Halo-Yuri Lithium Project
The Halo-Yuri Lithium Project covers approximately 450 square kilometres and comprises 37 contiguous claims. It is located approximately 250 kms northeast of Yellowknife on the Gahcho Kue annual winter road which provides good access for drilling and is within a few hundred metres of the ‘OIG’ spodumene occurrence. Historically, exploration on the project has focussed on diamonds with little or no previous work on pegmatites albeit there is documented spodumene bearing pegmatites with numerous unexplored targets (Figure 1).
Approximately 40 kilometres to the northeast of the Halo-Yuri Lithium Project is the Alymer Lake pegmatite field that contains both the Big Bird Lithium Pegmatite (1,280m in strike with 34m @ 1.24% Li2O in drilling) and the Curlew Lithium Pegmatite (400m strike length and 14.8m @ 1.72% Li2O in drilling). No assurances can be given that a similar or any mineral resource estimate will be determined at the Halo-Yuri Lithium Project.
Historical work across the project by Southern Era noted that most outcrop on the property consisted on granitoids, metasediments and pegmatites with large NW-SE trending pegmatites of the MacKenzie Dyke Swarm crossing the property.
Spodumene is mapped at the ‘OIG’ pegmatites in the northwest of the project and also at the ‘Sweet’ pegmatite which is located a few hundred metres to the east of the project. The OIG pegmatites are described in a 1991 Master’s thesis by Paul Tomascak submitted to the University of Manitoba which states “The four dikes of this series all contain spodumene and little K-feldspar, although OIG-4 is largely aplitic and the spodumene is not as coarse as it is in all other dikes of the series. Despite the presence of extensive spodumene, dikes are poorly zoned. Dikes are elongate, in general striking north-south. Contact relations are incomplete, but most dikes appear concordant with metasediment schistosity. Lengths of dikes range from 6 to 18 m. Texturally and mineralogically these dikes appear to belong to Cerny’s (1982) albite-spodumene type, bearing similarities to the King’s Mountain pegmatites of North Carolina, U.S.A.(Kesler, 1976).”
Furthermore Tomascak goes on to say “OIG-1, 2, 3 : These dikes are spodumene-rich and poorly zoned. They consist of a random assemblage of 0.5-4.0 cm spodumene + quartz + plagioclase (usually cleavelandite) ±muscovite ±K-feldspar (some megacrysts up to 5 cm). Randomly distributed pods of blocky spodumene + K-feldspar ±cleavelandite also are present in these dikes. Aside from spodumene they remarkably lack other rare-element minerals.
OIG-4 : This dike is much smaller than the others and appears extensively metasomatized. It contains a near-homogeneous and relatively fine-grained assemblage of cleavelandite + spodumene +muscovite+ quartz.”
High resolution satellite-based targeting and mapping will be utilised to filter out high priority areas prior to undertaking detailed field work. Fieldwork is proposed for late in the Northern hemisphere summer 2023 field season however recent wildfires across the Northwest Territories has had a significant impact on the availability of remote camp equipment.
