The 18UT1 prospect is located on the north side of the Peace Reach, the western arm of Williston Lake, approximately 74 kilometres north of Mackenzie, B.C. and 79 kilometres west of Hudson Hope, B.C.
The 18UT1 prospect is part of a shale-hosted vanadium property which includes the Ursula North (093O 063), approximately 950 metres south.
The earliest reported exploration in the vicinity of the property was performed in 1973 by Union Oil Company of Canada Ltd. This work resulted in the identification of the Poco (094B 007) and Coral (094B 008) mineral occurrences, approximately 25 kilometres north of Ursula South (093O 062), which are hosted in middle Paleozoic shelf carbonates. Subsequent work by Union Oil and other operators included soil geochemical sampling, hand trenching and diamond drilling. In 2016, nine shallow drill holes were completed on the Coral occurrence, which intersected only minor lead-zinc mineralization (deGraaf et al., 2016).
In 2007, the Northern Development Initiative Trust and Geoscience BC performed a reconnaissance-scale stream sediment and water survey on NTS map sheet 93O. Vanadium geochemistry in stream sediment samples was notably elevated south of Peace Reach, along a northwest trending belt of Triassic-aged sedimentary rocks (Jackaman, 2008).
Bedrock in the area includes recessive, moderate to sub-vertical dipping fine-grained sedimentary rocks of the Toad and Grayling formations. On the property, the Toad-Grayling contact is marked by an increase in bioclastic limestone interbedded with black silty shale. Above the contact, Toad Formation comprises a phosphatic, silty black shale with bioclastic, calcareous concretions. To the west, the contact region is tightly folded in a series north-northwest trending folds, while in the east, the stratigraphy has been repeated in the hanging wall of the Brewster Thrust Fault.
In 2018, Ethos Gold Corp. collected 38 trench samples from the 18UT1 prospect, as well as nine silt and 106 soil samples around the north shore of the Peace Reach. The 86.5 m long hand trench (18UT1) was dug on a steep, east-facing slope, in an area along strike of strongly elevated vanadium soil geochemistry. The trench exposed moderately southwest-dipping black shale, with a white precipitate on weathered surfaces. Continuous chip samples from the west end of the trench returned a weighted average grade of 0.24 per cent V2O5 over 36 metres, within a broader interval of 0.21 per cent V2O5 over 57 m. Another, shorter bedrock exposure, yielded an average grade of 0.22 per cent V2O5 over 15 metres. Soil sampling along strike of the hand trench suggests that the vanadium-bearing horizon has a strike length of at least 1.2 kilometres (Assessment Report 38052)