Lalor has been described as a mine that evolved from “drill hole to mill hole” in five short years.
However, a symposium reviewing temperature alteration, technology and innovation that brought Lalor to that point could equally be defined as from “sea floor to drill core” in many millions of years.
The Snow Lake area mine, its geology and its innovations were all discussed at a seminar held in Winnipeg last month.
Among those speaking was Dr. Alan Bailes, a respected geoscientist.
Bailes was direct and perceptive in his presentation of the geological setting for Lalor’s rich zinc/gold volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) deposit, wherein he explained the Snow Lake Arc Assemblage (SLAA), and the Chisel Basin itself, began forming over 1,890 million years ago.
Bailes opined that even with the immense amount of exploration done on the area and the mines that have been found, statistics show the Snow Lake area should have more VMS mineralization.
Erin Tracey, an executive with CGG Surveys, discussed CGG’s HELITEM (helicopter-borne time-domain electromagnetic system) test results from Lalor.
Tracey noted that Lalor was a tough target to survey because it is so deep, but their system got a broad response from the ore body.
Dr. Denis Wood, a geophysicist with DigAtlantis, was another presenter. He summarized the company’s borehole survey at Lalor.
It came to light (for me anyway) during this presentation that many of the contractors doing survey work at the mine site used the same ground loop (loop 5, referred to as the historic loop) for their signal.
Gilles Bellefleur, of Natural Resources Canada – GSC, reviewed the multi-component 3D seismic survey done over the deposit.
Bellefleur got a bit of buzz going in the venue when he said the survey seemed to show the ore body is rising to the north, rather than continuing at depth, and that this required a further look.
Later came Ernst Schetselaar, a research scientist at Natural Resources Canada – GSC.
Schetselaar’s discussion was on 3D High-Resolution Common Earth Modelling of Lalor. He conveyed how the Lalor deposit provides an ideal setting for developing and testing the multi-source data that has been acquired over the property since 2008.
Schetselaar called Lalor one of the best geophysically surveyed properties in Canada.
Peter Dueck, Hudbay’s chief geophysicist, also addressed the assembly. He spoke about the lessons learned from the Lalor discovery, noting that exploration grid lines may be too short to recognize deep anomalies.
Dueck showed, via a graph, the difference between placing grid lines at 3.5 km as opposed to one km. The potential for what is missed with shorter lines was a powerful sight to see.
In respect to this, Dueck said the message that can be gleaned from the work is that historically tested anomalies may have been inadequately explained due to old technology.
To drive home this point, he said that over the history of the Flin Flon-Snow Lake mining camp, more than 30,000 holes have been drilled and 30 mines have resulted – one mine for every 3,000 holes.
My Take on Snow Lake runs Fridays.
