Big Gulp, discovered by Barker Minerals Ltd. in 1996, is located 1.5 kilometres south of Cariboo Lake, 17 kilometres northeast of Likely. Work on the property is limited to reconnaissance mapping, some sampling, and a soil geochemical survey. Access to the showing is via gravel logging roads bearing northeast from Likely.
Big Gulp is a stratabound semi-massive sulphide occurrence in the Downey succession (Cambrian?) of the Snowshoe Group. Immediate hostrocks are pale grey to green sericite phyllite and darker chlorite phyllite; both contain abundant dispersed ankerite and variable amounts of calcite. These phyllites are interpreted to be altered mafic tuffs. The phyllites overlie Devonian-Mississippian Quesnel Lake orthogneiss immediately to the southwest and are structurally overlain by a 'chert to cherty tuff' horizon and then argillite.
Mineralization comprises a number of thin layers with dark sphalerite, and minor chalcopyrite and pyrite, dispersed in a siliceous, sericitic matrix. It is streaked parallel to a prominent west-plunging mineral lineation. Sulphides also occur in thin, discontinuous foliation-parallel quartz stringers. A grab sample assayed 4.5 per cent zinc and 0.06 per cent copper (Fieldwork 1997).
The host succession and zinc-copper tenor suggest similarities with Besshi-type massive sulphide mineralization. Alteration, including sericitic, silicification and 'brownish white carbonate' just northwest of the showing, is also characteristic of this deposit type.
Rio Algoma Exploration Inc. surveyed the area as the Mass claims in the early 1990s. Barker Minerals Ltd. prospected and sampled the Frank Creek property in 1998 and 1999. See also Frank Creek (093A 152).