The Balsam showing is located in the Rocher Deboule Mountain Range approximately 11 kilometres south of South Hazelton.

The area is underlain by clastic sedimentary rocks of the Middle Jurassic to Lower Cretaceous Bowser Lake Group and the Rocher Deboule stock, a porphyritic granodiorite intrusive body which is part of the Late Cretaceous Bulkley Plutonic Suite. A potassium/argon date on biotite from the stock yielded a date of 72 million years (Geological Survey of Canada Open File 2322).

The occurrence is shown on Map 69-1 as a copper occurrence, however, no other information is available. It is assumed to be porphyry-style disseminated copper mineralization.

Work History

In 2010, Dunham Gold Corp. completed a 495 kilometre airborne geophysical survey on its Porphyry Creek property which covered numerous showings including the Balsam area (Assessment Report 31728).

The Porphyry Creek project consists of 13 mineral claims covering an area of 4811 hectares (ca. 2017). The claims overlap a small group of Crown-granted claims that surround the past-producing Red Rose tungsten mine (093M 067) and it is assumed that this area is fully excluded from the property.

The Porphyry Creek property contains eight separate MINFILE occurrences listed as: Armagosa (093M 068), Balsam (093M 059), Big Thing (093M 062), Brian Boru (093M 064), Brunswick (093M 066), Jupiter (093M 065), Sultana (093M 061), and Tina (093M 060). The Brunswick mine had some minor production from two adits driven to 20 and 52 metres, respectively and possibly from open cuts, prior to 1950. Development occurred mainly in the 1920s, and the total amount of ore produced is unknown, but ‘thirty bags’ of handpicked ore are reported from a later operator in 1954. Other occurrences that are reported to have some old development workings include the Armagosa and the Brian Boru, consisting of small open cuts and short adits. The Sultana prospect has had more extensive past exploration, including substantial trenching (essentially small-scale mining) and limited drilling on a high grade silver vein. This prospect was the main focus of an exploration and drilling program in 2010 and 2011 that identified extensive low grade copper and molybdenum mineralization below and to the northwest of the historical workings.

Refer to Sultana (093M 061) for further details of the Porphyry Creek property work history, of which the Balsam area was part of.