Trailbreaker Acquires the Wheaton GOLD Property, an Orogenic GOLD Prospect IN Bc’S Underexplored Turnagain Placer District
TRAILBREAKER ACQUIRES THE WHEATON GOLD PROPERTY, AN OROGENIC GOLD PROSPECT
IN BC’S UNDEREXPLORED TURNAGAIN PLACER DISTRICT
July 7 , 202 5 – Trailbreaker Resources Ltd. (TBK.V) (“Trailbreaker” or “the Company”) is pleased to
announce the acquisition of the Wheaton Gold property, an orogenic gold prospect located 60 km east of
the Village of Dease Lake, British Columbia (BC). The property covers the headwaters of multiple placer
gold-bearing creeks, including Alice Shea Creek, source of the famous 52 troy oz ‘Turnagain nugget’.
Highlights of the Wheaton Gold Property
• 2,223 hectares in size, covering roughly 2 km x 9 km (Figure 1).
• Located 60 km east of Dease Lake, BC, with extensive truck and ATV trail access throughout the
claims, servicing historic and current placer mining operations.
• Covers the headwaters of the placer gold -bearing Wheaton and Alice Shea creeks, which are
famous as the source of some of BC’s coarsest gold nuggets. This includes the fourth largest
nugget ever found in BC, the ‘Turnagain nugget’, weighing 52 oz gold (Au) (Figure 2)1.
• The project represents one of BC’s most underexplored placer gold districts, with very limited
hardrock exploration work done to date.
• A three -hole, 304.7 -meter diamond drill program completed in 1986 yielded numerous gold
intercepts, including 5.38 g/t Au over 3.05 m (from 28.96m depth)2.
• Historic gold-in-soil values up to 32.3 g/t Au , and historic rock grab samples up to 11.25 g/t Au 3,
have been returned.
Daithi Mac Gearailt, CEO of Trailbreaker, commented: “We are excited to add the Wheaton Gold property
to our portfolio of gold and copper exploration projects. Now that the claims have been consolidated, this
is a great opportunity to explore the area of a historic discovery hole that has yet to receive follow -up
exploration. This is one of the few placer districts left in BC where a hardrock source of the placer gold has
yet to be found. We are currently designing a robust exploration program and will be providing updates
as soon as they are available.”
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TRAILBREAKER RESOURCES LTD.
650 W. Georgia Street, #2110
Vancouver, British Columbia
Canada, V6B 4N9
Telephone: 604 681 1820
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https://www.TrailbreakerResources.com
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Location and Access
The 2,223-hectare Wheaton Gold property is located approximately 60 kilometers east-southeast of the
Village of Dease Lake in northwestern British Columbia and can be accessed by all-terrain vehicles utilizing
the Boulder Mine Road. The property can also be accessed by float plane chartered from Dease Lake to
Boulder City Lake. Historic placer mining trails provide good vehicle access to much of the property.
Giga Metals Corporation has proposed a major road and transmission line to its advance-stage Turnagain
nickel-cobalt deposit, located 10 km to the east. This would bisect the northern end of the Wheaton Gold
property, further bolstering the potential economic viability of the area.
Figure 1: Location of the Wheaton Gold property with historic exploration highlights.
Placer Mining History
Placer gold was first discovered at the mouth of Wheaton Creek (formerly Boulder Creek) in 1932 and
shortly afterwards on Alice Shea Creek, a small tributary of Wheaton Creek. The Wheaton-Shea placer
camp marked the last major placer gold discovery in BC, with a total of 7,756 oz of placer gold mined from
Wheaton Creek between 1932 and 1945, and a total of 331 oz Au mined from Alice Shea between 1936
and 1940. Alice Shea Creek produced the coarsest placer gold in the drainage, with one nugget weighing
over 52 oz (the Turnagain nugget, Figure 2) and numerous nuggets weighing from 1 to 16 oz. Modern -
day placer mining continues to this day at the mouth of Wheaton Creek , with over 20,000 oz of placer
gold estimated to be recovered to date.
Figure 2: The 52 oz Turnagain nugget, discovered in Alice Shea Creek in 19371.
Hardrock Exploration History
Wheaton Zone
The northern portion of the property , covering the present -day placer operations near the mouth of
Wheaton Creek, has seen the least amount of hardrock exploration within the property, having undergone
only one documented significant program , completed in 1986 by Supreme Resources (Supreme). That
year, Supreme conducted a soil geochemical survey followed by a mechanical trenching program which
returned very encouraging results, and identified strongly anomalous gold-in-soil values up to 32,300 ppb
Au. Trenching within these soil anomalies returned rock gab samples up to 11.25 g/t Au. During the same
year, Supreme test ed this zone with 3 shallow diamond drill holes totaling 304.7 meters (Figure 3).
