Omineca Mining and Metals Ltd. (TSXV: OMM) (OTCQB: OMMSF) has announced the discovery of a hard rock (“lode”) gold zone 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 Wingdam underground paleoplacer gold project, validate the company’s assertion of a proximal lode source for the rich paleoplacer gold found beneath Lightning Creek.
The discovery comes 165 years after placer gold was first found in the Lightning Creek valley. The highest grade intercept was found in a section of amygdaloidal basalt associated with the Slide Mountain Terrane, which is well preserved along the Eureka Thrust Fault in the immediate area. These ultramafic oceanic crustal rocks are affiliated with many of British Columbia’s orogenic gold camps, including the Barkerville Gold camp 30 kilometers east, the Cassiar camp in northern B.C., and the historic Bralorne camp to the west.
Highlights from the drill program include WD25-41, which returned 4.84 g/t gold over 1.07 meters from 158.98 to 160.05 meters, and WD25-42, which returned 1.25 g/t gold over 2.0 meters from 345.00 to 347.00 meters. The 2025 program totaled 3,091.9 meters in six NQ diamond drill holes, following up on mineralization found in 2024.
The exploration thesis is based on changes in watershed flow direction caused by isostatic depression under the Cordilleran glacial ice sheet. This weight pushed down the area to the west, causing Lightning Creek to change from flowing east to flowing west approximately 200,000 years ago. The reversed flow has been confirmed in Omineca's underground workings, where imbrication in gravel layers indicates water flow from west to east, opposite to the present direction.
These forces, combined with potential re-activation and subsidence of the Eureka Thrust Fault, explain why the lode source is located downstream (west) at depths equivalent to and below the Wingdam underground placer workings, where 173.4 ounces of placer gold were recovered from a single sample in 2012.
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, 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 plans to announce further details of the ongoing exploration program once finalized.
