The Den occurrence (and larger Spanish Moly property) is located approximately 75 kilometres northeast of 100 Mile House, British Columbia on Highway 97.
The oldest rocks on the property, and which host the mineral occurrences, comprise a mixture of pelitic schist, marble, felsic schist and chert, and dark, fine-grained, pyritic cherty metasedimentary rocks tentatively correlated with the Cambrian to Mississippian Eagle Bay Assemblage of Schiarizza and Preto (1987). These stratified rocks outcrop intermittently through the northern portion of the property. The rocks are typically tightly folded and strike north to northeast with moderate to steep easterly dips, although local variations are noted. The metasedimentary rocks display hornfels up to 1.5 kilometres from the observed plutonic contact. A composite granodiorite-granite pluton outcrops extensively in the southern half of the property where it forms a distinct donut shaped airborne magnetometer anomaly. Coarse-grained biotite granodiorite is intruded by finer-grained two mica granites and leucogranite in the central portion of the pluton and locally along the northern intrusive-metasediment contact (Assessment Report 36166).
The Den showing is characterized by a north-northeast trending band of limestone, marble, calc-silicate schist, and skarn, largely enclosed in schist and quartzite. This band is up to 70 metres wide and has been traced for over 1 kilometre along strike. The southern end of the band is characterized by intense garnet-diopside-wollastonite tungsten-bearing skarn, and is obliterated by a two mica granite pluton across a small swamp. Within the marble skarn, scheelite and lesser powellite are visible with an ultraviolet light. Pyrite and lesser pyrrhotite occur as bedding parallel blobs and disseminations up to 600 metres along strike, northward from the Den showing. The intense skarn appears to be enclosed in less skarn altered marble and calc-silicate alteration which carry visible molybdenite and scheelite culminating at the Den North showing (MINFILE 093A 221) 170 metres along strike to the north (Assessment Report 36166).
The Spanish Moly property has been prospected, sampled, and mapped intermittently since 1999 by D. Ridley. In 2009, a stream sediment program identified a molybdenum-zinc-cobalt-iron-manganese anomaly draining the central portion of a granodiorite intrusion. In 2012, anomalous arsenic in soil was reported, associated with quartz-sericite-pyrite schist and phyllite (Assessment Report 33464). In 2013, minor molybdenite was reported in quartz-pyrite veinlets cutting biotite-granodiorite (Assessment Report 34678). In 2014, a program was completed to follow up the 2009 multi-element stream sediment anomaly and narrowed down potential source areas (Assessment Report 35537). In 2015, D. Ridley and D. Black discovered the Den (this MINFILE), Den North (MINFILE 092P 221) and East (MINFILE 092P 219) showings (Assessment Report 36166).
A grab sample (SM15BK2) from the Den showing returned 91.5 parts per million molybdenum and 2710 parts per million tungsten in a sample of garnet-quartz-wollastonite skarn (Assessment Report 36166).
