Economic Geology

of the veins, taking several samples of highly pyritized material. Assay returns
on this material showed a gold content as high as 6 ounces in one sample.
They later returned to the showings via Sandifer Lake and staked the fourteen
claims.

As these claims are in a part of the area difficult to reach and were staked
at the end of the writer’s last season of field work, they were not visited.
However, R. A. Stuart of the British Columbia Department of Mines, who
was stationed at Kemano visited the showings with Smith and Nash and
reported in the British Columbia Minister of Mines Annual Report for 1952,
as follows:

The veins are near the eastern contact of the Coast Range batholith on an
anticlinal structure. The country rock on the east side of the group consists
of interbedded greenstones and gneissic quartzites on the west; nearer the batholith
it consists of granitic gneisses containing numerous pegmatite bands and dykes
and occasional barren quartz veins.

The only vein examined occupies a shear zone striking northwest and
dipping southwest. It outcrops continuously between elevations 4,500 feet and
5,000 feet in a steep shear-controlled gulley on the northeasternmost claim of
the group. At the top of the gulley the vein, which is here about 4 feet wide,
disappears beneath talus on a small bench and could not be located in the
bluffs above. At the 4,500 foot elevation the only place where the vein is
accessible, it swells to a width of about 15 feet then pinches out abruptly. The
sheared zone, about 8 feet in width, continues below the pinch-out of the quartz
but flattens in dip and swings to a more easterly strike.

The only visible metallic mineral is pyrite, which occurs as disseminated
blebs and stringers in the quartz. Several stringers of massive granular pyrite
from 2 to 6 inches wide occur on the hanging wall and footwall of the lowest
seen part of the vein, and in the sheared zone below the quartz pinch-out. The
sheared wall rock is only slightly mineralized.

The following type samples were taken by Stuart.

Gold Silver
(ounces per ton) (ounces per ton)
heen enalizeds v.cinecc Waltzes essere : 0.39 0.28
2. Massive pyrite from a S-inch stringer ............ DS) ES
Bee Sheaned gyal =1.0 C Kereaee sees cents eee ener 0.09 0.1

A sample of the highly pyritized material given to the writer by George
Smith, one of the stakers, gave an assay of 3.14 ounces of gold a ton.

Some development work was done on the claims during 1953 but results
were disappointing. The writer met Mr. Smith during the 1954 season and
was told that only one vein was auriferous. af

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