TThe Upper Gnat Creek occurrence is located on a ridge 1.5 kilometres south of Upper Gnat Lake.
The area is underlain by intrusive rocks of the Upper Triassic Cake Hill pluton, part of the Jurassic-Triassic Hotailuh batholith. The pluton consists mainly of hornblende quartz monzonite, granodiorite and rare hornblende diorite. Regional mapping indicates that the area immediately west of the Upper Gnat Creek showing is underlain by rocks of the Triassic Stuhini Group, consisting of andesite and basalt flows, tuffs and breccias with some sediments intruded by small stocks and sills of porphyritic andesite and basalt.
Locally, a gossanous (oxidized) and chlorite altered diorite to monzodiorite hosts quartz stringers and 1 to 10-centimetre-wide veins of massive sulphides, primarily chalcopyrite, bornite and pyrite, haloed by strong potassium feldspar alteration, locally widening to a 20 by 20 centimetre pod with associated copper oxide staining. The vein is hosted in within well-foliated Cake Hill plutonic rocks. The wider mineralized zone is associated with brecciated wallrocks. An outcrop containing copper sulphide-bearing veinlets was found in the same hostrock about 140 metres further southeast along the ridge.
Approximately 3.5 kilometres to the south east a gossanous, chlorite-hematite altered monzonite hosts quartz stringers with trace chalcopyrite, pyrite and malachite.
Work History
In 2011, Finsbury Exploration Ltd carried out exploration over the Property as part of a soil and silt sampling program over a much larger 168,983 hectare property area known as the Galaxie property. An assay sample of the massive sulphide breccia gave 1.7 grams per tonne gold, 82 grams per tonne silver, greater than 1 per cent copper and 483 parts per million bismuth (Fieldwork 2011, page 112).
In 2012, Quartz Mountain Resources Ltd, on the Galaxie property, conducted systematic soil and IP surveys over eight high-priority grids and two target areas identified by the 2011 stream sediment and soil geochemical results. This work included an IP survey over almost the entirety of title 512878 and the southeastern third of title 604847. A select sample (987453) of massive chalcopyrite vein assayed 14.94 per cent copper, 7.50 grams per tonne gold and 117.1 grams per tonne silver, while a sample (987451) from the south eastern gossan yielded 0.124 per cent copper (Bowen, B.K. (2013-04-30): Technical Report on the Galaxie Project).
