The Clancey occurrence is located on a steep southwest-facing slope, approximately 7 kilometres north of Black Lake.
The area lies within the Omineca-Cassiar Mountains at the southern end of the Toodoggone gold camp. It occurs within a Mesozoic volcanic arc assemblage that lies along the eastern margin of the Intermontane Belt, a northwest-trending belt of Paleozoic to Neogene sediments, volcanics and intrusions bounded to the east by the Omineca Belt and to the west and southwest by the Sustut and Bowser basins.
Permian Asitka Group crystalline limestones are the oldest rocks exposed in the region. They are commonly in thrust contact with Upper Triassic Takla Group andesite flows and pyroclastic rocks. Takla volcanics have been intruded by Lower Jurassic granodiorite to quartz monzonite of the Black Lake Suite and are in turn unconformably overlain by or faulted against Lower Jurassic calc-alkaline volcanics of the Toodoggone Formation (Hazelton Group).
The dominant structures in the area are steeply dipping faults that define a prominent regional northwest structural fabric trending 140 to 170 degrees. In turn, high-angle, northeast-striking faults (approximately 060 degrees) appear to truncate and displace northwest-striking faults. Collectively these faults form a boundary for variably rotated and tilted blocks underlain by monoclinal strata.
The occurrence area is underlain by Toodoggone Formation volcanic rocks of the upper volcanic cycle. These consist of a heterogeneous mixture of green, grey and mauve lapilli ash and lesser block tuff, with lesser interspersed ash flows, lava flows and interbedded epiclastics of the Attycelley member and partly welded, crystal-rich dacitic ash flows of the conformably overlying Saunders member.
Locally, quartz veins with pyrite, chalcopyrite, sphalerite and galena mineralization are hosted by highly silicified and gossanous rocks and/or weakly propylitic-altered Takla and/or Toodoggone volcanics, near their faulted contact, and associated with a 15-metre wide, northwest-trending feldspar porphyry dike. The veins are reported to be north- to northwest-trending with near vertical dips and to vary from less than 0.15 metre to 1.05 metres in width.
In 1989, two rock samples (PD-53 and -201) from the west side of the creek yielded 24.7 and 11.6 grams per tonne gold with 742.7 and 605.4 grams per tonne silver, respectively, whereas five talus samples (PD-121 through -125) taken from the east side of the creek yielded from 0.168 to 3.70 grams per tonne gold, 6.2 to 43.7 grams per tonne silver, 0.187 to 2.580 per cent lead and 0.045 to 0.285 per cent zinc (Property File – Carter, N. [1997-02-10]: Proposal for 1997 exploration work - Chappelle (Baker Mine) Property).
In 1997, three samples (97GR36, 97GR38 and 97GR19) from the ‘main’ Clancey vein assayed 19.3, 1.80 and 6.72 grams per tonne gold with 3200, 820 and 402 grams per tonne silver, respectively, whereas samples (97GR22 and 97GR48) from the S.W. and N.W. Clancey zones yielded 3.65 and 2.00 grams per tonne gold with 1150 and 37.0 grams per tonne silver, respectively (Assessment Report 25619). The exact location of these samples is not known.
Work History
The area has been explored in conjunction with the nearby Baker (MINFILE 094E 026) occurrence since the late 1960s and a complete exploration history can be found there. The occurrence was first identified in 1989.
