Manhattan Gold Corporation Ltd. June 23 announced the start of the first drilling on the company’s Hook Lake gold project in Nunavut’s Kivalliq region in more than 30 years.
Manhattan Gold Corporation Ltd.
Lying about 225 kilometers (140 miles) southwest of Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd.’s 6.7-million-ounce Meliadine gold mine, the 423-kilometer (163 square miles) Hook Lake project hosts high-grade orogenic gold systems and volcanogenic massive sulfide (VMS) copper-zinc-gold-silver mineralization within the Rankin-Ennadai greenstone belt in southeastern Nunavut.
“We are operating in a well-endowed greenstone belt, with minimal modern exploration despite hosting several mining majors, including Angico Eagle, who have set a strong precedent for mining activities in Nunavut,” said Manhattan Corporation Technical Manager Eric Sondergaard.
Australia-based Manhattan acquired and carried out first-pass exploration of the project in 2025. Last year’s surface sampling and mapping program focused largely on Jaws, the most advanced of 11 deposits and prospects historically identified at Hook Lake.
Based on exploration carried out in the 1970s and 80s, Jaws hosts 285,000 ounces of gold in an estimated 3.4 million metric tons of historical resource averaging 2.38 grams per metric ton gold.
Highlights from historical drilling at Jaws include:
• 52.78 meters averaging 3.38 g/t gold from a depth of 89.2 meters in hole 133-88-02.
• 16 meters averaging 5.04 g/t gold from a depth of 52 meters in hole 133-88-04.
• 15.2 meters averaging 4.5 g/t gold from a depth of 14.7 meters in hole 133-88-25.
Rock chips sampling carried out last year at the Jaws and nearby Vesper target returned grades as high as 14.35 g/t gold, with some of the highest-grade samples collected from areas near historical drilling. Manhattan said the 2025 program confirms that gold mineralization in the Jaws area of Hook Lake extends for at least 4.7 kilometers (2.9 miles).
This year, Manhattan plans to complete 4,000 meters of reverse circulation drilling focused largely on confirming historical drilling and testing expansion targets over a potential 3.3-kilometer (two miles) trend at Jaws.
The company also plans to carry out preliminary testing at four other targets:
• Spectre, a target about 25 kilometers (16 miles) southwest of Jaws, where drilling in 1974 encountered copper-zinc-gold-silver massive sulfide lenses.
• Quantum and Lotus, undrilled targets near Spectre where 2025 sampling returned 16.75 g/t gold and 1,485 g/t silver (Quantum), and 8.01 g/t gold and 2,660 g/t silver (Lotus).
• Omega, a banded-iron formation gold target about five kilometers (three miles) northeast of Jaws.
Manhattan Gold Corporation Ltd.
Manhattan’s planned till sampling program at Hook Lake.
In addition to drilling, Manhattan plans to carry out an expansive till sampling program to assess gold and polymetallic mineralization beneath shallow glacial cover across the more than 20-kilometer (12.5 miles) Vesper-Jaws-Omega trend, as well as the Moonraker prospect area to the east.
The company is also carrying out additional rock chip sampling and airborne magnetic geophysical surveys over the property.
“The Hook Lake Project will see more exploration work this year than at any time in the past 30 years, a level of attention we believe is warranted given its potential to become Nunavut’s next major gold district,” Sondergaard said. “Manhattan is combining modern geophysics, project scale sampling and systematic target generation to unlock value across the portfolio, particularly in areas where mineralization may have gone undiscovered below cover.”
Author Bio
Shane Lasley, Publisher
Over his more than 18 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.