Instead of resting on its laurels, Fireweed Metals Corp. aimed for 2023 to be a year that outshined its previous exploration success. With its largest drill program ever at the Macmillan Pass zinc project in the Yukon, the company outdid itself at each turn of the drill and with each intercept received. Add on a mineral resource estimate for the newly dubbed largest known high-grade tungsten deposit in the world, and Fireweed had its most exceptional year ever.

Fireweed's 2023 success begins at Macmillan Pass, a 940-square-kilometer (363 square miles) road-accessible project that blankets a roughly 55-kilometer (34 miles) trend of zinc, lead, silver, and copper mineralization adjacent to Yukon's border with Northwest Territories.

The two more advanced deposits on this district-scale property – Tom and Jason – host 11.2 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 6.59% (1.63 billion pounds) zinc, 2.48% (620 million lb) lead, and 21.33 grams per metric ton (7.7 million ounces) silver; plus 39.5 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 5.84% (5.08 billion lb) zinc, 3.14% (2.73 billion lb) lead, and 38.15 g/t (48.4 million oz) silver.

This resource, calculated in 2018, does not include additional resource expansion drilling completed at Tom and Jason, nor the impressive drill intercepts encountered in the Boundary and Boundary West zones that lie about 15 road-kilometers (nine miles) to the west.

Accumulating more data for an inevitable updated resource estimate, the 2023 program utilized five diamond drill rigs and targeted over 16,000 meters between Boundary, Tom, and Jason. What was initially more than double the roughly 7,000 meters drilled in 2022 turned into more than 22,500 meters drilled in 2023.

Kicking off early June, initial drilling focused on stepping out from the high-grade intersections at Boundary in 2022, which aimed to test the potential continuation of the high-grade mineralization between Boundary Main and Boundary West.

As its first assays began to roll in, targeting this region between Boundaries, Fireweed found the high-grade feeder zone that linked the two deposits.

"The first results of the season have already been a game-changer for Fireweed, demonstrating the presence of a high-grade layer of massive sulphides and stratiform mineralization feeder system which connects Boundary West and Boundary Main in one single zone which we are now just calling Boundary," said Fireweed Metals CEO Brandon Macdonald.

While Fireweed was awaiting the news of its feeder discovery, the company took a moment to inspect one of the newest additions to its portfolio – Mactung.

Located roughly 13 kilometers (8 miles) north of Fireweed's flagship Macmillan Pass zinc-lead-silver project camp and government-maintained airstrip, Mactung is a 37.6-square-kilometer (14.5 square miles) contiguous land package that is also accessible via the North Canol Road about 230 kilometers (143 miles) from the town of Ross River, Yukon.

Acquiring the project for C$15 million (US$10.96 million) from Northwest Territories government in 2022, Fireweed quickly consolidated previous data and new assessments to release a mineral resource estimate that immediately ranked this property as the largest high-grade tungsten resource in the world.

According to this calculation, Mactung hosts 41.5 million metric tons of indicated underground and open pit resource averaging 0.73% (665 million pounds) tungsten trioxide and 12.3 million metric tons of inferred underground and open pit resource averaging 0.59% (158.7 million lb) tungsten trioxide.

In addition to the main tungsten resource, Fireweed also estimated copper and gold as byproduct metals for underground constrained resources only. According to this calculation, Mactung hosts 12.17 million metric tons of indicated underground resource averaging 0.058% (15.67 million lb) copper, and 0.078 g/t (32,914 ounces) gold; and 2.8 million metric tons of inferred underground resource averaging 0.02% (1.2 million lb) copper, and 0.017 g/t (2,194 oz) gold.

Fireweed Metals Corp.

With assays rolling in at Macmillan Pass that continue to surpass one after the other, the game-changing news that Boundary Main and Boundary West are one continuous zinc-rich zone now called Boundary, the possession of the largest tungsten deposit in the world, and the accomplishment of its largest drill program ever, in many ways Fireweed really did outshine all previous successes in 2023.