Manhattan Gold Corporation Ltd. July 22 announced high-grade gold assays from the Vanquish target that open a new exploration area on the company’s 665-square-kilometer (257 square miles) Hook Lake project in Nunavut.
Lying about 225 kilometers (140 miles) southwest of Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd.’s 6.7-million-ounce Meliadine gold mine, the 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 the Kivalliq region of southeastern Nunavut.
Manhattan Gold Corporation Ltd.
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 12 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.
This year’s program, which got underway in June, includes drilling a planned 4,000 meters of reverse circulation drilling at Jaws and related targets along a roughly 3.3-kilometer (two miles) trend, along with mapping and sampling of key targets and airborne geophysical surveys over the property.
“Manhattan is entering a highly exciting phase at Hook Lake. Drilling at Jaws is advancing, samples from the initial holes are being analysed, and first assay results are expected shortly,” said Eric Sondergaard, a technical advisor to Manhattan.
One of the earlier-staged targets being explored this year is Vanquish, an outcropping prospect about 80 kilometers (50 miles) southwest of Jaws where historical surface sampling encountered up to 5.75 g/t gold over 1.5 meters.
To follow up on this target, field crews collected grab and channel samples from Vanquish.
Manhattan reports high-grade gold in grab and channel samples collected across 131 meters of strike at Vanquish’s Main Zone:
The best grab sample collected at Vanquish Main Zone graded 20 g/t gold. Other highlights include 4.33 g/t gold, 3.92 g/t gold, and 3.37 g/t gold.
Highlights from the 11 channels cut at Main Zone include:
• 0.3 meters averaging 18.55 g/t gold.
• 0.4 meters averaging 15.45 g/t gold.
• Two meters averaging 0.89 g/t gold.
• 0.7 meters averaging 0.67 g/t gold.
Sondergaard called these initial results from the undrilled Vanquish target particularly exciting.
“Vanquish opens a second highly prospective area for Manhattan to explore, reinforcing the scale of the broader project area and expanding the Hook Lake exploration pipeline,” he said.
Manhattan plans to integrate the results from its surface program at Vanquish with high-resolution magnetic and lidar data to sharpen the structural model and generate the first-ever drill targets at the emerging Hook Lake gold prospect.
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.