The Backburn Central showing is located 10.2 kilometres southwest of Spences Bridge, at an elevation of 1450 metres. The property can be accessed via the Botanie Lake Road, which is along Highway 12, approximately 1 kilometre northeast of its junction with the Trans-Canada Highway. An alternative access point may be gained via the Sleetis Creek Road, which is located approximately 9 kilometres from the start of Botanie Lake Road. The Sleetis Creek and Skoonka Forestry roads are linked via a 1.5 kilometre connecting road dubbed the “JJ Connector”, which was built in 2006 to allow easier access through the property and is where the JJ showing is situated. The Backburn area is accessible via a 2.6 kilometre road that begins at the intersection of the Sleetis 90 forestry road and the JJ Connector. The road then follows topography along the existing fire break, where the Backburn area can be accessed by foot.

Regionally, the northwest-southeast–trending Cretaceous Spences Bridge Group is part of the southern Intermontane tectonic belt of the Canadian Cordillera. The Spences Bridge Group volcanics are faulted against older plutonic and related metamorphic rocks of the Triassic-Jurassic Mount Lytton Complex. The dominant rock types within the area are subaerial andesite flows and tuffs, overlain by amygdule-rich basaltic flows. Minor felsic flows occur within these intermediate and mafic rocks, along with some sandstone, shale and conglomerate units. Stratigraphy is intruded by abundant Late Triassic and/or Jurassic to Miocene plutons. Metamorphic assemblages consist of Cache Creek Complex mélanges and Bridge River Complex metamorphic and ultramafic rocks. Quaternary sediments occur as thick drifts along the main rivers and some of the larger creeks. Major structural features in the region are steeply dipping normal faults, oriented subparallel to the western-bounding Fraser (River) fault system. The faults have two dominant trends: northwest-southeast and north-south (Assessment Report 34626). The Deadwood, Ember, Discovery and Backburn gold showings define a 3-kilometre-long corridor of low-grade gold mineralization (Assessment Report 34636).

Locally, the Spences Bridge Group is overlain by Tertiary mafic to felsic volcanics of the Kamloops and Princeton groups, which are in turn cut by small intrusions of intermediate composition. The Spences Bridge Group underlying the Skoonka Creek property is further divided into two assemblages, the Pimainus Formation and the Spius Creek Formation. Above the basal conglomerate, the Pimainus Formation is a predominantly volcaniclastic package comprising subaerial andesite ash, crystal, and lapilli tuffs (Assessment Report 29084). These flows are poorly sorted, weakly to non-bedded, and may contain up to 50 percent amygdules. Sandstone, shale, and conglomerate units can also be found alongside the andesite flows within the Pimainus Formation. The Spius Creek Formation overlies the Pimainus Formation and comprises amygdule-rich basaltic flows. Bedding is often apparent in the fine-grained tuff units throughout the property, oriented at a northwesterly strike and dipping between 0 and 40 degrees to both the northeast and southwest (Assessment Report 28182). Within the Backburn Central anomaly, outcrop is moderately abundant and consists of a mixture of Pimainus crystal tuff and lapilli tuffs, minor sandstone and Spius flows.

Mineralization is coincident with abundant float and subcrop occurrences of brecciated volcanic rocks that are variably oxidized with locally developed stockwork in a quartz ± carbonate ± chlorite matrix. This occurs as a mixture of andesite crystal and lapilli tuffs with centimetre-scale stockwork and discontinuous quartz veins. Silica alteration occurs as pervasive to localized zones associated with thin quartz veinlets or stockwork veining mineralization in the host rock (Assessment Report 29084). Weak limonite alteration also occurs along fracture planes and trace to minor fine-grained, disseminated pyrite occurs in the wall rock adjacent to veining. Clay alteration is usually weak to moderate in intensity and occurs as localized envelopes or patchy zones. Hematite alteration is present, but likely not related to hydrothermal processes. There are two styles of gold mineralization: (1) multi-stage massive, banded veins with associated breccia zones and intense proximal silica to distal argillic alteration and (2) narrow stockwork veinlets with disseminated pyrite and moderate silica, minor carbonate, limonite and clay alteration. The second style is more common in the Backburn showings (Assessment Report 34626).

The Backburn Central trench returned composite samples with 219 parts per billion gold over 3 metres and 311 parts per billion gold over 9 metres (Assessment Report 29084). Backburn Central shows anomalous soil samples centred on a 1296 parts per billion gold grab sample (regional sample 8750E/80550N; Map 15; Assessment Report 29084).

Work History

In 2005, work completed by Strongbow Exploration Inc. in the Backburn area consisted of 294 samples taken at 50 metre station spacing and 50 metre line spacing to infill a portion of the 2005 regional soil survey. Five ground magnetic surveys were completed between April 2 and September 2, 2006, contributing to a total of 33.7 line-kilometres. This sampling extended the regional grid 500 metres to the east and 300 metres to the south and identified two areas of interest: Backburn Central and Backburn South. Backburn Central and Backburn South were followed up with detailed prospecting and soil trenching later that year. Strongbow’s 2007 exploration program consisted of property and detailed mapping, grid and trench soil sampling (2262 samples), surface to trench rock sampling (783 samples), mechanized and hand trenching (432 metres), ground geophysics (33.9 line-kilometres of magnetometer surveying), airborne geophysics (580 line-kilometre DIGHEM V survey), diamond drilling (3147 metres in 13 holes; 1129 core samples assayed) and road construction (1.46 kilometres). The property-scale mapping (1:10 000) focused on the contact between the Spius Creek and Pimainus formations while detailed mapping (1:2 500) was conducted over the Backburn and Zebra showings. The airborne magnetic, electromagnetic and radiometric surveys covered the 2006 airborne survey area. The fall diamond drilling program tested the Deadwood (six holes), Ember (two holes), Backburn (four holes), and JJ (one hole) zones.

In 2013 and 2015, Strongbow completed programs of geological mapping, prospecting and geochemical (rock and soil sampling) on the Skoonka property.

In 2017 and 2018, Westhaven Ventures completed programs of geochemical (rock and soil) sampling, 2376 line-kilometres of airborne magnetic and radiometric surveys, 31.8 line-kilometres of ground magnetic surveys, a 6 line-kilometre passive seismic survey and 29 diamond drill holes, totalling 11 882 metres, on the area as part of the Spences Bridge Group (SBG) of properties.

In 2019, Westhaven completed a program of prospecting, geochemical (rock and soil) sampling, petrographic and Terraspec analysis on select 2018 drillcore samples, a LiDAR survey, 327 line-kilometres of ground magnetic surveys, a 20.3 line-kilometre DC resistivity survey and 49 diamond drillholes, totalling 21 849.3 metres, on the Spences Bridge Group (SBG) of properties.

In 2020, Westhaven completed a further program of geochemical (rock, silt and soil) sampling, various ground geophysical surveys and 102 diamond drill holes, totalling 43 268.7 metres, on the Spences Bridge Group (SBG) of properties.