Great Bear identifies 200-plus targets ahead of Canadian drilling

200-plus targets emerge from maiden field campaign

Great Bear Exploration Ltd (ASX:GBL) has finished its first field programme at the Great Bear Project in Canada’s Northwest Territories with more than 200 high-priority exploration targets identified across copper, gold, silver and IOCG-style mineralisation.

The campaign, conducted from the newly built Glacier Lake Camp, focused on the northern part of the project around the historic Echo Bay and Contact Lake mining centres. Great Bear says its 2026 field campaign had been planned to combine sampling, mapping and geophysics before the company moved towards drilling.

Field teams collected 103 rock-chip samples from Gossan City, Contact Lake and other gossan targets. Those samples had been submitted to ALS, but assay results remained outstanding at 30 September. No drilling took place during the quarter, leaving the geological case at an early exploration stage rather than a tested resource story.

Gossan City and Contact Lake lead 2027 priorities

Gossan City has become the centrepiece of the next phase after Great Bear applied for approximately 1,100 hectares covering the historic Echo Bay mine site. The company identified gossans up to 1 kilometre long and several hundred metres wide, while 19 sampling stations tested a 650-metre by 250-metre trend containing near-surface bornite, chalcopyrite, chalcocite and pyrite.

Contact Lake presents a different proposition. Great Bear does not hold the historic silver mine itself, which sits on Crown land outside the company’s permits and within a remediated federal contaminated site. Its proposed work instead targets the mineralised structure as it extends east onto company tenure, where an untested strike section and a mapped alteration halo have been nominated for 2027 drilling. Historic production figures cited in the report are expressly non-JORC 2012 compliant and have not been verified by Great Bear.

Half-completed FALCON survey sharpens drill planning

Great Bear completed about half of its planned FALCON airborne survey before seasonal weather forced demobilisation. The completed block covers the priority northern areas around Echo Bay, Contact Lake, Glacier Lake and Gossan City, combining gravity gradiometry, magnetics, LiDAR and radiometrics.

The survey replaces historical gravity data collected on roughly 10-kilometre spacing with lines about 300 metres apart, according to the company. Great Bear says the higher-resolution data will assist with mapping faults, alteration zones and possible IOCG system boundaries. The southern block, including Grouard Lake and the Camsell River area, remains to be flown.

Cash position supports roughly three quarters of activity

Great Bear finished the quarter with $3.508 million in cash and no debt. Relevant quarterly outgoings were $1.162 million, comprising $355,000 in operating cash use and $807,000 in exploration and evaluation expenditure, implying approximately three quarters of funding on the Appendix 5B calculation.

The company spent $807,628 on exploration after its ASX relisting, above the prospectus estimate for mapping and sampling because the FALCON survey was brought into the programme. It also reported $6.504 million in year-to-date equity proceeds, consistent with the $6.5m exploration raise that had been secured earlier to fund the Canadian project campaign.

New claims covering about 1,900 hectares remain pending and are currently held by Aurora Geosciences, Great Bear’s field contractor, with transfers to Great Bear expected in due course. The company also plans discussions with Canadian authorities to determine whether any claim boundaries need to be adjusted around contaminated or licensed areas.