The Rise (Wingdam) area is underlain by Upper Triassic sediments correlative with the Nicola Group. Most deposits in the region are underlain by rock of the Upper Proterozoic to Lower Paleozoic Snowshoe Group. These rocks have been metamorphosed to greenschist facies and are predominantly metasedimentary.
On the Wingdam Property, quartz veins are associated with acidic intrusions. Small irregular quartz veins, up to 1 m wide have been reported and often occur at the contact between the intrusives and the argillites. Sulphides have been noted in these veins and consist mostly of pyrite with minor galena. Mineralized quartz veins hosted in the Cariboo Group (Minister of Mines Annual Report 1935) were exposed in the underground development at the Wingdam mine (Melvin shaft).
The Rise property was optioned by Rise Resources in late 1986 as a lode gold prospect mainly due to its location in a historically rich placer area. Exploration by Rise Resources began in 1987 with an airborne geophysical survey flown over the entire claim group. The results of this survey were used as a basis for the 1987 ground program. Work consisted of flagging 46 line km on three grids all of which were geophysically surveyed with a VLF-EM 16 and a proton magnetometer to confirm results of the airborne survey. All three grids were geochemically sampled and a total of 646 soil samples were collected. Approximately 800 metres of road was constructed to access geophysical targets for future drilling. The 1988 drill program consisted of nine reverse circulation rotary drill holes totalling 1067 metres. The goal of the drilling was to test two areas on grid 2. A large, broad zone of irregular magnetic lows trending east/west across the northern portion of the claim group was detected during the airborne survey and further defined by the 1987 ground magnetometer survey.
Two fences of three 50 metre spaced rotary holes were drilled across the best defined anomaly, along Everton Creek. All six holes were 122 metres in length. Drillsite construction exposed foliated, chloritic to micaceous to graphitic clastic sediments. These six holes yielded neither mineralized rocks or anomalous gold values.
The other area of exploration was in the vicinity of the old Wingdam underground placer mine. A total of 335 metre in three holes were drilled to test for the cause of an airborne magnetic low, for quartz veins exposed in underground workings, for hydrothermally altered rocks reported to have been encountered during drilling in the 1960's and for a nearby source of the gold found in the rich bedrock gravels.
Of the three holes drilled near the old Wingdam mine, one returned anomalous zinc and lead values and another intersected significant gold values. Elevated lead and zinc values, up to 0.3 per cent and 0.7 per cent respectively, were obtained from hole WG 88-8 (Assessment Report 18558). In hole WG 88-9 gold values of 18.4 grams per tonne and 1.23 grams per tonne, each over 1.5 metre were obtained (Assessment Report 18558).
Further work was anticiapated by Rise Resources in the area of the Wingdam mine to determine the extent of gold bearing mineralization encountered during the 1988 drilling and to explore for other gold bearing structures However, no further work is documented.
Refer to Wingdam (093H 012) and Wingdam Creek (093H 086) for related references.
