Several promising grassroots discoveries, many of them made by prospectors, highlighted the 2000 exploration season in British Columbia and could provide a much-needed boost for exploration in the western province.
Last year, about $30 million was spent on mineral exploration in British Columbia, up from $25 million in 1999 but a far cry from the $226 million spent in 1990 following the discovery of the Eskay Creek gold deposit. The number of mineral claims recorded in 2000 was up 60% at 27,800 units.
Early last year,
In the fall,
Moore liked the looks of the volcanic package, which showed signs of chlorite alteration and some argillic alteration. He believed the area was prospective for intrusive porphyry. Moore subsequently found copper-bearing float alongside the highway, which ran 1-2%. Returning to the area last summer, Moore was following-up with soil sampling, when he noticed a slight discolouration near the edge of the roadcut; there, he discovered massive sphalerite mineralization, with chalcopyrite and galena.
Realizing that massive sulphide mineralization represented a unique exploration target in the Nicola Group package, Gitennes optioned a 100% interest in the 15-sq.-km property for shares and cash. The junior added to its holdings by staking an additional 50 sq. km of surrounding ground.
The Blacktop prospect is a polymetallic, zinc-rich massive sulphide showing hosted by intermediate-to-felsic volcanic rocks. Gitennes has intermittently traced the mineralization in outcrop, bedrock rubble and float over a strike length of 100 metres. The zone is characterized by sphalerite, pyrite, chalcopyrite, galena and tetrahedrite mineralization, and associated sericite alteration and chert-barite.
Grab samples of the mineralized outcrop returned up to 19.75% zinc and 1.58% copper, plus 91.8 grams silver and 0.7 gram gold per tonne. Higher-grade boulders of dense massive sulphides are found scattered over the length of the zone. The better of two boulder samples yielded 33.26% zinc, 3.22% copper, 0.86% lead, 144.7 grams silver and 1.06 grams gold.
Short trenches and pits have been hand-dug through the backfill along the roadside, but this work failed to determine the thickness of the zone, as the highest-grade and most promising-looking material occurs near the base of the roadcut at ditch level. The base of one such trench yielded 1.1 metres grading 17% zinc, 1.6% copper. 0.47% lead, 76 grams silver and 0.49 gram gold. Some 20 metres away, a small pit exposed 1.2 metres grading 5.96% zinc, 0.18% copper, 0.07% lead, 65.2 grams silver and 0.12 gram gold.
Since October, Gitennes has completed a 475-line-km helicopter-borne electromagnetic (EM) survey and carried out property-wide mapping, prospecting and stream-sediment-sampling.
The Blacktop prospect occurs in the western facies of the Nicola Group at the break of a distinct rock package of andesite-dacite volcanic tuffs and breccias, waterlain tuff, siliceous mudstone and polymictic breccia. This package is overlain by more magnetic-rich basalt, andesitic flow breccias and volcaniclastic grit.
Surveys
The contact between the two packages can be traced by airborne and ground magnetic surveys both north and south of the Blacktop showing for a distance of 8 km. Gitennes has detected several airborne and stream-sediment anomalies along this corridor that warrant further investigation.
Ground induced-polarization (IP) surveys over the Blacktop prospect have detected a coincident chargeability and resistivity anomaly, 600 metres in length. To determine that the IP anomaly was not caused by manmade objects, such as culverts, powerlines or fibre-optic cables, buried beside the highway, four lines of horizontal-loop electromagnetics (HLEM) and soil-sampling were completed across a 300-metre length of the core of the anomaly. The HLEM revealed a thin, steeply west-dipping anomaly at an orientation consistent with the geology of the showing. The soil samples were analyzed with mobile metallic ion technology, which is used to detect minute quantities. Gitennes says the results suggest a natural source.
Gitennes is set to begin an initial 1,200 metres of drilling once permits are in hand, which should be any day now.
Another recorded occurrence of massive sulphide mineralization in the Nicola package is the Redstar prospect, 100 km south of Fox, near Princeton. A few years back,
The showing had yielded assay values of up to 40% zinc and 3.72% copper, plus 36 grams silver and 0.95 gram gold per tonne, across thicknesses of up to 1.1 metres. All five holes intersected altered, variably pyritic, felsic volcanics. The best hole, drilled beneath the showing, intersected a 0.76-metre interval of semi-massive-to-massive sulphides, including 0.2 metre of 14.1% zinc, 5.1% copper, 76.4 grams silver and 1.4 grams gold, from 128.74 metres down-hole.
Redstar is seeking a joint-venture partner to continue exploring this property.
Moore, with the assistance of Paul Metcalfe, also had success on the west coast of Vancouver Island, where the pair targeted the massive sulphide potential of a package of rocks in an amphibolite-greenschist altered area on Nootka Island. “It appears to be an upturned package of Sticker Group volcanics,” says Moore, adding that there are no assessment reports for that particular package on Nootka Island. The same package of rocks in central Vancouver Island hosts
“There is a fair amount of massive sulphide float, primarily pyrite and some magnetite,” says Moore. “We also found what appeared to be siliceous volcanic that had compositionally layered sulphides, with about 0.5% copper.” In addition, regional stream-sediment geochemistry shows highly anomalous gold and copper values in the area covered by the Raven property.
The Lang Mining Group’s
Imperial
Grab samples returned peak values of 8.03% copper, 7.89% zinc and 51 grams silver, whereas channel sampling yielded values ranging from 0.05% to 2.31% copper and from 0.03% to 2.26% zinc.
Last fall, Imperial drilled seven short holes near the showing. Four of these intersected the mineralized zone, cutting a representative 3.12 metres of 0.51% copper and 1.08% zinc (including 0.65 metre of 1% copper and 4.86% zinc) in hole 1.
Further exploration is planned for the spring of 2001.
Three new showings of zinc-lead massive sulphide mineralization were discovered by geologist-prospector Leo Lindinger on the Broken Hill property, 7 km northeast of Avola in the North Thompson area of east-central British Columbia.
Lindinger made the find while backed by a provincially funded prospecting grant. The new sulphide showings occur over a 5-km distance. A grab sample from the Vista showing assayed 24.3% zinc, 4.89% lead and 62.7 grams silver, whereas the Navan showing, a further 1.5 km to the southeast, returned 23.6% zinc, 4.05% lead and 16.1 grams silver.
Kamloops-based
Cassidy has also optioned the 5-sq.-km Silver Lynx property from prospector Bruce Doyle, who discovered polymetallic mineralization in a roadcut 20 km west of Nelson. A selected grab sample ran 24.59% zinc, 22.35% lead, 0.21% copper and 556 grams silver. Soil sampling by Doyle showed an open-ended multi-element anomaly measuring 800 metres long and up to 300 metres wide. Cassidy is waiting until spring to begin ground geophysical surveys.
Hudson Bay Exploration & Development, an affiliate of
The 709-metre drill campaign was the culmination of a 5-month-long field season in which HudBay spent $650,000 completing a multifaceted exploration program on the Lottie claim group, 25 km northwest of Wells.
The primary target was a 900-metre-long, open-ended ground EM anomaly southeast of an area where high-grade copper boulders had been discovered. In 1998, prospector Martin Peter discovered a single, well-mineralized boulder that assayed 24% copper. Eureka optioned the property in 1999 and dug a series of test pits, uncovering numerous boulders that ran 10-22% copper.
Eureka is considering its options for further exploration.
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