Strategic Metals Ltd.

TSX.V:SMD

Midas Touch Project

  • Major land position in Canada's only Carlin-type gold district

  • Evidence of large scale hydrothermal alteration

The wholly-owned Midas Touch project, located within the traditional territory of the First Nation of Na-Cho Nyak Dun, covers over 1,200 sq km of prospective stratigraphy for Carlin-style gold mineralization within the Rackla Gold Belt, where ATAC Resources Ltd. and Anthill Resources Ltd. have made several significant drill discoveries within an emerging Carlin-style gold district. The Midas Touch project largely adjoins the south side of ATAC's Rackla Gold Property.

Nad Property
Strategic's Nad property is located 400 m along strike from Anthill Resources' new Venus gold discovery, where initial drilling returned 9.76 g/t gold over 38.7 m. The Nad property has never been drilled and preliminary surface work has identified sizeable gold and pathfinder geochemical anomalies associated with orpiment-realgar mineralization, key indicator minerals for Carlin-style gold deposits.

Crag East Property
The Crag East property is situated in overburden covered terrain 7 km to the south of ATAC's Anubis discovery and 12 km to the southwest of its Osiris area, where five significant Carlin-style discoveries have been made, including the Conrad, Osiris, Isis East, Isis, and Sunrise Zones.

The Crag East property has a strong pathfinder geochemical signature of a similar intensity and magnitude to the geochemical response that marks ATAC's Anubis and Osiris areas. The largest soil anomalies occur in areas with low topographic relief and little bedrock exposure. The anomaly at the Merlot Zone measures about 4,000 m in length and 2,200 m in width and contains highly elevated pathfinder elements including arsenic values from 100 to 6,950 ppm. The anomaly at the Malbec Zone is 4,000 m long by 100 to 650 m wide. It contains gold values from 10 to 2,410 ppb with very strong pathfinder elements including arsenic (200 to 2,900 ppm), mercury (10 to 28 ppm), antimony (10 to 447 ppm) and thallium (10 to 56.7 ppm).

Drilling to date at the Crag East property is broadly spaced and has intersected many features characteristic of Carlin-style gold deposits, including:

  • Abundant realgar and orpiment;
  • Favourable geological features - silty limestone, debris flows, styolites and breccias;
  • Strong clay alteration and decarbonatization; and
  • Intense pathfinder signatures over thick intervals, including 1.03% arsenic, 86.1 ppm mercury and 50.6 ppm thallium across 60.8 m.

While initial drilling has not returned economic grade gold mineralization, the results are consistent with classic Carlin-style zoning, where pathfinder geochemical signatures are typically found above and adjacent to gold zones.

Many geochemical anomalies at the Crag East property have not yet been followed up, including low-level gold anomalies, which have proven to be important elsewhere in Rackla Gold District.

Crag Property
At the Trent Zone, diamond drilling has intersected fracture filling and disseminated orpiment/realgar within a package of siltstone and brecciated dolostone host rocks. Numerous intervals returned anomalous gold (20 to 2,070 ppb) together with strong Carlin-style pathfinder elements (arsenic 5,000 to 15,300 ppm, mercury 50,000 to 367,000 ppb, and thallium 20 to 60.9 ppm). Overlapping silica-lead-zinc-antimony-silver mineralization is also present.

At the South Crag Zone, located 1,200 m south of the Trent Zone, a gold-arsenic soil geochemical anomaly measuring about 700 m in length and 250 m in width was outlined. Two holes were drilled and cut locally sheared, strongly listwaenitized ultramafic rocks with weak gold values.