This past Wednesday, July 29th, I had the opportunity to visit Wildcat's Jeep property near Bissett, MB. It is located 12 kms east of Bissett on the north side of Highway 304. Unfortunately, it was raining on and off all day, so the road through Bissett wasn't great (it is gravel once you get east of Manigotagan), but we did manage to avoid rain while we were at the Jeep property. I have posted some pictures in the photo section (tab at left) which some of the narrative below refers to.

The road accessing the Jeep property is not that well-developed, but if you drive slowly and carefully, it is quite passable. Just a short distance from the property line, we crossed a small creek that was actually overflowing the road. I was glad I was driving my new Jeep at that point, as I am not sure I would have attempted the crossing with my previous car. But after that, we had no trouble making our way to the location of the old Jeep mine, which is just a bit more than one kilometer off Hwy. 304. The road is narrow (one lane) as you can see in the photos.

When we got to the old Jeep mine location, there were a couple of trucks parked there, but no one was around. It looked to me that workers had parked there for the day and then hiked on to wherever they were working.

When I arrived, I was not clear at first where the old mine had been. There is really nothing much left now - no buildings or structures - and the grass and trees quickly grow in to hide things of the past. But I did find some old timbers and some steel pieces in amongst the trees, right near a concrete base and a rectangular flat-topped piece. I wasn't sure what I was looking at immediately, but later realized that this was likely the cover that closed off the top of the old jeep mine shaft, and this was later confirmed to be correct (see photos).

Just a little to the southwest of this was a gully that had been excavated at sometime in the past. I had a look in there and took some photos. This gully or cut was created at sometime in the process of mining the area. I would have liked to explore that area further, but the bugs were very bad, swarming around me and the rain clouds were threatening, so we soon headed back down the road to an area I had noticed on the way in.

About 200 meteres southeast of the old Jeep mineshaft, there was an area where recent excavation work had been done. I stopped there and checked out the rock outcropping that had been exposed. I took some photos of this, and later realized that this was the PGE rock area that is also included in the photo section of the Wildcat website: http://www.wildcat.ca/viewphoto.php?AREAID=6 (see Bissett Jeep Property 4).

Continuing back down the road a little further, there was another smaller excavation right alongside of the road where a rock area had been exposed recently (see last photo). While not absolutely sure, I believe this is likely what was referred to as "Showing 3" on the May-June 2009 Surface Gold Assay Results sheet found in the Map Gallery on the Wildcat website: http://www.wildcat.ca/openwindow.php?PATH=upload/map/large/Jeep2009May-JuneGoldShowingDiscoveries1-3.jpg

After this, we headed back to Hwy 304 and made our way back home to Winnipeg. We probably spent only half an hour in total at the Jeep property.

This summarizes what we discovered while visiting the Jeep property. I had thought to explore a little further originally, but the other areas would have required hiking in the bush away from the road. I was not equipped for that as the grass and undergrowth was soaking wet from the rain that had been falling throughout the day, and the bugs also would have made such exploring quite a trial. As well, without a geologist or guide along to explain or interpret what one is looking at, the significance of what is all there can be easily missed -- it could appear to be just another undeveloped piece of Canadian Shield with rocks, trees and swampy marsh areas. But, it is what is in the rocks that is of value and that is not something the average guy can just walk in and see on the surface.

Nevertheless, it was nice to have been there, just to have a better sense of where it is situated, to have actually been at the old Jeep mine site, and to have a better sense of what is transpiring on this valuable property - one that I even own a little part of!