North Arrow’s exploration programs are conducted under the direction of President and CEO, Ken Armstrong, P.Geo., a Qualified Person under NI 43-101. Mr. Armstrong has reviewed and approved all information posted on this page that is of a scientific or technical nature.
Location: located on the north central shore of Great Slave Lake, approximately 115 km east of Yellowknife; 18 km to the southwest is the Nechalacho Rare Earth Metal mine.
Size: 1,843 ha
Ownership: 100% North Arrow
Stage: Delineation drilling and grade assessment.
Closest Infrastructure: Property is located on the shoreline of Great Slave Lake, so accessible by barge. Hay River, also on Great Slave Lake, lies ~200 km to the southwest, would provide port access to rail and road.
The pegmatites at the DeStaffany property (Moose 1 and Moose 2) were initially evaluated in the 1940’s for tantalum and niobium but have never been subject to a focused evaluation of their lithium potential. The property is located on the north central shore of Great Slave Lake, approximately 115 km east of Yellowknife; 18 km to the southwest is the Nechalacho Rare Earth Metal mine.
Moose 1 and Moose 2 are part of the Yellowknife Pegmatite Province (YKPP), an area west of Yellowknife and south of Great Slave Lake where the latest stages of a magma from a two-mica, fertile, S-type granite intruded as pegmatites into an ancient sedimentary basin, where the lithium in the melt crystallized out in the form of spodumene, a lithium pyroxene silicate (and other lithium bearing minerals).
Following the success of many companies exploring for lithium in the James Bay region of Quebec over the last few years, the YKPP has become the focus of pronounced staking and property acquisition by Canadian and Australian lithium exploration companies, commencing largely in November 2022 when Li-Ft Power announced they had brought many of the known pegmatites into their property portfolio.
The DeStaffany property sat unstaked following the intital flurry of staking and acquisitions by Li-FT Power, Gama Resources and others because of its incomplete remediation work of its earlier mining history. When the NWT went through devolution in 2014, any unremediated mine sites stayed under federal control until the remediation work could be completed. Despite some remedation work being conducted in the 1990s and some environmental studies being completed in 2010, some remediation work still remained (and still does) and so the site is under federal control, requiring federal tags to stake. It was already on North Arrow's radar as it had been the focus of some work by one of NAR Chairman, Gren Thomas' predessor companies: Navigator.
Below is an exerpt from a paper by Ryan Silke (2009) - The Operational History of Mines in the Northwest Territories, Canada:
"With its previous mine history in the 1940s and 1950s The Moose #1 dyke was discovered by Gus DeStaffany and Al Greathouse in June 1942, being originally staked as a tungsten deposit. The ‘Moose’ claims were staked. Following the encouragement of the Geological Survey of Canada towards the development of rare-metal deposits, DeStaffany reviewed the mineralogy of his claims and found an abundance of tantalite-columbite showings. First development occurred during 1943 and 1944. The first plant to recover a concentrate went into operation in 1947, and after a short period of inactivity, reopened in 1953 with a newer plant. The mine closed in 1954."
The Moose 1 pegmatite has never been drilled but has been traced over a 370 m strike, averaging 4.5 m to 6.0 m in width, with a maximum width of approximately 11 m, and hosts spodumene mineralization that returned 1.5% Li2O over 7.5 m from historic channel sampling in 2009.
The Moose 2 pegmatite has been mapped over a 450 m strike length, is up to 30 m wide, but has never been fully evaluated or drilled for its lithium potential. Spodumene mineralization is common throughout the pegmatite, with elevated lithium analyses of up to 2.73% Li2O returned from samples along at least a 250 m strike length of the body.
North Arrow conducted a preliminary exploration program in June 2023, collecting 68 rock sawn channel samples from 20 channels testing Moose 1 and 2 as well as Moose 3 and 4 which were discovered during the program. Lab results from that program were announced on August 28th, 2023.
Historical and recent results are compiled on the images below.
