The Hepburn Lake occurrence is located at an elevation of approximately 990 metres, south west of Spanish Creek and approximately 650 metres south east of Hepburn Lake.

Regionally, the area lies within the Quesnel Trough and is underlain by Upper Triassic metasedimentary rocks with some intercalated volcanics of the basal part of the Nicola Group. This sequence is overlain to the west by alkali basalt and alkali olivine basalt. The metasedimentary rocks consist of slaty to phyllitic, dark grey to black shale and siltstone and dark brown to black-weathering grey limestone and, increasing in amount up section, banded tuff, volcanic breccia and local pillow lavas.

Locally, the area is underlain by mudstones with minor greywacke interbeds of the Middle-Upper Triassic Nicola Group in the eastern part of the property, while the more western sections are predominantly greywacke and tuffaceous siltstone. Drilling has intersected variable pyrite content in quartz veins and as disseminations, predominantly within the argillaceous and graphitic mudstones, with 10 per cent pyrite common. Bedrock is covered by a variable thickness of glacial materials, including compact till up to 50 metres and glaciofluvial sand and gravel of 3 to 10 metres thickness.

In 2006, a diamond drill hole (06SPM-15) returned three intersections of greater than 0.5 gram per tonne gold including 2.54 grams per tonne over 1.51 metres and 2.29 grams per tonne over 1.52 metres (Assessment Report 29099).

Also at this time, reverse-circulation drilling to the east and south east yielded intercepts of 0.50 gram per tonne gold over 4.58 metres in hole 06SPRC-321, 0.829 gram per tonne gold over 7.62 metres in hole 06SPRC-322, 0.457 gram per tonne gold over 24.39 metres in hole 06SPRC-340 and 0.512 gram per tonne gold over 10.66 metres in hole 06SPRC-347 (Singh, B. (2008-02-11): Technical Report on the Spanish Mountain Property).

Work History

The area has been explored in conjunction with the nearby Spanish Mountain (MINFILE 093A 043) occurrence and a full regional geology and work history summary can be found there.

Acrex Ventures Ltd. completed preliminary prospecting and soil sampling in 2005. A soil grid was established on the Hepburn Lake Group and a total of 323 soil samples were obtained. Acrex completed a program of infill soil sampling, trenching and diamond drilling within the Hepburn Lake group in 2006. A total of 6 excavator trenches and 15 diamond-drill holes (2214.7 metres) were completed. Diamond drilling was designed to test areas of elevated gold-in-soil, and where surface outcrops indicated argillaceous bedrock, the potential hostrocks for gold mineralization.

During 2005 through 2012, Skygold Ventures (Spanish Mountain Gold Ltd.) completed programs of diamond and reverse circulation drilling, rock and soil sampling and geophysical surveys on the area as apart of the Spanish Mountain property.