Fathom Nickel Inc. [CNI-FNI; OTCQB-FNICF; FSE-6Q5] has added the Friesen Lake property, Saskatchewan, to the company’s property portfolio. The Friesen Lake property encompasses three mineral dispositions acquired by staking directly through the Government of Saskatchewan’s MARS portal.
Ian Fraser, CEO and VP Exploration stated, “In light of recent activity in the Albert Lake property area, we made the decision to stake three claims to cover the Friesen Lake Ni-Cu-Pt showing and acquire land that puts us adjacent to the Toppings Lake Cu-Ni showing.
“Both showings are ultramafic-mafic hosted and have the potential to host significant magmatic nickel sulphide-styles of mineralization. Of significant interest to us is the platinum-palladium associated with the Friesen Lake showing. It is very intriguing to us that >1 g/t Pt-Pd occurs in historic surface trenching and that significant Pt-Pd has been confirmed in historic drilling at Friesen Lake.
“The recent Ramp Metals Inc. drill result announcement has brought a lot of attention to the area and a bit of a staking rush. We felt it was important for Fathom to secure these dispositions and cover these known Ni-Cu-Pd-Pt showings before the staking frenzy grabbed this land ahead of us. As first movers in the area, we believe we have the largest and most prospective land package this region has to offer, providing us incredible exploration optionality.”
The Friesen Lake showing and the Toppings Lake showing are located approximately 40km and 55km, respectively, southwest of the historic Rottenstone mine. The historic Rottenstone Mine was in production 1965-1969 and produced some of the highest magmatic nickel sulphide grades in Canadian mining history.
The Friesen and Toppings Lake showings occur within ultramafic-mafic intrusive rock that have intruded paragneiss and migmatites that dominate the Rottenstone Domain.
At Friesen Lake, a northeast trending ultramafic dyke-like feature has been exposed over a strike of 240m and a width up to 60 metres. Within this dyke-like feature, mineralization occurs as up to 1% combined pyrite-pyrrhotite-chalcopyrite with violarite (iron-nickel sulphide) blebs and stringers.
Saskatchewan Mineral Assessment Database (SMAD #74A03-011) reports trench samples of mineralized bands within the dyke-like feature returned values up to 0.42% Ni, 0.29% Cu, 0.03% Co, 2.07 g/t Pt and 1.13 g/t Pd associated with 0.5% to 2% sulphides; very impressive Ni-Cu-Pt-Pd values given the very little sulphide content noted.
Historic drilling at the Friesen Lake showing yielded significant drillhole widths of ultramafic rock; up to 38.5 metres, with localized zones of mineralization yielding up to 565ppm Ni, 540ppm Cu, and 0.2 g/t Pd-Pt.
A 1998 heli-borne biogeochemical survey which collected and analyzed representative ash samples from the tops of 11 Black Spruce trees within the Friesen Lake showing area returned anomalous Ni (up to 352ppm), Cu (up to 407ppm) and Pd (up to12 ppb) values.
The company now has a portfolio of three high-quality exploration projects located in the prolific Trans Hudson Corridor in Saskatchewan: the Albert Lake Project, a 90,000+ hectare project that was host to the historic and past producing Rottenstone Mine1 (produced 28,724 tons at 3.3% Ni, 1.8% Cu, 9.63 g/t 3E (Pd-Pt+Au) 1965-1969), and the 22,000+ hectare Gochager Lake Project that is host to a historic, NI43-101 non-compliant open pit resource consisting of 4.3M tons at 0.295% Ni and 0.081% Cu2, and 3) the 10,000+ hectare Friesen Lake Project located 50km southwest of the historic Rottenstone Mine and 30km northwest of the historic Gochager Lake deposit.
