OVERVIEW
Acquisition of Larose
The Larose Project consists of a single property ("Larose"). Please see the Overview for our Verneuil Project, which discusses our combined acquisition of Verneuil Central (a 70% interest) and Larose (a 100% interest) in a single transaction on May 17, 2011.
Larose is comprised of 16 claims covering a total of 3088 ha. in Moss Township, 120 kms. west of Thunder Bay, Ontario. A 3% NSR on Larose is payable to previous owners, 1.5% of which can be bought back for the sum of $500,000 for each 0.5% increment (total - $1,500,000).
Geology
Larose is situated in the western portion of the Shebandowan belt, approximately 40 km west of Golden Share's Shebandowan project. The property is mostly underlain by metasedimentary rocks of the Quetico sub-province, mainly greywacke and argillite, which have been intruded by various plutonic rocks with the most prominent of these in the area being the Moss Lake and Obadinaw syenite stocks. Gold mineralization is associated with the Larose shear zone ("LSZ"), a major northeast trending shear up to 25 m wide, that can be identified across the entire property over 9 km and which has so far been systematically traced through surface exposures over 4 km.
The LSZ hosts quartz veins, stockworks and sulphide disseminations in altered greywacke which show very high gold grades locally. The previous operator, Freewest Resources Canada Inc. ("Freewest"), reported grades up to 371.9 g/t Au from surface rock sampling on the P1 trench. Freewest executed surface programs comprising prospecting, mapping, surface geophysics and trenching from 2003 to 2004. Limited diamond drilling showed gold mineralization to be persistent at depth with intercepts such as 8.74 g/t Au over 2 m and 1.95 g/t Au over 5 m.
Exploration History
This property lies just west of the Shebandowan greenstone belt volcano-sedimentary package, within the Quetico sediments, and its exploration history milestones may be summarized as follows:
1999 - Noranda Exploration conducts till sampling in the area and gets anomalous gold results near Larose.
2003 - R. Kwiatkowski samples rusty schist yielding very anomalous gold grades and recorded as the original discovery of the Larose showing. In the same year an option agreement is signed with Freewest Resources Canada Inc..
2003 - Freewest Resources Canada Inc. conducts prospecting, line cutting, geochemical soil sampling, ground geophysics (magnetic and induced polarization) and trenching.
2003/2004 - Freewest Resources Canada Inc. executes two short diamond drilling programs totaling 2,742 m on selected targets of the LSZ while continuing to explore the property by direct or indirect methods.
The sedimentary rock package and the association of the gold with syenitic type intrusives are very reminiscent of the Malartic and Timmins mining camps.
Option Agreement
On December 9, 2011, we announced that we had entered into an option agreement with Golden Share whereby Golden Share may earn up to a 50% interest in Larose. Under the terms of the agreement, Golden Share agreed to issue 100,000 shares to Viking Gold on the later of (i) execution of the agreement and (ii) TSX Venture Exchange approval (completed), and an additional 100,000 shares on the first anniversary of the agreement.
In addition, Golden Share agreed to spend $200,000 in the first year of the agreement on exploration on the property, plus another $150,000 in year two and $150,000 in year three of the agreement. Viking Gold and Golden Share also agreed that at the time they become 50/50 owners in the property, they will enter into a joint venture agreement with Golden Share as the operator.
The acquisition of the Verneuil Central/Larose properties was approved by the TSX-V on May 27, 2011.
A previous Freewest document on Larose is available here (Ontario Prospectors Association website).
On December 27, 2012, the Company announced that the parties had amended and extended the option agreement - see press release here.
