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Ardeen

Pele: Ardeen Overview


The Ardeen Project covers over 10,000 acres along the Shebandowan Greenstone Belt west of Thunder Bay and includes northern Ontario’s first gold mine. Past drilling by Pele has returned numerous high-grade intercepts from more than 12,000 metres of core, demonstrating the project’s exceptional gold potential. The property also has considerable base metal potential as evidenced by an outcrop discovery on an adjacent property in 2005 which returned numerous high-grade assays of up to 12.5-percent copper and 32.8-percent zinc.

The Ardeen Mine yielded 30,000 ounces of gold and 175,000 ounces of silver from a 200-tonne per day mill during operations that continued intermittently until the mid-1930s. The mine area and surrounding mineralized zones are characterized by structurally-controlled, high-grade gold and silver mineralization hosted in quartz-carbonate vein systems and iron formation. The southern part of Ardeen hosts geology similar to the neighboring property of Moss Lake Gold Mines Ltd. where according to published reports, an in-situ resource of 2.1 million ounces of gold was delineated by Noranda Exploration Company in the mid-1990s.

Pele’s past exploration at Ardeen was centered on the mine area and its extensions to the east and west, in search of high-grade gold deposits similar to those historically mined from the property. Over 12,000 meters of core were drilled in mostly-shallow holes along and in close proximity to a 3,200-meter strike length of the Ardeen Fault, primarily near the high-grade Pele and Fisher zones. The Pele Zone appears to be an extension of the Ardeen vein system and has been traced for over two kilometers from where the mine workings end. The Fisher Zone is just south of the mine workings and has also returned high grade gold, including a remarkable 43-ounce per tonne sample that was collected by staff at the Ministry of Northern Development and Mines and has been archived at their office in Thunder Bay.

Drilling highlights from Pele’s work at Ardeen include the following:

Drill Hole Intersection (m) Width (m) Gold (g/t, uncut) Width includes (m) Gold includes (g/t, uncut)
96-8 19.20 — 24.08 4.88 75.26 0.60 598.53
96-8A 27.98 — 29.87 1.89 33.23 0.60 99.34
97-01 29.35 — 31.20 1.85 16.80 0.65 40.84
97-06 71.55 — 72.82 1.27 39.98 0.45 111.20
97-15 71.00 — 73.00 2.00 76.25 1.00 149.51
97-35 69.26 — 71.22 1.96 14.17 0.76 17.58
97-40 115.81 — 117.32 1.51 40.20 0.66 82.11
97-56 19.71 — 27.05 7.34 20.20 0.75 116.34
97-60 29.00 — 30.45 1.45 33.30 0.76 43.80

In late-2005, 13 drill holes were completed testing five target areas including extensions of surface gold showings and new geophysical targets. All of the areas examined, none of which are in the vicinity of the Ardeen Mine where most of Pele’s prior work has been performed, showed encouraging mineralization. The most intriguing results were found in the Waverly Zone where one hole intersected a 78.5-metre wide mineralized zone along strike from the Moss Lake gold deposit, including a 10-metre section with gold values ranging from 0.07 to 3.32 g/t over one-metre intervals.

Also in 2005, A 1,676 line-kilometre VTEM airborne survey was flown over the entire property, identifying anomaly patterns characteristic of shear zones, iron formation, and possible VMS targets. The presence of ore-grade base metal mineralization along the Shebandowan Belt is well-known. Just seven kilometres northeast of Ardeen, the North Coldstream Mine produced over 100-million pounds of copper, along with significant silver and gold by-products.