This occurrence is based on a few small zinc-copper showings in the DPP No.3 claim in the Driftpile Pass area, 14 kilometres southwest of the confluence of the Gataga and South Gataga rivers in the Muskwa Ranges of Northern British Columbia (Assessment Report 7290, Figure 9).

The DPP property is in the Gataga mineral district, in a belt of Proterozoic and Paleozoic basinal-facies sedimentary strata known as the Kechika Trough, part of Ancestral North America (Exploration and Mining Geology, Volume 1, page 1; Geological Survey of Canada Map 1713A). Locally the area is underlain by a steeply southwest-dipping succession consisting of, from northeast to southwest: the Cambrian Atan Group; the Cambro-Ordovician Kechika Group; the Ordovician to Lower Devonian Road River Group; and the Devono-Mississippian Earn Group, represented by the informally named Gunsteel Formation (Assessment Report 7290; Geological Survey of Canada Memoir 373, Map 1343A). The last unit is host to important stratiform barite-lead-zinc mineralization at the Driftpile Creek deposit a few kilometres to the southwest (MINFILE 094K 066). Similar mineralization may exist in the baritic facies of Gunsteel Formation rocks in the DPP property, as suggested by lead soil anomalies (Assessment Report 7290). However, the DPP No.3 occurrence is based on a different form of mineralization, lower in the stratigraphy, namely zinc and copper mineralization near the top of the Atan Group.

In this area, the Atan Group comprises a lower quartzite unit and an upper unit of massive, blue-grey micritic limestone, forming a ridge of steep cliffs. To the southwest, the overlying Kechika Group apparently consists of orange-brown weathering, dark grey argillaceous limestone and dark grey calcareous shale or slate. These and the younger units are moderately to tightly folded and are cut by steep reverse faults. The strata strike about 320 degrees and dip 75 degrees southwest.

Minor showings of sphalerite, galena, chalcopyrite and malachite are distributed erratically along the trace of the upper contact of the Atan Group limestone (Assessment Reports 6736, 7290). This occurrence is positioned towards the northern end of them. The mineralization is localized in calcitic fracture-fillings and in breccia. Well-formed crystals of sphalerite also occur in argillaceous bands in the limestone.

Work History

In 1977 and 1978, Texasgulf Canada Ltd. completed programs geological mapping and geochemical (silt and soil) sampling on the area as the DPP 1-7 claims of the Driftpile Pass property.