Omineca Mining and Metals Ltd. (TSXV: OMM) (OTCQB: OMMSF) has announced the discovery of a hard rock (lode) gold zone from its 2025 winter drill program at the 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 company has now identified a lode source that can explain the incidence of autochthonous (close distance from source) placer gold in the rich paleoplacer deposit. The well-known structural relationship between ophiolites (ancient sea floor thrust upward) and orogenic gold deposits in British Columbia is of particular interest at Wingdam, given that the Slide Mountain Terrane (dominant in ophiolites) is well preserved along the Eureka Thrust Fault in the immediate area.
Highlights from the 2025 drill program include WD25-41, which returned 4.84 g/t gold from 158.98-160.05 meters (1.07 meters), and WD25-42, which returned 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. These ultramafic oceanic crustal rocks are affiliated with many of British Columbia's orogenic 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 evident changes in watershed flow direction caused by isostatic depression of the crust under the tremendous weight of the Cordilleran glacial ice sheet. This weight pushed down the area to the west of Wingdam enough to cause 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 flowing east to flowing west. These forces, combined with the potential re-activation and subsidence of the Eureka Thrust Fault, explain why the recently identified lode source is located downstream (west) at depths equivalent to and below the level of the Wingdam underground placer project 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 shows imbrication (overlapping arrangement of pebbles and cobbles) in the brown gravel layer, indicating water flow was left to right (west to east) along the Lightning Creek valley, in a direction now reversed to the present flow direction west.
The 2025 drill program totaled 3,091.9 meters in 6 NQ diamond drill holes. Drilling was completed by Newmac, and core was logged and sampled by TerraLogic Exploration of Cranbrook, BC. A total of 1978 drill core samples and 179 QA/QC samples were collected. The program was designed to follow up on mineralization found in the 2024 program, with continuation drilling further to depth at elevations below the Wingdam underground placer workings, specifically in areas downdip of mineralization in the ultramafic unit intersected in WD24-37. Additional drilling was conducted southeast of WD24-37 along strike of the mapped Eureka Thrust Fault toward the UAV magnetic high.
WD25-41 was drilled at a northward azimuth and was a downdip follow-up hole of WD24-37, which aimed to test the most anomalous gold results from the 2024 season. The anomalous gold concentrations (870.00 ppb Au from 93.40 to 95.40 m) were in a brecciated and faulted ultramafic amygdular basalt. WD24-37 also intersected veining deeper in the hole along the transition from a magnetic high to low as outlined by the drone mag survey completed in 2024. WD25-41 intersected the most anomalous gold result in diamond drilling on the Property to date, with localized fracturing and 2.0-6.0 cm calcite-quartz veins and disseminated pyrite traces in the groundmass. WD25-42, drilled from the same pad at a northeasterly azimuth, targeted the magnetic high outlined by the 2024 UAV Magnetic survey and intersected mineralization deeper than the previous hole in a lithic wacke containing minor quartz veinlets and 0.1-0.3% 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 the discovery of lode gold in close proximity to the underground paleoplacer at Wingdam, 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 exciting discovery.
The qualified person for this news release is Stephen Kocsis, P.Geo., an independent qualified person for the purposes of National Instrument 43-101. Omineca's flagship Wingdam project is located along the Barkerville Highway, 45 km east of Quesnel, BC, and includes mineral tenures totaling 61,392 hectares and over 15 linear kilometers of placer claims. The company also holds the Fraser Canyon Project, 12 kilometers northwest of Quesnel, where two historical mines collectively produced 1,482 oz of raw placer gold.
