Stacked Up: How targeting gold undercover could lead to a company maker at Trek Metals’ Christmas Creek

Championed by the original visionaries behind Pilbara Minerals and Newmont’s exploration work, Trek Metals is hoping to bring the true scale of Christmas Creek to light.

Trek is looking forward to getting the drill rig spinning at Christmas Creek as soon as possible, targeting high-priority gold targets in WA’s Kimberley region. Pic: Getty Images

• Trek stunned the market last year with impressive gold drilling results at Christmas Creek

• The company recently reported that the intercept was due to a series of stacked orogenic gold veins with visible gold

• Trek is looking to get back on the ground in May

 

Special report: Trek Metals believes it could be onto the next major greenfields gold discovery at the Christmas Creek project in WA and is getting ready to test that theory with the next round of drilling planned to begin in May.

Recent exploration work including detailed assaying has only added to the growing pipeline of gold targets at the site south of Halls Creek – the site of WA’s first gold rush in 1885 – flipping the script on what was previously unexplained prior to 2024 drilling.

The hype around Trek Metals’ (ASX:TKM) Christmas Creek project accelerated last year when RC drilling at the Martin prospect delivered impressive gold hits of 10m at 12.66g/t gold and 10m at 7.34g/t.

Those assay results sit next to a historical intercept of 2m at 9.56g/t gold, drilled by the world’s largest gold mining company, Newmont, which spent about $6m over six years doing the hard yards with activities like magnetic surveys, ground gravity, EM, soil sampling, and early-stage aircore and RC drilling.

Now, with the inherited exploration work from Newmont combined with its own standout drilling results, early-stage ASX goldie Trek is beginning to realise there could be something significant lurking undercover, perhaps the early signs of a massive orogenic gold system.

Cross-section at Martin, highlighting the two significant recent gold intercepts in yellow. Pic: TKM

On the shoulders of giants

TKM chief executive Derek Marshall said the company is keen to get back on the ground at Christmas Creek to follow up an incredible start at Martin.

“We secured the project a year and a half ago and got a cracking result last year during our first drill program, and now we are going to go back and drill it again,” he said.

“We see huge potential at the project, we’ve got around 1000km² of high-potential, but under-explored, ground in the southern Kimberley, right on the edge of the Canning Basin at the interpreted triple junction of the Halls Creek and King Leopold Orogens, right where the crustal scale structures come through from the Tanami.

“The idea is that the large structures that are controlling the mineralisation in the Tanami are also controlling the mineralisation at Christmas Creek.”

The Tanami region has seen increasing attention in recent years as a host of explorers seek a repeat of the prolific Tanami gold project, which started production in 1983 and has been operated by global gold major Newmont (ASX:NEM) since 2002, currently producing ~500,000ozpa of gold.

Its centrepiece, the 20-million-ounce Callie mine, sits within the same orogenic belt on the Northern Territory side of the WA border, where little to no outcrop and extensive sand cover is the norm.

Exploring the unknown

The Christmas Creek project sits under shallow sand cover and hasn’t been subjected to any historical production or prospecting.

It is pure greenfields stuff and, according to Marshall, this is this type of exploration work that is going to generate the next round of big discoveries.

“Christmas Creek wouldn’t normally be a typical small company play, it’s more suited to a major, which is why Newmont had it for so long,” Marshall said.

“Most juniors go and explore underneath known resources or directly along strike from known resources in historical mining centres, thinking there is a better chance of getting good hits because you’re in a known mineralised area.”

That risk-off approach is not something Marshall ascribes to when it comes to finding a genuine company-maker.

“Drilling in a historic gold field isn’t a bad approach, but if you want to find a world-class, 20-million-ounce deposit, you’re unlikely to find it where everyone else is looking.

“Although it is riskier to go exploring in greenfields areas – where there is no known gold – the work that Newmont undertook proved that there was gold under the sand at Christmas Creek. We have now come in and shown that there is some thick, high-grade gold that remains open, which has significantly de-risked the project from a discovery perspective,” he said.

Listen: Derek Marshall chats with Barry FitzGerald

In a previous inslalment of the Explorers Podcast, host Barry FitzGerald spoke with TKM CEO Derek Marshall to discuss the company’s latest ventures across its promising Western Australian projects.

Four main targets earmarked for exploration

Originally pegged by legendary WMC geologist Dr Jon Hronsky, along with Greg Down and Keith Platel, the entire Christmas Creek acreage is covered by heritage agreements, entered into by Newmont under a farm-in joint venture arrangement with Archer X Pty Ltd.

After a rebalancing of Newmont’s portfolio, the project was relinquished in its entirety to Archer before Trek’s acquisition in late 2023.

Newmont undertook a massive soil sampling program when they owned the asset and defined four main targets, with the largest being Zahn.

Recent detailed assays upgraded the Zahn target to ‘large-scale’ status after results highlighted classic characteristics of a major orogenic gold camp, with antiformal “trap” structures next to a large-scale shear.

Although the Zahn prospect has always stood out for its surface geochemistry, Marshall said the recent results – put in geological context – are a step in the right direction to honing-in on the source of the large gold-in-soil surface expression.

The Coogan target was also recently upgraded after pervasive low-grade anomalism and widespread alteration halos in drilling were identified, pointing towards a very large mineral system and discovery opportunity.

Other exploration work, including a down-hole televiewer survey, has also confirmed that high-grade gold in drilling at Martin occurred across the veins and not down them, adding weight to the interpretation that there is a stacked vein system with scale potential.

While Martin remains the priority focus for drilling, which is expected to kick off in May, the next phase of exploration will also evaluate Zahn and Coogan, where multi-square kilometre gold-in-soils responses have been delineated.

Backed by Pilbara Minerals founders

On Trek’s board are many of the early Pilbara Minerals (ASX:PLS) founders including former chair Tony Leibowitz, previous exploration manager John Young and ex-founding director Neil Biddle.

Their commercial and exploration success also includes the mergers of Spitfire Materials and Aphrodite Gold and the subsequent merger of Aphrodite with Bardoc, eventually sold at a premium to St Barbara and now in the portfolio of Genesis Minerals (ASX: GMD).

“The thing that really drove me to want to take up the position at Trek was the board,” Marshall said.

“Our three directors oversaw Pilbara Minerals’ growth from discovery right through to the multi-billion company it is today. For investors considering an investment in Trek, that shows we have a really strong board with a commitment to exploration and a great track record of wealth creation.”

This article was developed in collaboration with Trek Metals, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.

Originally published as Stacked Up: How targeting gold undercover could lead to a company maker at Trek Metals’ Christmas Creek