British Columbia Ministry of Energy, Mines and Natural Gas and Responsible for Housing
News | The Premier Online | Ministries & Organizations | Job Opportunities | Main Index

MINFILE Home page  ARIS Home page  MINFILE Search page  Property File Search
Help Help
File Created: 24-Jul-1985 by BC Geological Survey (BCGS)
Last Edit:  18-Oct-2021 by George Owsiacki (GO)

Summary Help Help

NMI
Name SHUKSAN, SURPRISE, DISCOVERY, LD, ATLIN GOLD Mining Division Atlin
BCGS Map 104N053
Status Showing NTS Map 104N11W
Latitude 059º 31' 20'' UTM 08 (NAD 83)
Longitude 133º 28' 54'' Northing 6599185
Easting 585902
Commodities Gold, Silver, Lead, Zinc, Copper Deposit Types I01 : Au-quartz veins
Tectonic Belt Intermontane Terrane Plutonic Rocks, Cache Creek
Capsule Geology

The Shuksan occurrence is located in the upper reaches of Seattle Jack Creek, about 13 kilometres southeast of the community of Atlin.

The area is underlain by limestone, chert and andesite of the Cache Creek Complex. Monger (1975) assigns the sediments to the Mississippian to Triassic Kedahda Formation and the andesites to the upper Mississippian to Permian Nakina Formation. The Atlin Ultramafic Allochthon is spatially related to the Nakina Formation and may be genetically related as well (Monger, Geological Survey of Canada Paper 74-47). The ultramafics consist of serpentinite, carbonatized serpentinite (listwanite?) and gabbroic dikes. The serpentinite is talcose, carbonatized and quartz veined near its contact with the chert. These veins sometimes carry minor disseminated pyrite and mariposite.

In 1983, trenching exposed twelve subparallel, gold-bearing quartz veins that cut the carbonatized ultramafics near their contact with the chert. These highly fractured veins pinch and swell along a northwest strike, measuring between 4 and 90 centimetres in width, and dip steeply to the southwest. The veins appear to be bounded on the northwest by a northeast striking graphitic argillite shear zone. Visible gold appears in many of the veins, locally in spectacular amounts. Pyrite with minor chalcopyrite, silver, galena and sphalerite comprises less than 1 per cent of the vein.

The mineralized zone has a measured area of 36 metres (width) by 18 metres (length). A 15-kilogram bulk sample taken from the quartz veins contained up to 330.35 grams per tonne gold. Carbonatized ultramafic wallrock chip samples assayed as high as 4.46 grams per tonne gold. In 1984, the best drillhole interval was 16.87 grams per tonne gold over 0.46 metre (Assessment Report 15062).

In 2019, a 2.0-metre intersection from 40.00 to 42.00 metres in drillhole BBB-19-12 assayed 8.53 grams per tonne gold (Assessment Report 38851).

Past work on the property was conducted by Standard Gold Inc. in 1982 to 1984 and included data compilation, soil sampling, mapping, airborne and ground geophysical surveys, trenching and diamond drilling. In 1985, rotary drilling was undertaken by Surprise Lake Exploration Limited Partnership and eight holes were drilled totalling 175.3 metres to test for gold mineralization in bedrock and for gold dispersion in overburden reflecting the eroded top of a deposit.

In 2006, Prize Mining Corp. conducted a small exploration program that included collection of 679 soil geochemical samples.

In 2018-19, Brixton Metals Corporation carried out exploration on their Atlin Gold Project which included: a 1992 line kilometre, helicopter-borne high-resolution aeromagnetic geophysical survey over a 40 square kilometre area that hosts the historic Pictou (104N 044) and Imperial (104N 008) showings, as well as the Yellowjacket gold mine (104N 043); the collection of 1227 soil samples, 110 rock samples and 1 stream silt sample; and a 1599.24-metre, shallow diamond drilling program that included 4 NQ-sized holes drilled at the Pictou showing and 18 NQ-sized holes drilled at the LD showing (104N 098, 100). In 2019, diamond drilling, as well as rock, soil and stream sampling focussed on historic areas known to host orogenic gold mineralization, as well as the Fourth of July batholith, Union and Sentinel mountains and Spruce Creek.

Bibliography
EMPR BULL 94; 108, p. 22
EMPR EXPL 1981-310; 1982-405; 1983-550; 1984-404; 1986-C453-455; 1987-394
EMPR OF 1989-15; 1989-24; 1996-11
GSC MAP 1082A
GSC MEM 307
GSC P 74-47
GSC OF 864
DIAND OF *1990-4
GCNL #149, 1983; #115,#144, 1984; #79,#135,#174,#190, 1986
IPDM Dec., 1985
N MINER Aug.9, 1984
NAGMIN July 16, 1984
Andrew, K.P.E. (1985): Fluid Inclusion and Chemical Studies of Gold-Quartz Veins in the Atlin Camp, B.Sc. Thesis, University of British Columbia
Cordey, F. et al. (1987): Significance of Jurassic Radiolarians from the Cache Creek Terrane, British Columbia, in Geology Vol.15, pp. 1151-1154
Newton, D.C. (1985): A Study of Carbonate Alteration of Serpentine Around Gold and Silver Bearing Quartz Veins in Atlin Camp, B.Sc. Thesis, University of British Columbia

COPYRIGHT | DISCLAIMER | PRIVACY | ACCESSIBILITY