MetalCORP sitting pretty beside Hemlo.

• Author: Stewart, Nick
• Position: SPECIAL REPORT: MINING

Even now, Aubrey Eveleigh is in disbelief.

A few weeks ago, MetalCORP, for whom Eveleigh is COO and vice-president of exploration, was able to snatch up two sizeable land packages in the shadow of the famed Hemlo deposit, roughly 350 kilometres east of Thunder Bay.

"It's a real coup to get, and I can't believe we were able to stake it," Eveleigh says.

"I can't believe it even came open, and it's almost as though it just fell through the cracks. We're very excited about this, and I can't emphasize enough the potential in this property. I don't know where else you could go in the world and try to get next to a $16 billion deposit."

Known separately as the Fearless and Python properties, the sites make for a combined total of 21,400 acres just two kilometres east of Hemlo, which was said to contain nearly 23 million ounces of gold.

Held by Lac Minerals since 1981, and then rolled into Barrick Gold, neither property has seen much exploration.

This lack of attention to the fearless property surprises Eveleigh, as it abuts a major gold deposit and the Hemlo mine, and is even tied onto its tailings pond. What's more, the characteristics of the rock is highly similar to that of the Hemlo property, giving MetalCORP even more confidence in its potential.

While the raw potential of the fearless site has piqued Eveleigh's interest, sporadic exploration on the property throughout the last 26 years has turned up the Gouda Lake gold zone, which MetalCORP has since inherited.

At roughly 250,000 tonnes, Gouda Lake has graded approximately 4.0 grams of gold per tonne, providing the company with "a good starter deposit."

As the deposit has not been drilled to depth, Eveleigh expects the zone may well provide interesting results as the company moves forward with its exploration efforts.

Adjacent to Fearless is the Python property, which also holds some potential for future exploration for the company. However, as the geology changes across this area, the mineralization changes as well offering up base metal assays. Drilling conducted through the late 1990s turned up various mineralized zones of anomalous copper, zinc, molybdenum and nickel. Grab samples have turned up historical assays grading as high as 1.2 per cent nickel, 0.2 per cent copper and 0.4 per cent zinc, though Eveleigh is quick to point out that Python has...