, S. 1992, Beardmore-Geraldton historical research project; Ontario Geological Survey, Open File Report 5823, 283p.
Therriault, R. 2009, Report of work completed on the King Solomon’s Pillars Property May to October, 2009, unpublished assessment report, Thunder Bay Resident Geologist’s office, 17p
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