Omineca Mining and Metals Ltd. (TSXV: OMM) (OTCQB: OMMSF) has announced a significant hard rock (lode) gold discovery at its Wingdam exploration project in the Cariboo Mining District of south-central British Columbia. The discovery, reported on August 6, 2026, comes from the 2025 winter drill program and marks the first time a proximal source has been identified for the rich paleoplacer gold found beneath Lightning Creek.
The initial drill intercepts, located 500 meters west of and at depths lower than the underground paleoplacer workings, returned promising gold grades. Highlight results include 4.84 g/t gold over 1.07 meters in hole WD25-41, and 1.25 g/t gold over 2.0 meters in hole WD25-42. These findings validate the company's assertion that the placer gold originated from a nearby lode source, a theory supported by recent underground observations indicating that Lightning Creek historically flowed from west to east, opposite its current direction, when the gold was eroded into the valley.
This discovery is particularly significant because it occurs 165 years after placer gold was first found in the Lightning Creek valley. The lode gold is associated with the Slide Mountain Terrane, an ophiolite complex (ancient seafloor thrust upward) that is structurally linked to many of British Columbia's orogenic gold deposits, including the Barkerville Gold camp 30 kilometers east, the Cassiar camp, the Bralorne camp, and the Greenwood Mining District. The highest-grade intercept was found in amygdaloidal basalt within this terrane, reinforcing the regional geological model.
The exploration thesis is based on dramatic changes in watershed flow direction caused by isostatic depression from the Cordilleran ice sheet. This depression caused the Fraser River to reverse its flow about 760,000 years ago and Lightning Creek to change direction approximately 200,000 years ago. These events, combined with potential reactivation of the Eureka Thrust Fault, explain why the lode source is located downstream (west) at depths equivalent to or below the placer workings, where a single crosscut sample in 2012 recovered 173.4 ounces of placer gold from a 2.4-meter-wide section.
During the 2025 drill program, 3,091.9 meters were completed in six NQ diamond drill holes, with core logged and sampled by TerraLogic Exploration. The program followed up on 2024 mineralization, testing downdip extensions and the Eureka Thrust Fault. WD25-41, a follow-up to WD24-37, intersected the most anomalous gold on the property to date, featuring localized fracturing and calcite-quartz veins with disseminated pyrite. WD25-42, drilled from the same pad, intersected gold in a lithic wacke with quartz veinlets and disseminated pyrrhotite and pyrite.
These results confirm high-grade gold mineralization on the southeastern side of Lightning Creek associated with ultramafic rocks and quartz-calcite veining. Omineca plans to intensify exploration of hydrothermal gold mineralization along the Eureka Thrust Fault, focusing on the immediate vicinity of this discovery. The company believes this could be the hard rock source of the placer gold, which has significant implications for understanding the region's gold endowment and guiding future resource development.
The scientific and technical information in this release was prepared by Stephen Kocsis, P.Geo., an independent qualified person under NI 43-101. Omineca's Wingdam project includes over 61,000 hectares of mineral tenures and 15 linear kilometers of placer claims along Lightning Creek. The company also holds the Fraser Canyon Project, which is slated for redevelopment of its underground paleochannel for placer gold recovery. As exploration continues, the discovery of a lode source could transform the project's potential from placer-only to a combined hard rock and placer operation.
