The Aldeen (Lot 1749) is in the north part of the Burnt Basin camp. This small mining camp is situated approximately 13 kilometres northeast of Christina Lake and roughly 25 kilometres west of Trail. Access to the property is via Highway 3 from either Grand Forks or Castlegar to the Paulson Bridge. From a point 0.4 kilometre southwest of the Paulson Bridge a dirt road extends along the eastern side of the claims and across the southern part of the property.
Burnt Basin is underlain by a variety of bedded rocks and igneous intrusions. The sedimentary and volcanic bedded rocks are mostly in the southern part of the camp. These units are assigned to the Carboniferous to Permian Mount Roberts Formation and include clean and dirty grey limestone beds of variable thickness interlayered with siltstone and minor chert. North of these units is an area of mostly massive andesitic volcanic rocks. Fragmental textures are found in places in the volcanic rock commonly associated with a carbonate matrix and small limestone lenses. These beds are cut by numerous felsic dikes and sills related to the Eocene Coryell Plutonic Suite.
Mineralization in the southern part of Burnt Basin includes magnetite/sulphide replacements, and sulphide disseminations. Disseminated pyrite is occasionally seen in granitic plutons and volcanic rocks, and scattered pyrite and pyrrhotite is common in hornfels. Replacement deposits occur in recrystallized limestone and the volcanic rocks. The altered limestone is characterized by coarse sparry calcite and garnets 1-5 millimetres in diameter. The volcanic rocks host skarn minerals in the form of epidote-garnet patches accompanied by pyrite and calcite. The pyrite generally comprises 1-2 per cent of the rock (rarely as much as 10-20 per cent). Most of the old workings are small replacements developed in limestone adjacent to dikes. These bodies were mined principally for silver, although they contained significant but erratic zinc, lead, copper and gold values.
The Unexpected zone, first identified in 2007 and located approximately 400 metres to the north west of the Aldeen zone on the Unexpected (L.2851) Crown grant, comprises a 2-metre wide rusty shear zone within strongly epidote altered metavolcanics and diorite. The shear zone hosts vuggy quartz veinlets with patchy galena and sphalerite. An old timbered shaft and a nearby pit are reported approximately 100 metres to the south of the zone. Dump samples from the shaft contain massive galena.
The Aldeen property is in the northern part of the camp where andesitic volcanic rocks predominate. In 1901, a 6-metre shaft was sunk on a fissure quartz vein carrying free gold near surface. The Kittie, Aldeen and Tunnel claims (Lots 1748-1750, respectively) were Crown granted to W.B. Townsend in 1901. Burnt Basin Mines Ltd. was incorporated in 1971 to acquire 21 Crown-granted claims and fractions and 15 mineral leases, including the above three claims. Donna Mines Ltd. in August 1972 optioned an 80 per cent interest in the property.
In 2007, samples from the Unexpected zone yielded values of up to 33.99 grams per tonne gold, 24.0 grams per tonne silver, 1.10 per cent lead and 0.61 per cent zinc, while a sample from the shaft dump assayed 51.5 per cent lead, 1.3 per cent zinc and 326.9 grams per tonne silver (MacIntyre, D. (2018-11-26): Technical Report - Molly Gibson Lode Property). A sample from the old diggings on the Aldeen zone assayed 4.9 grams per tonne gold (MacIntyre, D. (2018-11-26): Technical Report - Molly Gibson Lode Property).
In 2018, Rich River Resources, on the behalf of Golden Lake Exploration Inc., completed a program of prospecting and geochemical (rock, soil and silt) sampling on the area as the Molly Gibson-Golden Lode property. A sample (32161) from a 5-centimetre wide quartz vein exposed in a road cut located approximately 300 metres north of the Unexpected zone assayed 61.5 grams per tonne gold, 30.7 grams per tonne silver, 0.399 per cent zinc and 2.54 per cent lead (MacIntyre, D. (2018-11-26): Technical Report - Molly Gibson Lode Property).
