Omineca Mining and Metals Ltd. (TSXV: OMM) (OTCQB: OMMSF) has announced a significant hard rock (lode) gold discovery at its Wingdam exploration project in the Cariboo Mining District of south-central British Columbia. The discovery, made during the 2025 winter drill program, confirms the company's long-held thesis that a proximal lode source fed the rich paleoplacer gold deposits beneath Lightning Creek.
The initial gold intercepts, drilled 500 meters west of and at depths lower than the elevation of the Wingdam underground paleoplacer project, include 4.84 g/t gold over 1.07 meters in hole WD25-41 and 1.25 g/t gold over 2.0 meters in hole WD25-42. These results are particularly noteworthy as they coincide with recent empirical evidence from underground workings indicating that Lightning Creek historically flowed from west to east (opposite its present direction) when the gold was eroded into the valley. This suggests the lode source lies downstream of the placer deposits.
This discovery comes 165 years after placer gold was first found in the Lightning Creek valley. The lode gold is associated with the Slide Mountain Terrane, an ophiolite sequence (ancient seafloor thrust upward) that is well preserved along the Eureka Thrust Fault. This structural relationship is known to be important for orogenic gold deposits in British Columbia, with similar associations found at the Barkerville Gold camp (Osisko Development) 30 kilometers east, the Cassiar gold camp, the historic Bralorne mining camp, and the Greenwood Mining District.
The exploration thesis is based on ancient changes in watershed flow direction caused by isostatic depression during glaciation. The immense weight of the Cordilleran ice sheet depressed the crust west of Wingdam, causing the Fraser River to reverse its flow from north to south about 760,000 years ago, and Lightning Creek to change from flowing east to west approximately 200,000 years ago. These forces, combined with potential reactivation of the Eureka Thrust Fault, explain why the lode source is located downstream (west) at depths equivalent to or below the placer workings, where a single 2.4-meter-wide crosscut sample in 2012 recovered 173.4 ounces of placer gold.
The reversed flow theory has been confirmed in underground crosscuts, where imbrication (overlapping arrangement of pebbles) in gravel layers indicates west-to-east flow, now reversed to the present westward flow. The 2025 drill program completed 3,091.9 meters in six NQ diamond drill holes, with core logged and sampled by TerraLogic Exploration. A total of 1,978 drill core samples and 179 QA/QC samples were collected. The program followed up on mineralization from 2024, targeting downdip extensions of ultramafic units and the Eureka Thrust Fault.
WD25-41 was a downdip follow-up to WD24-37, which had anomalous gold in a brecciated ultramafic amygdaloidal basalt. The new hole intersected the most anomalous gold result on the property to date in a section with localized fracturing and calcite-quartz veins with disseminated pyrite. WD25-42, drilled from the same pad at a northeasterly azimuth, targeted the magnetic high and intersected gold in a lithic wacke with quartz veinlets and sulfides.
This discovery validates the presence of hard rock gold mineralization on the southeastern side of Lightning Creek associated with ultramafic rocks and quartz-calcite veining. Omineca plans to intensify exploration of hydrothermal gold mineralization along the Eureka Thrust Fault, with the next phase focusing on the immediate vicinity of this discovery. The true thickness of mineralization is yet unknown, and all samples were analyzed by AGAT Laboratories in Calgary, Alberta. The scientific and technical information in this release has been prepared or approved by Stephen Kocsis, P.Geo., an independent qualified person under National Instrument 43-101.
