British Columbia Ministry of Energy, Mines and Natural Gas and Responsible for Housing
News | The Premier Online | Ministries & Organizations | Job Opportunities | Main Index

MINFILE Home page  ARIS Home page  MINFILE Search page  Property File Search
Help Help
File Created: 31-Jan-1989 by Peter S. Fischl (PSF)
Last Edit:  10-Jul-2012 by George Owsiacki (GO)

Summary Help Help

NMI
Name GOLDKEISH Mining Division Skeena
BCGS Map 103P032
Status Past Producer NTS Map 103P05W
Latitude 055º 22' 35'' UTM 09 (NAD 83)
Longitude 129º 47' 30'' Northing 6136962
Easting 449834
Commodities Gold, Silver, Silica, Zinc, Lead Deposit Types I05 : Polymetallic veins Ag-Pb-Zn+/-Au
I07 : Silica veins
Tectonic Belt Coast Crystalline Terrane Bowser Lake, Wrangell
Capsule Geology

The Goldkeish occurrence is located on the west side of Bocking Peninsula, about 4.5 kilometres south of Anyox on Observatory Inlet. The Goldkeish vein produced silica flux for the copper smelter at Anyox between 1914 and 1935. This occurrence is not to be confused with the Golskeish Quartz mine (103P 027) which is located about 3 kilometres to the southwest on Granby Peninsula.

The region is underlain by a roof pendant, consisting of volcanic and sedimentary rocks, within the Eocene Coast Plutonic Complex. These rocks have been correlated with the Middle-Upper Jurassic Hazelton Group and the Middle Jurassic Bowser Lake Group. The volcanics consist of variably chloritized pillow and massive basalt with minor mafic tuffs. The overlying sediments consist of argillite, siltstone and sandstone with minor chert and limestone. There are two observable phases of folding in the area, an initial north-northeast trending phase followed by a later east-northeast trending phase.

The Goldkeish vein occurs within a turbidite sequence of medium to coarse-grained sandstone with subordinate siltstone and minor argillite. The vein is hosted entirely in a siltstone/argillite unit that strikes between 020 and 030 degrees and dips 50 to 60 degrees east. The vein is parallel to bedding, which is common to veins in the Anyox area, striking 025 degrees and dipping 60 degrees east. The vein varies from 1.2 to 1.8 metres in width over a known strike length of 180 metres. A graphitic shear zone in the argillite forms the footwall of the quartz vein.

The vein exhibits marginal banding or ribbon texture, similar to other stratabound quartz veins in the area. Lenses and stringers of pyrite, sphalerite and less frequently galena, are developed in the margins, parallel to the vein.

Chip sampling of the underground workings resulted in low and generally erratic gold and silver values, assaying up to 6.61 grams per tonne gold and 16.6 grams per tonne silver over a 1.5 metre width (Assessment Report 18127). Gold is suspected to be carried in the galena.

The Goldkeish vein is reported to have produced approximately 45,000 tonnes of quartz between 1928 and 1935 from 255 metres of underground workings (Assessment Report 18127). This tonnage is similar to that reported for the Golskeish Quartz mine, indicating that production figures for these two mines have been confused or combined.

In 2006, a helicopter-borne magnetometer survey was carried out on behalf of Cambria Geosciences Inc. on the Kitsault Project. The airborne survey was flown at 100 metre line spacings totalling 2057 line kilometres.

Bibliography
EMPR ASS RPT *18127, 29106
EMPR BULL 63
EMPR FIELDWORK 1985, pp. 211-216; 1988, pp. 233-240; 1990, pp. 235-243; 2005, pp. 1-4
EMPR MAP 8
EMPR OF 1986-2; 1994-14
EMPR PF (Alldrick, D. (1986): Anyox Map; In 103P 022 - Fox, J.S. (1988): First Summary of Field Work)
GSC MAP 307A; 1385A
GSC OF 864; 3453

COPYRIGHT | DISCLAIMER | PRIVACY | ACCESSIBILITY