Geology

The Whitehorse Copper Belt is located west of Whitehorse and contains 30+ mines, deposits and showings. Many of the occurrences in the Copper Belt are skarns. The skarns form on or near the contact between the Whitehorse batholith and the Lewes River group. The Whitehorse batholith is commonly a grey coarse-grained hornblende granite and ranges from quartz monzonite to granodiorite to diorite. The Lewes River group contains numerous different rock types, most importantly of which is the limestone group, which is essential in the formation of skarns in the area.  A small number of occurrences within the Copper Belt are vein and/or replacement and occur within the Whitehorse batholith granite.

In the old showings near Polar Lake, minor chalcopyrite and bornite occur in actinolite-epidote-magnetite skarn at a limestone-intrusive contact and in narrow shears near the contact. The limestone is partly altered to serpentine. A lens of stibnite 4.6 m long and 20 cm wide was found in limestone about 610 m south of the lake in 1966. Four channel samples across widths of 0.9 m to 3 m assayed between 15.5% and 27.5% Sb. The IP survey revealed 3 anomalies, one of which was associated with disseminated pyrite. Only minor copper mineralization was intersected in the drilling. In Hole 1, 0.9 m assayed 0.55% Cu and in Hole 3, several short sections assayed between 0.8 and 1.2% Cu.