The Sphalerite showing is located west of Ecstall River. It is 74.4 kilometres southeast of Prince Rupert, B.C. and 63.4 kilometres southwest of Kitimat.
The area is underlain by part of the north trending Ecstall Pendant, a metavolcanic-metasedimentary belt within the Central Gneiss Complex. The belt is approximately 8 kilometres wide and trends 170 degrees. It is bounded to the west by the Ecstall Pluton and to the east by the Quottoon Pluton, which are part of the extensive Coast Range Intrusive Complex.
The Ecstall Pendant consists mainly of hornblende-plagioclase amphibolites with lesser amounts of quartzite, marble, migmatite and granitoid rocks of late Paleozoic or early Mesozoic age. These rocks have been metamorphosed to the amphibolite facies and are locally migmatitic along pluton margins.
Mineralization at the Sphalerite occurrence consists of a 4-centimetre-wide by 2.2-metre-long band of sphalerite within a green, medium-grained, calc-silicate horizon at the contact between quartz-chlorite-biotite schist and marble. A grab sample (AD01700) contained 6.00 per cent zinc, 0.06 per cent copper, 1.5 grams per tonne silver and 0.0746 per cent cadmium (Assessment Report 16711).
The Sphalerite showing lies within the West Grid Alteration zone (103H 053) and crops out at 465 metres elevation, 250 metres north of Thirteen Creek (Hassard et al., 1987b, p.19 and Figure 8). A four-centimetre-thick layer of banded sphalerite is exposed in one small outcrop over a 2.2-metre strike length along the contact between quartz-chlorite-biotite schist and a marble unit. The immediate host rock is green, medium-grained calc-silicate rock. A grab sample assayed 6.0 per cent zinc, 579 parts per million copper, 28 parts per million lead, 1.5 parts per million silver, 15 parts per billion gold and 746 parts per million cadmium (Hassard et al., 1987b).
The Sphalerite showing was included in the 2019 airborne VTEM survey over Kingfisher Resources Ltd.'s Ecstall property. The airborne survey was aimed at detection of structures and/or conductors related to potential Cu-Au-Zn-Ag VMS-style mineralization (Assessment Report 39155).
