Palm Springs

VMS Targets just west of the Eskay Creek Mine

The Palm Springs Property has been optioned.

The Palm Springs property is located north and west of the Eskay Creek Mine in northwest, B.C.

Palm Springs Location Map

Eskay Creek Discovery and Mineralization

Gold and silver prospects have been explored at Eskay Creek since Tom Mackay's initial staking in 1932. At least 12 different companies optioned and explored the ground prior to Murray Pezim's Calpine Resources, with activity ranging from numerous surface drill campaigns to underground development on two zones. Calpine undertook a re-evaluation of the north-central portion of the property where a 1985 drill hole on the #21 Zone returned 4.18 g/t Au over 20.1 m. Surface work by Calpine indicated potential untested extensions to this mineralization and six drill holes were drilled on a soil geochemical anomaly. DDH CA88-06 cut a thick lens of massive stibnite and realgar bearing mudstone with grades of 45.6 g/t Au over 16 m. When combined with the adjacent modestly mineralized tuff, this hole produced a cumulative intercept of 25.78 g/t Au over 29.4 m.

VMS mineralization at Eskay Creek is hosted in the Contact Mudstone (variably sheared and fractured graphitic mudstone) between an underlying rhyolite breccia and overlying andesite flows. The Contact Mudstone unit contains massive to semi-massive sulphides (pyrite, sphalerite, galena, chalcopyrite) and very high precious metal content. It ranges from several to tens of meters thick. The Contact Zone does not outcrop on surface. Most drill holes were collared in the hangingwall andesite, drilled through the Contact Mudstone and footwall rhyolite units, and stopped when they encountered footwall dacite.

Palm Springs Exploration Targets

The Palm Springs property contains two prospects for Eskay style VMS mineralization: Palm Springs and Mt. Shirley. These were a Barrick Gold regional target in 2002 due to BCGS regional geochemical stream data anomalies at inferred contact mudstone horizons. Other target areas include Casper, Ernie Creek, Triple Fault, and Tom.

Palm Springs Targets

Palm Springs

The Palm Springs showing is located north of the Eskay Mine Road in the northern portion of the property. Streams draining this area are anomalous in gold, mercury (Hg), and antimony (Sb). The focus of previous work has been on a saddle-like depression between outcrops of volcanics on the west and black siltstones on the east. No outcrop is exposed within the depression, but outcrops are present in the steep side creeks that drain the area. Up to 5% realgar and abundant orpiment staining is visible within a brecciated zone north of the Saddle. Grab samples have returned >3.0% As and >16000 ppb Hg. Pb, Zn, and Cu are also anomalous.

Mt. Shirley

Mt. Shirley contains rocks of the Lower Jurassic Betty Creek, Mt. Dilworth, and Salmon River Formations outcropping at surface - a similar stratigraphic sequence to that seen at Eskay Creek. Mineralized quartz veins located in andesitic rocks of the Betty Creek Formation have returned up to 10.61% Cu and 2.09% Ni.

Casper

The Casper vein, discovered by Decoors in 2016, has been advanced by Garibaldi Resources from 2017-2022. Exploration at Casper has highlighted a 300 m long mineralized surface vein system with rock samples yielding >1 - 249 g/t Au within a 500 m wide anomalous gold-in-soil zone. Intersections from 2021 drilling yielded 10.15 g/t Au over 4.5 m including a 29.94 g/t Au intercept over 1.5 m within silicified volcanics.

Ernie Creek

Ernie Creek contains up to 4m wide mineralized quartz veins and 15m wide quartz breccia zones. Historical Noranda sampling returned assays of 50.7 g/t, 60.4 g/t, and 84 g/t Au. Sampling by Decoors in 2016 returned 20.8 g/t Au and >3% Cu.

Triple Fault

At Triple Fault, 2 NE strking faults strike towards the regional N-S striking Harrymel-Unuk fault. The faults appear responsible for chloritization, silicifcation, and mineralization of diorite dykes and fine-grained black argillites. Samples have returned up to 2.5 g/t Au, 2% Cu, and 5% Zn.

Tom

At Tom, values up to 4.25% Cu occur in chalcopyrite bearing quartz veins in the Lehto Porphyry. Disseminated pyrite and local chalcopyrite is also found in quartz-sericite alteration associated with major faults.