Work History

Prospector A. McMillan prospected the region in the late 1960s and the 1970s in search of mineralization discovered during the winter of 1892-3 by W. Pike and S. Simpson. McMillan staked Green cl 1-4 (YA55596) 3.5 km to the southeast (Minfile Occurrence #105A 032) in Jul/80. In early 1981 McMillan optioned the claims to Warburton Minerals Incorporated.
Staked within River cl 1-68 (YA57971) in Apr/81 by Warburton Minerals as part of their option agreement with McMillan. The company carried out prospecting, hand trenching and rock and soil sampling programs later in the summer. In July/83 Warburton added River cl 69-76 (YA66643) and conducted airborne magnetic and VLF-EM geophysical surveys in Oct/83.

Capsule Geology

The area is located in the south-central portion of the Selwyn Basin approximately 80 km northeast of the Town of Watson Lake. The area is underlain by silty limestone, calcareous phyllite and quartz-feldspar conglomerate assigned to the Upper Cambrian to Ordovician Rabbitkettle Formation. The Rabbitkettle Formation unconformably overlies coarse turbiditic clastic rocks assigned to the Upper Proterozoic to Lower Cambrian Hyland Group. West of this occurrence, a lobe of siltstone and fine grained sandstone assigned to the Upper Proterozoic to Lower Cambrian Vampire assemblage unconformably separates the Hyland Group from the Rabbitkettle Formation.
A. McMillan rediscovered numerous quartz-carbonate veins containing varying amount of tetrahedrite, pyrite, galena, chalcopyrite, arsenopyrite and azurite along the banks of the Hyland River. The best results were obtained from the Main vein located on the west side of the river and within the boundaries of the Green claims (approximately 3.5 km southeast of this occurrence).
This occurrence marks the western boundary of a series of quartz-carbonate veins that occur along the southern bank of the Hyland River, east to the junction of the Green River. Although details are sketchy it appears that these veins are similar in composition to the Main vein but are of lower grade. Two grab samples collected from veins located at this occurrence returned 20.2 and 12.0 g/t silver and unknown amounts of copper. A sample of black sand taken from a concentration of sand and gravel collected on the Hyland River west of the Green River returned 13.8 g/t gold.
Soil sampling carried out in 1981 and 1983 (locations unknown) returned a few weak single station silver anomalies but none over known mineralization and geophysical results were inconclusive. Glacial overburden is thought to have hampered the effectiveness of both methods. Keyser (1984), noted that although mineralization occurs over a very large area, all known occurrences except for the Main vein are small and low grade. This reason combined with the expense and difficulty in accessing the area likely led the company to allow the claims to lapse.