Work History

Staked as Dark Moth cl (39046) in April 1937 by W. Teare and optioned in 1938 to T.C. Richards and E. Keobke, who built a 107 m aerial tramway and a 1.8 tonne gravity fed stamp mill. The mill briefly produced 12.7 tonnes of ore from an opencut and shipped one brick containing 2,613 g gold with 20% silver. The milling equipment was subsequently moved to the nearby Laforma property (MINFILE occurrence 115I 054) in the winter of 1938-1939.

Re-staked as Hope cl 1 (69842) in October 1954 by P.F. Guder, who carried out hand trenching. Guder staked Greenstone cl 1-5 (90465) to the north in July 1964, before optioning the Hope claim to Peso Carmacks Gold Mines Ltd. in September 1964, which added Teare cl 1-44 (91122). Gruder added Greeenstone cl 6 (Y21094) to the north in September 1967; re-staked the Hope claims as Hope cl 1 (Y21249) in November 1967; optioned the Hope claim to R. Granger from 1969-1970; carried out hand trenching annually until 1974; staked Best cl 1-6 (Y25895) in September 1968; staked Hope cl 2 (Y76048) in July 1973; and carried out bulldozer trenching in 1978. The property was subsequently transferred to Guder Mining Exploration Ltd., which trenched in 1985.

The MJK cl 1-32 (Y78884) and MJK cl 33-44 (Y78916) were added to the immediate west in May 1974 by the Carmacks Syndicate (Castlemaine Exploration Ltd., Welcome North Mines Ltd., W.M. Bath Investments Ltd and Ventures West Capital Ltd.) and optioned to a joint venture between Western Mines Ltd, Cream Silver Mines Ltd and Belmoral Mines Ltd which carried out geological mapping, soil sampling and a magnetometer surveying later in the year. This area was re-staked as Cara cl 1-7 (YB08036) in August 1986 by G. Harris, who had earlier staked Greenstone cl 7-10 (YA92778) to the north in July 1985.

Doron Explorations Inc. surrounded the occurrence with Boo cl 1-66 (YB7740) in August 1987. The company also staked Boo cl 77-86 (YB07806) to the northeast, Boo cl 101-104 (YB07816) to the northwest and Boo cl 67-76 (YB08026) to the northeast at about the same time. Later in the year the company carried out bulldozer trenching on various claims. Doron optioned the Guder and Harris owned claims in 1988 and carried out geochemical sampling, geophysical surveying and cat trenching, followed by drilling of 23 holes (1,116.6 m) between the fall of 1988 and February 1989. In 1990, Sayre Development Inc. constructed and briefly operated a 50 tonnes per day mill on the property during an unsuccessful attempted to mine the open cut.

In July 1993, Harris and Associates blast trenched and sampled the Caribou vein and collected soil samples on the Cara, Best, Hope and various Boo claims. The road to the property was also upgraded. In December 1993, Harris staked May cl 1 and 3 (YB46564) to the northwest.

In September 1994, Doron Explorations Inc transferred the Boo cl 1-86 (YB07740) and 101-104 (YB07816) to B. Harris. In 1994, Dark Moth Mines Ltd drifted 100 m on the Caribou vein and carried out prospecting, geophysics and soil sampling on the surrounding claims. In 1996, Harris continued sampling the various veins in the area, constructed roads and test milled auriferous quartz breccia material. Between 1997 and 1999, Harris continued upgrading roads and sampling the open cut and underground workings.

In 2000, Midnight Mines Ltd (a Harris owned company) took over as operator on the project and extended the existing cut grid, prospected the gridded area and carried out an informal evaluation. The adit and drift were reportedly dewatered at that time and sampling of them and the open cut was carried out. Grid rehabilitation, upgrading and expansion of the road/trail network, prospecting, hand trenching and geochemical rock sampling were carried out in 2001 and 2002.

In 2006, Geotech Ltd. flew a magnetic and EM airborne geophysical over the Caribou Creek property for Bill Harris.

Regional & Property Geology

The occurrence is partly underlain by Yukon-Tanana Terrane (YTT). The rocks of the YTT in this region consist of Early Mississippian metamorphic rocks separated into meta-sedimentary and meta-igneous suites. The meta-sedimentary suite consists of micaceous quartz-feldspar gneiss, schist and quartzite. The meta-igneous package is comprised of biotite-hornblende feldspar gneiss and coarse-grained granodiorite orthogneiss with lesser amphibolite.

The YTT basement rocks are cut by numerous plutonic and volcanic events from the Mesozoic (Murray & Friend, 2018), including:
1. Early Jurassic Long Lake monzonite  and granodiorite plutonic suites;
2. Mid-Cretaceous Mount Nansen Suite andesite, dacite, tuffs and rhyolite;
3. Mid-Cretaceous Whitehorse granodiorite;
4. Late Cretaceous Prospector Mountain syenite;
5. Late Cretaceous Carmacks basalt; and,
6. Quartz feldspar and feldspar hornblende porphyry dykes and plugs.

Mineralization & Results

Coarse free gold is found in quartz veinlets and quartz-flooded breccia zones, near the remnant of a volcanic feeder possibly related to the Late Cretaceous Carmacks Group volcanics, which cut Carmacks Group Caribou Creek conglomerate and associated graphitic siltstone which are unique to the district (AR 094683). According to Murray & Friend (2018) and Carlson (1987) bedrock is believed to consist of monzonite assigned to the Early Jurassic Long Lake Suite and Mount Nansen andesite. A large mid-Cretaceous granitic pluton assigned to the Whitehorse Suite outcrops to the south.

Gold appears to be related to contacts between the volcanic feeder and the basal part of the graphite unit. The zone appears to trend northeast at the discovery showing, but the nine holes which intersected mineralization (88-1,9,10,11 and 12 and 89-1,2,3,4) outlined a 2.6 m thick zone which trends 340° and dips about 50° east. The best intersections assayed 95.76 g/t Au over 2.89 m and 101.6 g/t Au over 1.8 m (AR 093110).

Midnight Mines drifted on the Caribou vein, a 1-2 m wide quartz vein stockwork containing pockets of visible gold. The vein system occurs along a shear zone at the fault contact between graphitic siltstone and volcanic rocks. Approximately 147 tonnes of ore were extracted from the adit and stockpiled. A small pilot mill processed several tonnes of high grade ore, producing approximately 205 grams of gold.

Prospecting carried out from 2000 to 2002 was focused on 1 km by 1.5 km area northwest of the mill and found several float occurrences of brecciated graphitic siltstone, some of which contained visible gold, but was unsuccessful in locating the bedrock source of the float.

Rock geochemistry results from 2004 sampling of the adit returned up to 54.6 g/t Au with 6.3 g/t Ag over 1.7 m and 5.69 g/t Au with 1.5 g/t Ag over 1.2 m (AR 094683).