The Fram Northeast is a minor lead showing located 10 kilometres southwest of Mount Sylvia in the mountainous Muskwa Ranges of the Northern Rocky Mountains (Assessment Report 2875, Map 1). The main mineralization in this general locality is covered by the Fram copper showing (MINFILE 094F 004) a related occurrence located 2.75 kilometres to the south.
These occurrences are in a region known as the Muskwa anticlinorium, a major north-northwest trending structure characterized by large, folded thrust sheets that expose rocks as old as Middle Proterozoic (Helikian), as well as Paleozoic rocks (Geological Survey of Canada Map 1343A; Geological Society of America, Geology of North America, Volume G-2, page 639). All belong to Ancestral North America (Geological Survey of Canada Map
1713A). The Middle Proterozoic rocks are pre-Windermere Supergroup, and are known as the Muskwa Assemblage (Geological Society of America, Geology of North America, Volume G-2, page 111).
This assemblage of carbonate and clastic rocks has been divided into seven formations. The Fram Northeast showing is mostly in the Aida Formation, a 1200- to 1800-metre thick succession of dolomitic mudstone and siltstone; dolostone and minor mudstone, sandstone and limestone (Geological Survey of Canada Memoir 373, Paper 67-68). In this area, as well as regionally, these rocks are unconformably overlain by Lower Cambrian sedimentary rocks of the Atan Group. All rocks are gently folded, and some have slaty cleavage. The Proterozoic rocks are cut by northwest- to northeast-striking, steeply west-dipping diabase and gabbro dikes.
At the Fram Northeast showing, the Aida Formation generally strikes northwest and dips approximately 20 degrees southwest. The Atan Group to the east, apparently in fault contact, consists of a thin basal conglomerate and quartzite, overlain by thick-bedded dolostones (Assessment Report 2875; Geological Survey of Canada Map 1343A). A vertical shear zone occurs in the Aida Formation 250 metres west of this contact. Within the shear zone is a north-northeast–striking quartz-carbonate vein containing galena, and probably pyrite. A chip sample was assayed at 9.6 per cent lead and 116 grams per tonne silver (Assessment Report 2875, Map 1).
Work History
In 1970, Windermere Exploration Ltd. completed a program of geological mapping and rock sampling on the area as the Fram claims.