Glacial till sampling is a tried-and-true mineral exploration technique based on glacial erosion and the down-ice transportation of primary bedrock mineralization. This relatively new method has led to several critical gold discoveries in Canada in the past few decades.
Covered by 30 meter thick glacial sediment deposits in its namesake Rainy River greenstone belt of northern Ontario, the gold zones on this property might never have been discovered if not for modern till geochemistry.
With the help of reverse circulation (RC) drilling and till sampling techniques, gold anomalies were first detected on the property by the Ontario Geographical Survey (OGS) in the late 1980s, followed by a series of major and junior resource companies. A 20 hole RC drilling and till sampling program in 1994 at Rainy River identified the largest and strongest gold-grain anomaly encountered in till in Canada to that date and led to the discovery of the ODM/17 Zone, still today considered the largest gold zone on the property.