The Babylon North showing is located on an upper plateau 3.5 kilometres east of Legate Peak and 14 kilometres east of Yellowhead Highway 16 and the Skeena River, 45.5 kilometres northeast of Terrace, B.C.
Regionally, the Empire Property is situated in the Stikinia orogenic accreted terrane, a volcanic arc assemblage of volcanic and sedimentary rocks. The property itself overlays a sequence of bimodal volcanics and volcaniclastic sediments of the Lower to Middle Jurassic Hazelton Group. The orogenic class of gold deposit is defined here as syn-tectonic quartz-carbonate veins and wall rock replacement associated with regional-scale faults. Orogenic ores form at convergent plate margins in accretionary and collisional orogens.
The Babylon North showing is located at the southeast end of the Babylon Trend of mineralization on the Empire property, where pervasive zones of potassic and lesser chloritic alteration is often associated with polymetallic mineralization focused along contacts, fractures, shears and faults, and likely related to remobilization of prior mineralization. Disseminated globules of chalcopyrite and pyrite occur in altered rhyolite locally with tennantite and tetrahedrite along fractures with malachite and azurite staining. Copper staining is seen sporadically through the Babylon Trend, often with potassic alteration.
The Babylon North showing was discovered during J2 Syndicate Holdings Ltd's 2016 exploration program on their Empire property, during which time a SkyTEM airborne electromagnetic survey was flown, followed by an initial rock sampling program (139 samples). Rock grab samples ranged from below detection limit to 16.4 grams per tonne gold, 36,875 grams per tonne silver, 27.6 per cent copper, 33.9 per cent lead and 29.98 per cent zinc. Two Trends were discovered during the 2016 field season: Inca and Babylon. The north-south striking Inca Trend (1.6 by 1.2 kilometres) includes three zones: Metallica, Metalworks and Olympus. Approximately 3 kilometres southeast of Inca, the 1.6 by 1 kilometre Babylon Trend is subdivided into three areas (Babylon North, Babylon South and Babylon West).
Exploration on the Empire property continued in 2017 with Juggernaut Exploration as operator. Field mapping and sampling (379 channel, 488 chip/grab, 1 talus fine and 22 silt). Much of this work led to the expansion of the Inca Trend mineralization. Mapping of the north region of Babylon showed it to be hosted in maroon coloured, very fine-grained mafic volcanics. Mineralization in the north zone has a strong structural control to a set of small, sub-vertical consistently oriented NE-trending fractures. The fractures exhibit strong potassic alteration haloes (approximately 0.5 to 2 metres), Cu-mineralization (azurite and/or malachite), and locally Fe-carbonate veining. The Fe-carbonate veining is observed in multiple locations to be independent from the potassic alteration, indicating separate events. (Assessment Report 37539).
Property wide LiDAR and airborne geophysical surveys, ground IP surveys (including Babylon Trend), geological mapping, alteration studies, channel sampling (61), chip/grab rock sampling (544) and prospecting was conducted over the Empire in 2018, while 3209 metres of drilling focused on mineralized zones in the expanded Inca Trend. Further mapping at the Babylon zone identified sub-horizontal layers of volcanic rocks intruded by subvertical mineralized veins. Mineralization includes bornite, covellite, chalcopyrite and pyrite, indicative of an epithermal setting. The ground IP survey over Babylon identified “a significant chargeability anomaly in the subsurface that is coincident with the 2017 SkyTEM survey EM anomaly” (Assessment Report 38018).
In 2019 a comprehensive report was completed on the Empire property and a small drill program focused on the southern end of the Inca Trend (Rockstar showing) (Assessment Report 38978).