However, only limited follow-up work in the last 39 years has been documented.
Hole DDH-86-01, the first of the 1986 program, encountered several gold-enriched intervals associated
with fault-controlled quartz-carbonate breccia, including:
• 5.38 g/t Au over 3.05 meters (from 28.96 meters)
• 1.23 g/t Au over 3.05 meters (from 38.10 meters)
• 1.88 g/t Au over 3.05 meters (from 47.24 meters)
• 0.89 g/t Au over 3.05 meters (from 68.58 meters)
• 0.34 g/t Au over 3.05 meters (from 102.11 meters)
• 3.46 g/t Au over 2.44 meters (from 139.29 meters)
The other two holes underwent very limited sampling, with only two samples taken from DDH-86-02 and
one from DDH-86-03, all returning trace gold values.
This work by Supreme resulted in the first and only discovery of hardrock gold mineralization that could
be linked to the source of the rich placer gold deposits along the lower portion of Wheaton Creek.
Figure 3: Location of the 1986 diamond drill program above Wheaton Creek.
Pacific Bay Minerals, a junior mining company, held the ground from 2015 to 2024 but conducted very
limited exploration. Much of Pacific Bay’s efforts were focused on mining jade boulders rather than on
hardrock gold exploration. Their most significant work included a 2021 property-wide airborne magnetic
survey that defined an open-ended NW-SE trending linear magnetic low feature that correlates with the
1986 discovery hole by Supreme. This is interpreted to potentially represent a listwanite-altered fault zone
(Figure 4) . Listwanite and listwanitic alteration is extensively documented around Alice Sh ea Creek
(expanded upon below).
This survey provided several new exploration targets which have not been tested to date. Several east-
west trending offsets occurring near the Wheaton zone may represent potential structures associated
with gold mineralization.
Figure 4: The 2021 airborne magnetic survey completed by Pacific Bay Minerals displays a significant NW -SE
trending magnetic low which is interpreted to be a listwanite -altered fault zone. The 1986 drilling is located on
the margin of this zone.
Shea Zone
The Shea zone is located along the headwaters of Alice Shea creek, close to the discovery area of the 52
oz Turnagain gold nugget. The nugget was discovered in the upper extent of the drainage, narrowing the
search for the hardrock source.
The majority of the exploration work done at the Shea zone was done from 1985 to 1996, with several
junior mining companies conducting small -scale exploration surveys. This includes companies such as
Powder Ridge Resources, Imperial Metals, Goldbank Ventures, and Loumic Resources.
Loumic Resources’ 1996 exploration program was the most robust, comprising 196 soil samples and 191
meters of mechanized trenching4. Reconnaissance soil sampling identified several anomalous gold-arsenic
(As) zones (up to 161 ppb Au & 112 ppm As) that have yet to receive follow -up exploration (Figure 5) .
Furthermore, trenching, targeting gossanous float immediately upslope from the location of the 52 oz
gold nugget, revealed a listwanite outcrop containing intense quartz stockwork and disseminated pyrite.
Only trace gold values were returned; however, the mineralization and alteration are textbook markers
for orogenic gold deposits. This marked the last significant gold exploration program occurring on the
Shea zone.
In 2011, First Point Minerals Corp was the last junior mining company to work the property ; however,
they focused on nickel mineralization rather than gold. Gold analysis for rock grab samples during the
2011 program utilized a 4 g/t detection limit, much higher than fire assay detection limits commonly used.
Figure 5: Historic hardrock exploration along Alice Shea Creek, with the approximate location of the discovery of
the 52 oz Turnagain nugget.
Geology, Deposit Model, and Mineralization
The Wheaton Gold property is underlain by northwest-trending, complexly folded and faulted ultramafic
rocks of the oceanic Cache Creek terrane, and by metasedimentary rocks of the Kedahda Formation
(Figure 6).
The northern portion of the Wheaton Gold property covers fault-bounded metasedimentary rocks of the
Mississippian to Triassic Kedahda formation which include heterolithic argillite with wispy silt laminae ,
thinly bedded sandstone, and rare discontin uous limestone beds. This Kedahda sedimentary package is
separated from the ultramafic rocks (peridotite, dunite, pyroxen ite) of the Cache Creek terrane by a
northwest-southeast trending thrust fault.
Figure 6: Regional geology and neighbouring projects of the Wheaton Gold property.