The Dove property, consisting of 370 claim units in the Ideal and Harmony claim groups, is located 15 kilometres northwest of Courtenay, Vancouver Island, BC. The property lies on the east and north flanks of Mount Washington, at elevations between 100 and 790 metres.
Regionally, the area is underlain by the Triassic Karmutsen Formation of the Vancouver Group, which is unconformably overlain by the Upper Cretaceous Comox Formation of the Nanaimo Group. Both are intruded by Tertiary subvolcanic igneous rocks and diatreme breccias.
The Karmutsen Formation on the Dove property consists of shallow-dipping massive basalt, pillowed basalt and minor hyaloclastite and pillow breccia.
Previous and current work on Mount Washington, west of the Dove claims, has documented low-grade porphyry copper mineralization and high-grade gold-bearing quartz-sulphide veins of epithermal character, which are shallow dipping and probably fault controlled and lie in close proximity to the Cretaceous unconformity. These veins occur in Comox Formation Tertiary intrusives and diatreme breccia.
Pyrite, pyrrhotite and chalcopyrite are disseminated in sandstone of the Upper Cretaceous Nanaimo Group, Comox Formation. At the Ideal 4 occurrence, two showings occur in zones of sericitized sandstone; one showing over a 2 metre interval. The other showing contains 20 to 30 per cent quartz. A grab sample assayed 0.15 per cent copper and 0.034 grams per tonne gold (Assessment Report 16412).
History in the Dove project area began in the 1940s, with exploration for high-grade gold veins. For the next three decades, the area underwent intensive exploration for low-grade or porphyry-type copper deposits. During this period, little attention appears to have been given to quartz veins or gold assays. The 1980s has seen renewed exploration for high-grade lode gold deposits based on an epithermal model. Such mineralization has been documented both east and west of the Dove property.
In 1987, exploration was quite intensive in the area, involving four projects. Better Resources Ltd. continued evaluating their Lakeview-West grid and Domineer zones on Mount Washington with a diamond drilling program of 8230 metres in 105 holes and an underground exploration program consisting of 300 metres of adit and crossdrifts. This work resulted in an upgraded ore reserve figure of 88 859 tonnes drill-indicated at 4.44 grams per tonne gold and 20.9 grams per tonne silver (Assessment Report 19081A).
Noranda undertook an exploration program on a large block of ground to the west and south of Mount Washington. This work involved geological mapping, prospecting, soil geochemistry and trenching. Late in the season, Noranda optioned the southern block of claims from Better Resources, which cover the Murex breccia gold zone, following up on one hole previously drilled by Better Resources that had returned 15.9 metres of 5.56 grams per tonne gold plus 2.7 metres of 2.5 grams per tonne gold and 3 metres of 3.44 grams per tonne gold (Assessment Report 19081A).
In 1992, a limited lithogeochemical survey and structural mapping program was carried out on the property. The survey identified several significant structures that could represent a major north-south structure, believed to occur in this area based on earlier work. Also, the lithogeochemical sampling (17 samples) identified a significant alteration zone at the north edge of the area of interest, which might be a preserved regolith, or a hydrothermally altered zone (Assessment Report 22807).
In 1993, work consisted of establishing a small grid for an induced polarization survey. A total of 7.65 line kilometres were cut, including an 800-metre baseline. The results of the survey indicated a small chargeability anomaly near the Paquet showing; however, the location of the anomaly and its discontinuous nature suggested the improbability of developing a significant deposit. As a consequence, no further work was recommended for the target (Assessment Report 22975).
