McBride Geological Setting

For complete information concerning the McBride River Property please click here to review in detail the November 2005 McBride River Geophysical Report prepared by Laurence Stephenson, P.Eng. and updated in April 2007.

Regional Geology
The regional geology of this area is well summarized by Yeager and others in their various assessment reports and was confirmed in a broad scale by the author of the Report during his time in the area with visits to other regional showings and on the property directly.

The discontinuous succession of volcanic and sedimentary strata is bounded to the north and east by the northwesterly trending King Salmon Thrust fault and to the west and southwest by the Triassic-Jurassic granodiorites of the Hotailuh batholith. The upper plate of the King Salmon Thrust consists of the ultramafic - sedimentary Mississippian – Permian Cache Creek group which also contains the volcanics of the Kutcho formation and the sedimentary lower Jurrasic Laberge Group Inklin formation.

Between these two geological boundaries and hosting the Company’s claim group is a succession of volcanic and sedimentary island arc environment rocks ranging in age from upper Triassic Sinwa Formation to middle Jurassic Hazelton group (in part “Toodoggone Volcanics”) and include the upper Triassic Stuhini volcanics to the west of the McBride Property. The trend of these rock units is generally northwest (parallel to the King Salmon Thrust) but dip, depending on local deformation, is to the southwest or northeast.

Throughout the region are younger, coarse, clastic sedimentary and basalt lava rocks of the Tertiary to Quaternary age in small scattered and inconspicuous pods.

Deformation of the area is believed to be related to the movement along the King Salmon Thrust and a conjugate system of northeasterly trending block faults which cut the geological units.

The McBride Property’s geology was mapped in the early 1980’s exploration program and was shown to be underlain by green and purplish red volcanic and volcanoclastic strata dipping gently to the east (5° - 30°) with the steeper dips to the east (Figure 4). The author of the Report relied on the previous workers (Yeager, Ikona early 1980's and Rayner mid 1980's) mapping for most of this section adding his observations where appropriate.

The oldest rocks in the vicinity of the claims consist of sub-aerial red, maroon and grey volcanic tuff and breccia (Telkwa Formation) overlain by a coarse conglomerate, an intermediate unit of dark grey to black shales, siltstones and tuffs with minor greywackes and an upper unit of grey green marine andesites and tuffs. This formation is overlain by greywacke, shale and minor conglomerate that is reported to be the part of the Laberge Group and the southern most extent of the Whitehorse Trough.

The western and southern portion of the McBride Property is underlain by massive andesite flows and pyroclastics, including the “sheared and mineralized” andesite agglomerate. Angular to sub-angular fragments of maroon porphyritic volcanics (quartz eyes) and green volcanics up to 20 millimetres and breccia fragments up to four centimetres were observed by the author of the Report. The area of the mineralized shear zone has what appears to be pillow selvage rims which suggest tops to the south. These volcanics appear to be part of the Telkwa Formation.

Tuffs and shales (Takwahoni Facies Laberge Group) were found on the eastern portion of the McBride Property and appear to strike north south. The argillites on the east side of the Discovery Vein are possibly part of this unit as it appears to be close to the fault mapped contact.

On the extreme south of the McBride Property, tuffs and fine grained sediments with some limestone members (“Toodoggone Volcanics”) are located. This unit appears to overlie the black shale and argillite to the southeast.

An intrusive diorite dyke was noted to the southeast of the property while fine grained diorite or andesite intrude the argillites. Contact relationships between the green and purplish volcanic strata, including the agglomerates, was reported as appearing to be normal and conformable.

The dominant McBride Property scale structures are related to the northwesterly striking King Salmon Thrust fault. Imbricate thrust faulting, as well as open style folding parallel to this major fault direction are reported. The contact between the Telkwa and Takwahoni units is mapped as a parallel northwesterly structure. A “conjugate” northeasterly trending block fault system is observed in regional linears and regional fracture system between 25° to 40° with a vertical dip. The shear zone mapped around the Discovery vein follows this trend and it was measured in the north creek side showing.

Fracture density in outcrop was reported to vary from 1.0 metre to 0.1 metre spacing and air photo interpreted linears were in places only 100 metres apart. Fractures in outcrop ranged from hairline to discrete tension gashes up to 50 centimetres wide, with stockworks up to 3 metres across composed of anastamosing veinlets 5-10 centimetres apart were observed to be parallel or sub-parallel to the northeast trend.