Omineca Mining and Metals Ltd. (TSXV: OMM) (OTCQB: OMMSF) has announced a significant hard rock (lode) gold discovery 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 company's underground paleoplacer gold project, validate the assertion of a proximal lode source for the rich paleoplacer gold found beneath Lightning Creek.
Highlights from the drilling include WD25-41, which returned 4.84 g/t gold over 1.07 meters (158.98-160.05 meters), and WD25-42, which returned 1.25 g/t gold over 2.0 meters (345.00-347.00 meters). These results coincide with recent empirical evidence in the underground placer workings indicating that Lightning Creek flowed from west to east when the gold was eroded into the valley, opposite its present direction, suggesting the source lies downstream of the placer deposits.
The discovery comes 165 years after placer gold was first found in Lightning Creek, and the company has now identified a lode source that can explain the autochthonous 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.
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 30 kilometers east of Wingdam, the Cassiar gold camp, the historic Bralorne mining camp, and the Greenwood Mining District, all of which are structurally associated with ophiolitic seafloor rocks.
The company's exploration thesis is based on changes in watershed flow direction caused by isostatic depression of the crust under the 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 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 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, a direction now reversed to the present flow direction west.
The 2025 drill program consisted of 3,091.9 meters completed 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 1,978 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 to depth at elevations below the underground placer workings, specifically in areas downdip of mineralization in the ultramafic unit intersected in WD24-37.
WD25-41 was drilled at a northward azimuth as a downdip follow-up of WD24-37, which had intersected anomalous gold concentrations (870 ppb Au from 93.40 to 95.40 m) in a brecciated and faulted ultramafic amygdular basalt. WD25-41 intersected the most anomalous gold result in diamond drilling on the property to date, from 158.9 to 160.05 meters, returning 4.84 g/t gold. This sample displayed localized fracturing and contained 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 from 345.00 to 347.00 meters, returning 1.25 g/t gold in a lithic wacke containing minor quartz veinlets and disseminated pyrrhotite and pyrite.
Drilling during the 2025 season 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 discovery.
All scientific and technical information in this news release has been prepared by or approved by Stephen Kocsis, P.Geo., an independent qualified person for the purposes of National Instrument 43-101. The company's flagship Wingdam project includes mineral tenures totaling 61,392 hectares and over 15 linear kilometers of placer claims, encompassing the Lightning Creek valley where a buried paleochannel contains placer gold-bearing gravels. Omineca also has a program exploring for potential multiple hard rock sources of the placer gold at Wingdam.
