37

shack at elevation 3,250 feet. The claims have been restaked several times
during the past twenty years, but very little work has been done aside
from the building of a trail.

The country rock comprises a thick series of andesitic flows. Between
elevations of 3,500 and 3,700 feet a granodiorite dyke about 200 feet wide
intrudes the volcanics. The mountain rises abruptly in an easterly direc-
tion along the strike of the dyke and falls steeply on the west. A pit
sunk on a 3-foot lamprophyre dyke, which cuts the granodiorite at eleva-
tion 3,650 feet, failed to reveal any minerals.

Diorite Group (28)
References: Ann, Repts., Minister of Mines, B.C.: 1916, p. 98; 1929, p. 152; 1981, p. 71.

The Diorite claims are less than half-a mile west of Skeena river on
Hardscrabble creek, and are reached by way of a wagon road about one
mile long from Pitman flag station. In 1916 Stanley Ross and Sons did
some surface work and shipped 104 tons of hand-sorted copper ore to the
Anyox smelter, which gave returns of 65 cents in gold and silver to the
ton and 5-2 per cent copper. Some years later the property was acquired
by J. M. Dechene, who carried on a little prospecting prior to his death
in 1930.

The predominant rocks on the claims, fine-grained, andesitic volcanics,
are cut by fine-grained, pinkish white, quartz-albite dykes. The dykes are
composed of about 50 per cent quartz and 50 per cent albite phenocrysts,
both microscopically crystalline. Small dykes and stocks of oligoclase
diorite porphyry intrude the andesites and cut the quartz-albite dykes.

Half a mile west of the railway Hardscrabble creek flows through a
narrow canyon with vertical rock walls 150 feet high. Near the top of the
rock bluffs, at an elevation of 640 feet on the north side of the creek,
a 20- by 20-foot open-cut and a 15-foot adit explore a quartz-albite dyke
mineralized along minor faults and small fracture planes by narrow seams
of chalcopyrite with minor amounts of bornite. The sulphides also occur
along the contacts of several small 6-inch dykes of oligoclase diorite
porphyry that traverse the quartz-albite dyke in irregular fashion.

Twenty-five feet down the face of the bluff a 20-foot adit was driven
north into the dyke. It is reached from the upper working by a ladder that
runs down the vertical rock face. Some good ore in this adit came from
along a small fault striking north.

In the 15-foot adit 4 inch of solid chalcopyrite occurs along a small
fault striking northwest. A picked sample taken from the partly replaced
wall-rock, a few inches on both sides of the fault plane, assayed: gold, a
trace; silver, 0-30 ounce a ton; copper, 2°50 per cent. From a nearby
10-ton ore dump a representative sample was collected which assayed:
gold, a trace; silver, 0:20 ounce a ton; copper, 1:84 per cent. As the
sulphides in the dyke comprise less than 1 per cent by volume of the whole
rock mass, there is insufficient copper present to make a large low-grade
ore-body.

About 300 feet farther west a third short adit was driven on the
opposite side of the creek to explore volcanic rocks mineralized along
jointing planes with chalcopyrite and bornite.