North of 60 Mining News - The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North

Fireweed Metals Corp. Nov. 17 announced that its exploration program at Gayna River revealed several potential high-grade targets at this zinc-lead-gallium-germanium project in Canada's Northwest Territories.

"The results from this year's exploration program at Gayna River demonstrate that there is potential for high-grade massive sulphides here, consistent with our approach in exploring Kipushi-style high-grade targets around the margins of these ancient carbonate reefs," said Fireweed Metals CEO Brandon Macdonald.

With just cursory work for its first year in exploration, Fireweed Metals conducted numerous exploration techniques to get as broad an impression as quickly as possible.

This included the collection of ten samples across the Jaws anomaly, an area of very high lead-in-soil values in historical soil geochemical data. The 2022 sampling was carried out over an area with the highest historical values.

"The soil sampling confirmed the presence of a large lead anomaly at the Jaws target that could represent the top of a shallowly buried reef," said Macdonald. "This soil anomaly is large and intense-the Jaws target has a central area of four kilometers by one kilometer with soils over 100 parts per million lead and peak values over 27% lead."

All ten samples ultimately ran over 4,000 ppm lead, including seven samples over 1% lead, one sample of 27.5% lead and 176 ppm silver, and another at 0.75% zinc, confirming the presence of a very strong soil anomaly and validating the high lead- and zinc-in-soil values in the rest of the historical soil geochemical dataset.

In addition to soil sampling, Fireweed geologists collected rock samples that confirm the presence of high-grade zinc and lead sulfide mineralization at surface, as well as elevated concentrations of the critical minerals gallium and germanium.

Eight grab samples were analyzed in total, including dolostones, dolostone breccias, limestones, and veins.

All had grades greater than 7% zinc, and the best sample comprised 73.7% lead, 9.2% zinc, and 40.5 ppm silver.

Click image to see larger map.

The highest zinc grade was 51.2% in a sample that also contained 42 ppm gallium and 39 ppm germanium, with appreciable grades of gallium and germanium also being present in many of the samples, with up to 42 ppm gallium and 99 ppm germanium in different samples, notably in those with higher zinc grades.

On top of the rock and soil sampling, Fireweed also conducted lidar and ground gravity surveys, further exemplifying the mineralization at Jaws and overall Gayna River.

"The coincident geological, geochemical, and geophysical anomalies at both the Jaws target and the ABC showings are very favourable in terms of the potential for high-grade zinc-lead-silver mineralization in the near surface," said the Fireweed CEO. "With these excellent initial results, we are very excited to advance these targets further."