Mountain Province has two active exploration programs that are focused on the discovery of new kimberlites to add to the Company’s diamond production. Both are located in the Northwest Territories 240 km east-northeast of Yellowknife, on the traditional territories of Tłįchǫ, Dene, and Métis people.  

The Gahcho Kué Joint Venture (‘GKJV’) with De Beers Canada covers 5,216 hectares of mining leases that includes the Gahcho Kué Mine. Exploration within the GKJV focuses on near-mine and brownfields discoveries that can extend the life of the mine.

The Company also has the 100%-held Kennady North Project, covering roughly 96,000 hectares that completely surround the GKJV leases. Mountain Province is the operator of the exploration programs on the KNP. Nine kimberlites have been discovered on the KNP, with three having NI 43-101 resource estimates. These resources are within ten kilometers of the Gahcho Kué Mine.

The GKJV and KNP are contiguous and located in the southeastern portion of the Slave Archean Craton, an ancient nucleus of thick cratonic rocks that are ideal for the preservation and recovery of diamonds in kimberlite. The oldest rocks in the craton are granites and gneisses that are 2.55-4.03 billion years old, with overlying metasedimentary and metavolcanic units that have been metamorphosed to amphibolite-facies lithologies. These rocks have subsequently been intruded by diabase dykes and sills that range in age from 2.3 to 0.7 billion years.

The kimberlites that comprise the mine and resources in the region were emplaced about 0.5 billion years ago, making them some of the oldest economic kimberlites in the world. Much of the geologic record since their emplacement has been erased through erosion, with the most recent erosional event being continental glaciation that ended roughly 8,000 years ago. As a consequence, the upper crater portions of both the GKJV and KNP kimberlites have been eroded, and only the diatreme and hypabyssal portions remain. Erosion during the ice age was important, as unique minerals that form with diamond but are more abundant than diamond can be found in the glacial deposits left by the advancing ice sheets. These ‘indicator’ minerals can be tracked back to their kimberlite source by carefully sampling the glacial deposits. All of the kimberlites in the GKJV and KNP areas were discovered with the support of indicator minerals.

At the Gahcho Kué Mine there are four kimberlites in the mine plan; 5034, Hearne, Tuzo and Wilson. The 5034 kimberlite is the largest and most complex both in terms of its shape and internal geology. The Kennady North Project hosts nine diamond-bearing kimberlites, Kelvin, Faraday 2, Faraday 1-3, MZ, Doyle, KS, KE, NA and SA. These kimberlites are unconventional in both their shape and nature of emplacement relative to younger ‘carrot-shaped’ kimberlites as seen at Ekati and Diavik, but they can host significant volumes of kimberlite with economic diamonds.

All of the kimberlites that are part of the mine or are an estimated resource lie within the Kelvin-Faraday Corridor. This northeast-trending structural feature appears to have allowed the greatest volumes of kimberlite to reach the surface at the time of their emplacement. Kimberlites do occur outside of the Kelvin-Faraday Corridor, such as the MZ kimberlite that is located twenty kilometers west of the mine. MZ is diamond-bearing, but has not seen any recent exploration.

The Kennady North Project includes 58 federal leases and 49 claims covering an area of over 96,000 hectares that surround the GK Mine on all sides. The Kelvin and Faraday kimberlites are different from all other vertically-sided bodies that occur in the GKJV area and elsewhere in the world. Determining their inclined orientation through drilling was sufficient to define them as resources and has placed Kennady Diamonds at the forefront of discovering more bodies of this nature. Four new kimberlite areas were discovered by applying these new models; NA, SA, KS and KE, and further discoveries are possible. Extensive exploration over claims in the far south of the project area demonstrated no potential for kimberlites and subsequently these claims were dropped in 2024. The new project boundary is shown on the map image below. 

Over 900 till samples collected in 2021 and 2022 confirmed the presence of strong historic kimberlite indicator mineral (‘KIM’) dispersions in the Western Area. The till sampling program was the first extensive till sampling program in the area in over 25 years, and was supported in part by a Minerals Incentive Program grant from the Government of the Northwest Territories. The data have identified four areas of interest that merit further sampling and/or localized geophysics to identify drill targets. These are the P29, P27, Bob, and Southwest areas of interest, as shown on the map image below.

The summer 2024 field program completed four objectives: (1) glacial geology mapping of the WW claims, (2) till and surficial sediment geochemical sampling of the WW claims, (3) ground geophysics on the WW claims (4) outcrop mapping and sampling of the Eastern Claims.

After completing the glacial geology mapping at WW, a total of 60 KIM samples and 60 sediment geochemical samples were strategically collected. Anomalous KIM samples were generated from the till sampling, but may derive from the MZ kimberlite to the east. Ground magnetic surveys were also conducted over portions of the WW claims as a follow-up to historical airborne work suggesting that possible kimberlite targets were present (orange rectangles on map image). A total of 44.85 line-km were completed in the survey. No obvious kimberlite targets were identified in the geophysics.

The 60 sediment geochemical samples collected in 2024 were analyzed for base metal elements to follow up on a visual report of molybdenite in historic drill core from the claims. None of the 60 geochemical samples reported molybdenum over 5ppm Mo, nor did the other base metal elements of interest have elevated in the results. The samples were processed at ALS (North Vancouver, BC) following the ALS ME-MS41L aqua regia analytical protocol.

From the 2021-22 till sampling program, four samples recovered coarse gold grains with surface features indicating minimal transport. The -0.25mm fractions of these four anomalous samples as well as an additional 24 adjacent samples were processed for gold recovery, with gold confirmed in 18 of the 28 samples. The locations of the gold-bearing till samples are circled in red in the map, with the number of gold-bearing samples listed within the circles.  As follow-up to the gold occurrences, outcrop mapping and sampling on the Eastern Claims traversed a total of 9.85 line-kilometers with 27 outcrops visited. No gold or sulfides were observed in the outcrops.

A total of 28 claims were surveyed to lease in the Western Area, with confirmation of their lease status expected from the GNWT in Q2 of 2025. Exploration programs on the Kennady North Project were supported in part by Minerals Incentive Program grants from the Government of the Northwest Territories. 

At the 12th International Kimberlite Conference held at Yellowknife in 2024, the Company contributed six presentations to the conference and was formally acknowledged via public display of its company logo.  Roughly 800 industry and academic participants attended the conference. Extended abstracts of the Company presentations can be found at the 12^th IKC link: International Kimberlite Conference: Extended Abstracts.

The summaries above are provided as an overview of exploration at the Gahcho Kué Mine. For more detailed information, please access the NI 43-101 Technical Reports on www.sedar.com, or download them from the links provided below.

Gahcho Kue Mine NI 43-101 Technical Report - October 2 2024
Gahcho Kue Mine NI 43-101 Technical Report - March 28 2022
Gahcho Kue Mine NI 43-101 Technical Report - March 1 2020
Gahcho Kue Mine NI 43-101 Technical Report - March 16 2018
Gahcho Kue Mine NI 43-101 Technical Report - March 31 2014
Kennady North Project NI 43-101 Technical Report - May 10 2019
Kennady North Project NI 43-101 Technical Report - November 16 2017
Kennady North Project NI 43-101 Technical Report - January 24 2017