The Whit occurrence is located on a small south-southwest–flowing tributary of the Table River, approximately 34 kilometres northeast of the rivers’ confluence with the Parsnip River.
The region is underlain by an assemblage of sedimentary rocks consisting mainly of continental margin and shelf facies rocks. This assemblage was deposited on and to the west of the ancestral North American craton. These sedimentary rocks, for the most part typical miogeoclinal facies, range in age from Hadrynian to Upper Cretaceous. Structurally these rocks are part of the Foreland thrust and fold belt of the North American Cordillera.
The Whit main showing consists of chalcocite and tetrahedrite in a narrow zone of steeply dipping discordant quartz carbonate veins hosted in upper Cambrian Lynx Formation dolomite. This zone occurs an estimated 50 metres above the middle Cambrian contact. The mineralization consists of malachite; azurite and disseminations, stringers and pods of black, sooty metallics (mainly chalcocite and tetrahedrite) within the veins.
In 1981, channel sampling across this vein gave values of up to 10.9 per cent copper, 0.05 per cent lead, 0.87 per cent zinc, 3.05 per cent antimony and 361.7 grams per tonne silver (Assessment Report 9693).
The nearby Pete showing consists of minor chalcopyrite in breccia zones. Trenching indicated the high-grade mineralization is discontinuous and mainly restricted to a vein 8 to 14 centimetres thick.
Work History
In 1981, Esso Resources Canada Ltd. completed a program of geological mapping and geochemical (rock, silt and soil) sampling on the area as the Whit claim.