149

yards distant from it. At this point a trench 15 feet long has been opened
across the strata and ends in a shallow pit from which an opening several
feet deep extends into a rock face. This face is composed of fine-grained
bedded quartzite dipping into the hill at an angle of 47 degrees. At the
bottom of the pit is a bed-like body of hematite about 12 inches thick.
It has the same dip and strike as the overlying quartzites which for a
thickness of several feet are stained red and pink and contain streaks
blotches, and irregular areas sparingly impregnated with hematite. Beneath
the hematite band are highly crumpled and sheared, soft, argillaceous
rocks, stained reddish and in part almost clay-like.

True North

Geological Survey, Canada

Figure 26. Sand Creek iron ore occurrences, Kootenay district, B.C. Localities referred to in
text are indicated, respectively, by letters A, B, and C. Sketch contours are at approxi-
mately 100-foot intervals.

The hematite of the 12-inch layer contains a little vein quartz in the
form of highly fractured veins. The ore is fractured and slickensided
planes are visible. The material is red, fine-grained, compact, and seems
to carry considerable finely disseminated quartz.

About 10 feet in front of the entrance to the cut, a 6-foot hole exposes
a wide mass of vein quartz containing little or no iron ore. The vein
crosscuts the strata which on the hanging-wall side consist of red, crumpled,
shaly material holding irregular patches and stringers of vein quartz.

The hematite layer dips into the hill-side at an angle of 47 degrees
and it and the enclosing strata strike along the hill-side. The rock face in
which the ore now shows approximately marks the plane of a nearly
vertical fault which cuts across the strata at a small angle. The quartz-
ites and hematite layer are on the up-hill side of the fault and dip down-
wards into the hill. The strata occurring down hill from the fault-plane
lie in the relatively uplifted fault block and except at the open-cut which
has been broken across the fault conceal the hematite band because the
measures of the lower slopes act like a thick veneer applied along the
fault-plane, thus concealing the down-thrown layer of ore. The strike of
the strata and of the fault and the course of the hill-side nearly coincide
in direction, so that the horizon of the ore layer may not again come to
the surface or not until the ore has died out.