The Empress Jade property is located along the Cassiar Highway, within 600 metres southeast of the past producing Seywerd property (MINFILE 104J 057).
The Empress Jade property is in a zone of serpentinized peridotite of the Upper Mississippian to Permian Cache Creek Complex ultramafics. The highly sheared serpentinized peridotite contains elongated nephrite jade lenses oriented at approximately 120 degrees and dipping at 80 plus degrees. Previous exploration work found occurrences of high-grade nephrite jade within zones of lower-grade material.
Contacts in the Empress property are most likely composed of chert and argillic slate for hangingwall material and altered dark green serpentinite for footwall material. Fluids responsible for the metasomatic processes to form nephrite would have arrived through conduits like rock contacts or faults. Typical rock types on the Empress property include chert, argillic slate and interbedded limestone often occurring together, altered-unaltered serpentinites and peridotites often adjacent to each other, and in some cases chlorite schists nearby. Chlorite alterations were found often on the surface as a pale green platy mineral. Chlorite is an alteration product of mafic minerals such as pyroxenes, amphiboles and biotite.
In 2016, a total of 2,199 tonnes of low-grade nephrite jade ore and 2,237 tonnes of high-grade nephrite jade ore were defined (Assessment Report 36525). This gives a combined total 4,436 tonnes nephrite ore.
The Jade Empress 1,2,3 properties have historically been explored by trenching and sampling for asbestos. The Pit 1, Pit 2, and Pit 3 deposits were previously disturbed prior to the properties’ acquisition by Dease Lake Jade Mine Ltd. Several nephrite lenses were left exposed in each area.
Dease Lake Jade began open trenching of the property in 2010, leading to more extensive excavation of the footwall material which continued into the 2013 mining season. Exposed nephrite lenses were initially removed by excavator. An estimated 400 tonnes of low-grade nephrite material was extracted up to the end of the 2013 mining season. The majority of material was too heavily fractured and unsuitable size and quality for the market at the time.
Dease Lake Jade Mine Ltd. conducted an exploration drilling program in 2014 of the Pit 1 and Pit 2 orebodies. A total of 39 drill holes were used to delineate each deposit in an effort to gauge the property’s economic potential. A lithologic drill log survey identified a hangingwall and footwall zones of volcanic and serpentinite consecutively, and interspersed zones of low and high-grade nephrite. Quartz Creek development was contracted in January, 2016 to log the existing Pit 1 core produced during the 2014 Empress 2 Drill program. This program included lithology and geotechnical logging of 21 of the 26 holes.
In 2016, owner Dease Lake Jade Mine Ltd. commissioned Quartz Creek Development Ltd. with MineIt Consulting Inc. to complete a technical report on the Empress 2 nephrite jade project based on previous data acquired from exploration drilling of the property in 2014. Due to limitations in resource estimation for nephrite jade deposits, the report was not meant to adhere or be in compliance with the NI 43-101 Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Project.
