The Big Thing showing is located at the headwaters of Corya Creek, 17 kilometres south of New Hazelton.
The area of the showing is intruded by porphyritic granodiorite of the Late Cretaceous Rocher Deboule stock of the Bulkley Plutonic Suite. This stock intrudes andesitic rocks of the Cretaceous Kasalka Group in the area of the Big Thing. Further north the stock intrudes sedimentary rocks of the Jurassic to Cretaceous Bowser Group and possibly the Lower Cretaceous Skeena Group.
A molybdenum-copper occurrence is reported on Map 69-1. This was all the information on the showing until 2010. Three samples were taken from this showing in 2010 by Dunham Gold, who reports that the Big Thing area of interest lies close to the margin of the Rocher Deboule stock. The lithologies were reported to be almost identical to those described at the Tina West (093M 060) which were pyritic tuffs. Chalcopyrite-bearing veinlets are reported to occur at the Big Thing. One sample was anomalous in gold, silver and arsenic but the values were reported to be well below economic levels.
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 Big Thing showing (Assessment Report 31728).
In 2010, Ranex Exploration Inc./Duncastle Gold Corp. conducted site visits to Sultana (093M 061), Tina North (093M 060), Big Thing and MT (093M 063); 480 soil samples were collected and three diamond-drill holes were completed for a total of 1330.5 metres (Assessment Report 32516). The Sultana prospect was the main focus of the 2010 exploration and drilling program. Site visits were also made to the MT showing, the Big Thing showing and various areas of geophysical interest around the Tina showing. The Big Thing geophysical anomaly, which was the second most prospective of the east side porphyry targets, requires more follow up as the sampling showed promise.
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.
In 2018, Lansdown Holdings completed a minor program of prospecting and soil and rock sampling on the area.
Refer to Sultana for details for further details of the Porphyry Creek property work.
