Fathom Nickel Inc (CSE:FNI, OTCQB:FNICF) this week announced that it has expanded the footprint of its Gochager Lake nickel-copper-cobalt project by 12.5 times the original size through strategic soil and rock sampling.
CEO Ian Fraser joined Proactive to discuss the achievement, highlighting that this discovery hints at a much larger mineralization zone than previously thought.
Proactive: There is news out from the company talking about expanding the footprint at Gochager Lake. You've done some soil and rock sampling and been able to find some pretty interesting results.
Ian Fraser: Yes, we're very pleased with that work, We kind of went back to school on this thing and then tried to figure out what what would this look like on surface. And now with the work that we've done, we've expanded the footprint and we think there's more of this type of mineralization along this trend.
We're talking about expanding it about 12.5 times the original size. That's a significant amount.
Yes, that's right. In the sort of the immediate area, we did some outcrop sampling and mapping and that sort of thing. So, we're seeing all the same rocks that we've encountered, subsurface and drill core on surface in this area that is now 12.5 times bigger than the area that was actually drilled historically. That's very, very encouraging. And then that signal replicates itself in the soils in this expanded footprint. So, it gives us a big playground to go play in.
It's open a number of different directions, but one particular way is intriguing where it's heading.
Yes. The highest soil was to the southwest of the deposit, but to the north east, this seems to be building up very, very nicely in this sort of unique configuration of such a linear feature in the soils. It is very intriguing. It's potentially, you know, a subsurface dyke of some sort. Is that feeding into Gochager, is it something completely different? We really don't know. But anytime you get a feature like that, you definitely have to go back out and do some more work on it.
What's the plan moving forward here? What would you like to do this fall
Well, we've completed the camp construction, so we have a 20 to 25-person camp. We're trying to wean ourselves off the complete dependency on helicopters. So, this fall, we'll be getting ourselves organized to get more boots on the ground to follow up on these new anomalies with the intention of drilling. There is a possibility of drilling this fall. But most definitely come wintertime, we'll be drilling this thing very, very aggressively, but take advantage of the camp, and its location and expand these anomalies and ground-proof them. And do a little bit more surface geophysics that will get us well aligned for, what's going to be a pretty interesting drill program.
Helicopters are expensive and the ability to have workers within the camp staying there instead of having to fly people all over the place is great. I would imagine that you want to see that money spent in the ground and not in the air?
Absolutely. In our constant communication with First Nations, they've encouraged us to eliminate the helicopter. That's a very positive development. That's with all due respect to the fellows that have been helping us out, the various helicopter companies. In terms of drilling cost, if that's going into the ground, we can get more meterage out of the bit.
Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity and style