The Tent occurrence is located in the northeastern head waters of the Klaskish River, at an elevation of approximately 350 metres.
The area lies within the Insular Belt of the Cordillera and is underlain mainly by volcanics, crystalline rocks and minor sediments. Andesitic to rhyodacitic lava, tuff and breccia of the Lower Jurassic Bonanza Group overlie an assemblage consisting of sediments of the Paleozoic Sicker Group and basalts and minor carbonate and clastic sediments of the Upper Triassic Vancouver Group. The Bonanza volcanics are coeval with, or genetically related to, granodiorite stocks of the Jurassic Island Plutonic Suite which intrude all older rocks.
The Tent occurrence lies at the faulted contact between Vancouver Group Karmutsen Formation tholeiitic basalts and Bonanza Group andesite. A small northwest-elongated amphibolite quartz diorite has intruded the contact area. Dacite-rhyolite and quartz diorite dykes are common. Faulting and shearing is prominent. Chlorite and carbonate alteration is present on fractures in the intrusive rock.
Traces of disseminated and fracture coating pyrite, molybdenite and chalcopyrite occur in biotite-kaolinite altered intrusive rocks and volcanics, and in 3-millimetre quartz stringers that occur at a frequency of about 3 per metre. The main zone of intrusive hosted copper-molybdenum mineralization is reported to have minimum dimensions of 300 by 600 metres.
Work History
Rio Tinto is thought to have conducted mapping, geochemistry and trenching on the Tent property in the 1960s. Vanco Explorations staked the claims covering the prospect in 1969 and followed up in 1970 by collecting 2225 soil samples and conducting IP and ground magnetics surveys. They also excavated 65 trenches. Branta Explorations drilled two holes totalling 184 metres. In 1974, Imperial Oil Limited drilled five holes totalling 497 metres.
No other work is documented prior to the 1991 work program of Stow Resources Ltd. which included the collection of 41 rock samples and the 65 stream silt samples. Grab sampling yielded up to 0.28 per cent copper, 0.1 gram per tonne gold and 0.074 per cent molybdenum (Assessment Report 22167, page 7). Also at this time, a 50-metre continuous chip sample averaged 0.09 per cent copper (Assessment Report 22167, page 7).
No other significant work was conducted on the property until 2010, when Compliance Energy Corp. acquired the NIC property and performed early-stage exploration, which included geological mapping, soil and rock geochemistry and airborne geophysical surveys. The 2010 exploration program confirmed the existence of a previously indicated copper-molybdenum porphyry system in the NIC North area. A sample (17420) from a mineralized granodiorite outcrop with 10 per cent quartz-sulphide stringers yielded 0.244 gram per tonne gold, 2.88 grams per tonne silver and 0.381 per cent copper (Assessment Report 31915).
In 2011, Compliance completed nine holes totalling 2065 metres of diamond drilling at NIC North to delineate the suspected portion of the Tent porphyry copper-molybdenum deposit. Highlights of the 2011 drilling program include hole 11-NICN-04, which returned an intercept of 0.1013 per cent copper, 0.026 gram per tonne gold and 0.77 gram per tonne silver (Assessment Report 32773).
In 2019, First Geolas Consulting completed a minor program of prospecting and rock sampling on the area as the Nic property. Two rock samples (samples Y993852 and Y993853) of strongly silicified and sericite-altered granodiorite hosting numerous quartz-pyrite-chalcopyrite-molybdenite veinlets were collected in a road cut of a new logging road, approximately 400 metres north of the plotted location of the Tent occurrence, and returned 0.199 and 0.649 per cent copper, respectively (Assessment Report 38879).
