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 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 align 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 returning 4.84 g/t gold from 158.98-160.05 meters (1.07 meters), and WD25-42 returning 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, an ophiolite sequence known for its structural relationship with orogenic gold deposits in British Columbia. These ultramafic oceanic crustal rocks are affiliated with many of the province’s gold camps, including the Barkerville Gold camp (Osisko Development) 30 kilometers east of Wingdam, the Cassiar gold camp in northern B.C., the historic Bralorne mining camp to the west, and the Greenwood Mining District in southern B.C.
The company’s exploration thesis is based on changes in watershed flow direction caused by isostatic depression under the Cordilleran glacial ice sheet. This weight pushed down the area west of Wingdam, causing 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 eastward to westward flow. These forces, combined with potential reactivation and subsidence of the Eureka Thrust Fault, explain why the 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, viewed as a cross section looking north, 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.
The 2025 drill program totaled 3,091.9 meters in six NQ diamond drill holes. Drilling was completed by Newmac, with core logged and sampled by TerraLogic Exploration of Cranbrook, BC. A total of 1,978 drill core samples and 179 QA/QC samples were collected. The program was designed to follow up on mineralization found in 2024, with continuation drilling at depths below the underground placer workings, specifically downdip of mineralization in the ultramafic unit intersected in WD24-37. Additional drilling was conducted southeast of WD24-37 along the mapped Eureka Thrust Fault toward a UAV magnetic high.
WD25-41 was a downdip follow-up of WD24-37, targeting the most anomalous gold results from the 2024 season. It intersected the most anomalous gold result on the property to date, with 4.84 g/t gold from 158.9 to 160.05 meters, displaying localized fracturing and containing 2.0-6.0 cm calcite-quartz veins and disseminated pyrite traces. WD25-42, drilled from the same pad at a northeasterly azimuth, targeted the magnetic high and anomalous mineralization along strike, intersecting 1.25 g/t gold from 345.00 to 347.00 meters in a lithic wacke with 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 this discovery, 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.
All scientific and technical information in this news release has been prepared or approved by Stephen Kocsis, P.Geo., an independent qualified person for National Instrument 43-101. The Wingdam Project includes mineral tenures totaling 61,392 hectares and over 15 linear kilometers of placer claims, encompassing the Lightning Creek valley where a buried paleochannel contains placer gold-bearing gravels. Omineca is also exploring for multiple hard rock sources of the placer gold at Wingdam.
