The Elaine Creek showing is 73 kilometres southeast of Prince Rupert and 63 kilometres southwest of Kitimat.
The north-northwest trending Ecstall Pendant, a metasedimentary-metavolcanic belt within the Central Gneiss Complex, is flanked by granodiorite of the Coast Range Intrusive Complex. The West Grid occurrence, which is located about 4 kilometres southwest of the Ecstall deposit (103H 011), lies within a zone of strong hydrothermal alteration including choritization, sericitization, and silicification.
Disseminated and stringer chalcopyrite and malachite occur in a 120 metre wide belt of quartz-sericite-kyanite schist for about 900 metres. Twelve samples taken along the belt averaged 0.27 per cent copper, with one assaying 1.5 per cent copper (Assessment Report 15488).
Seven grab samples of stringer material averaged 3.04 per cent copper, 0.0695 per cent zinc, 11.7 grams per tonne silver, and 1.525 grams per tonne gold (Assessment Report 16711).
The area also contains mineralized quartz veins in small shear zones within amphibolite. Mineralization consists of pyrite, chalcopyrite, and pyrrhotite.
The Elaine Creek prospect lies within in the central area of the West Grid Alteration Zone (44) and consists of four separate showings well-exposed along the three main branches of Elaine Creek, and on the high ground mid-way between South Elaine Creek and Thirteen Creek. The Elaine Creek showings are very similar to the Phoebe Creek (39) showings and consist of chalcopyrite stringers and disseminated to blebby chalcopyrite, hosted by the quartz-sericite-kyanite schist unit (Hassard et al., 1987c, p.19-20 and Figure 8). The numerous chalcopyrite veinlets are 1 to 3 centimetres wide and can be traced for a few metres. Grab samples from all four showings were averaged for each zone. The best assays from these averaged samples ranged up to 3.04 per cent copper, 913 parts per million zinc, 11.7 parts per million silver, and 1525 parts per billion gold (Hassard et al., 1987c). The assays show a consistent pattern of increasing gold northward over the 800 metre distance between these showings.
Subsequent collection of 50 composite chip samples along Phoebe Creek (Schmidt, 1995) returned best assays of 0.522 per cent copper, 0.492 per cent copper and 0.387 per cent copper.
The West Grid alteration zone encompasses a large area, including the whole of the basin of Thirteen Creek cirque, and extending as far north as Phobe Creek (Hassard et al., 1987b, p.26-27 and Figure 7). The entire West Grid area is also characterized by a broad alteration zone that extends from Phoebe Creek to Thirteen Creek. Alteration consists of strong chloritization, sericitization and silicification over an area of 2.7 square kilometres (Hassard et al., 1987b, p. 21-22 and Figure 7). The alteration zone includes four separate sulphide prospects: Thirteen Creek (103H 054), Sphalerite (103H 070), Elaine Creek (103H 053), and Phoebe Creek (103H 069). Associated with the alteration is a unit of quartz-sericite schist up to 150 metres thick and characterized by chalcopyrite-malachite mineralization and anomalous copper-gold values up to 1.5 per cent copper and 310 parts per billion gold (Hassard et al., 1987b). At Elaine Creek, the footwall (west side) chlorite schist is cut by numerous pyrite stringers which assay up to 0.87 per cent copper (Hassard et al., 1987b). Several large boulders containing polymetallic sulphides have been identified scattered over the floor of the cirque, but the source of this float has not been located.
Exploration work conducted by Kingfisher Resources Ltd. in 2018 consisted of historic data compilation and georeferencing and field work on their Thirteen Creek Zone, which comprises the Phoebe, Elaine and Thirteen Creek showings. All 13 rock samples collected during this program were from around the Elaine Creek showing. The 2018 rock sampling program was successful at confirming the presence of highly anomalous disseminated and stringer hosted copper and gold mineralization (Assessment Report 38410).
The Elaine Creek showing was part of a 2019 airborne VTEM survey conducted over Kingfisher's Ecstall property (Assessment Report 39155).
