The Rice Lake Greenstone Belt, Manitoba

The Rice Lake Greenstone Belt forms part of the Uchi Sub-province that includes the Red Lake and Pickle Crow belts in northwestern Ontario. The Uchi Sub province has produced greater than 15 million ounces of gold with lesser copper and zinc.

Generally speaking the Rice Lake belt is a typical Archean greenstone belt consisting of mafic to felsic volcanic flows intruded by a variety of ultramafic, mafic and felsic dykes and locally overlain by clastic sedimentary rocks. All rocks have been deformed and metamorphosed to at least greenschist facies and cut by a number of later structures. All gold production from the belt has been from veins associated with these later structures.

In southeastern Manitoba, the Belt comprises two subsidiary greenstone belts (The English Lake and Wallace Lake-Siderock Lake belts) that are separated from the main Rice Lake Belt by major east-west trending faults. The Rice Lake greenstone belt consists of Archean mafic volcanic and metasedimentary rocks of the Rice Lake Group that are unconformably overlain by metasedimentary rocks of the San Antonio Formation. The Ross River quartz dioritic pluton intruded the Rice Lake Group prior to the deposition of the San Antonio Formation.

The Belt is an established gold camp with over 1.7 million ounces produced and is one of the most important gold-producing areas in Manitoba. Gold production continues with the San Antonio Mine and mill operating in the town of Bissett. It is our belief, based on historical records and recent high-grade gold discoveries that the area is under explored and highly prospective for the discovery of significant new gold deposits.

More than 200 gold occurrences have been documented in the Belt. Gold mineralization is present in both the older rocks in the northern part of the Belt and the younger rocks in the southern part of the Belt. Most of the past production has been obtained from the San Antonio Mine which is hosted in the younger southern package of rocks.

Limited production has been obtained from vein deposits in the northern part of the Belt, where the older rocks are considered to be the equivalent of the Balmer series of rocks that host world class gold mineralization at Red Lake Ontario 80 km to the east. These older rocks, underlie most of the Lesavage North property, and are comprised of mafic volcanic rocks, sedimentary rocks and banded sulphide and oxide iron formation. The Wanipigow Fault, a regional shear, cuts through the property and extends eastwards to the Red Lake and Pickle Lake gold camps. Major crustal breaks such as the Wanipigow Fault are associated with major gold camps throughout the Canadian Shield.

The initial focus in the belt was on the Lesavage North Property (formerly known as the Johnston Property). Subsequent exploration has targeted the Lesavage South, Conley Estate and Dunlop Option properties all of which are located within 25-30 km of the town of Bissett by all weather gravel road and a 3-hour drive from the provincial capital of Winnipeg, Manitoba.

The Harvest Gold properties cover highly prospective geology in the Rice Lake Gold Belt. Several key geologic controls to the formation of gold deposits are known to occur on the property including a major shear zone, Balmer Formation equivalent rock (The Balmer Formation hosts the giant gold deposits of the Red Lake Belt 80 km to the east) and gold mineralization hosted in rocks having undergone the same type of alteration that is associated with gold deposits in Red Lake and elsewhere on the Canadian Shield. Field work and analysis of historic exploration data has resulted in the recognition of several areas on the property with the geologic characteristics usually associated with economic gold deposits. Harvest Gold’s first drill program resulted in the discovery of a new gold zone and drilling will continue on this wide open target during the summer of 2006. The ongoing field work is establishing additional target areas for drill testing indicating the potential for multiple deposits on the property.

Potentially economic gold deposits similar in size and grade to those found in the neighboring Red Lake Gold Camp and in other important gold mining camps on the Canadian Shield are the goals for the Company. Target selection and subsequent drill testing will be accomplished through a compilation program using previously undertaken exploration results and supplemented with prospecting, geological mapping, ground and airborne geophysical surveys and geochemical surveys. This will be achieved through drill programs focused on integrated geological, geophysical and geochemical surveys.
 

A review of results to date for each property is provided below.

 

     Lesavage North        Lesavage South       Wallace-Conley Estate        Dunlop Option