TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Four rusty and angular gold-bearing boulders found along a new all-weather road being built to Stornoway Diamond Corp’s Renard project, in north-western Quebec, boded well for gold explorer Visible Gold Mines, which is on a mission to find the region’s next major gold mine.

The Quebec government in 2011 launched its ambitious ‘Plan Nord’ to develop infrastructure in the province’s far-laying reaches, which TSX-V- and Frankfurt Stock Exchange-listed Visible saw as an opportunity to look for new gold projects close to the new infrastructure.

Since 2011, Visible had been staking claims all along the proposed 243-km-long, all-season road, which linked Stornoway's Renard project to the provincial highway network, to have access to new outcrops and strippings generated by the road construction, with one of the latest claims being called ‘167 Extension’.

It was on this property, about 320 km north of Chibougamau city, in the James Bay region, where the company found what it believed could be the early start of a new significant find.

Visible said it had sent samples from the four boulders for assays, which returned promising results. Among the results, sample 55130 returned grades of 7.28 g/t gold, 56.8 g/t silver, 2.23% copper and 2.99% zinc, while sample 55132 returned 38.76 g/t gold, 68.4 g/t silver, 2.05% copper and 0.02% zinc.

"These positive early indications underscore the potential of this entire area, which has clearly been underexplored and is now all-season accessible by vehicle.

“We keep reminding our geological team that the two last major discoveries in the James Bay area –  Goldcorp's Eleonore and Stornoway's Renard discoveries – were both discovered by boulder tracing in glaciated terrain,” Visible president and CEO Martin Dallaire said.

A recent prospecting and mapping field trip also outlined another interesting area north of the discovery, along the construction road, over a distance of 500 m. Visible reported that it had discovered several rusty and angular erratic boulders, which were mainly composed of alteration minerals with semimassive to massive sulphides.

Samples from these boulders were sent for analysis.

The company noted that after it had received the results, its geological team would review the results and establish an exploration programme to define the bedrock sources of these mineralised boulders. A gabbroic outcrop sample about 200 m north had returned 0.6 g/t of gold.