Abstract: The Wolf property is situated within the Pelly Mountains, 90 km south of Ross River, Yukon. The Mississippian felsic volcanic and sedimentary rocks which underlie the Wolf property are part of a belt that occurs within the Pelly-Cassiar platform, a miogeoclinal sequence thought to be part of ancestral North America. Much of the bedrock exposure in the region is along the northeastern edges of southwesterly dipping, imbricate thrust sheets. The felsic volcano-sedimentary sequence on the Wolf property is approximately 900 m thick and bounded by two thrust panels of lower Paleozoic platformal carbonate sequences. Volcanic stratigraphy is characterized by high potassium geochemistry, a variety of pyroclastic grain sizes, and high-energy fragmental and low-viscosity flow textures. The chemistry of the volcanic rocks and their tectono-stratigraphic setting indicates deposition within an intra-continental rift.

Volcanogenic sulphide mineralization and exhalative barite occur at four stratigraphic levels within the Wolf property. The Wolf deposit is hosted within a laterally extensive sheet of massive sulphide mineralization at the upper stratigraphic level and has been defined by 30 diamond-drill holes over a 600 m strike length and a 500 m width (down-dip). Thickness of zinc, lead and silver bearing massive sulphide ranges from 2 to 25 m. A bulk of the deposit is contained within a higher grade ""keel"" that has a strike length of 125 m, a down-dip length of 400 m, an average thickness of 12 m and dips 45 degrees to the south. The deposit has an inferred resource of 4.1 million tonnes grading 6.2% Zn, 1.8% Pb and 84 g/t Ag, and is open along strike and down-dip. Exploration potential of the property has been enhanced by the discovery of the East Slope zone, 1200 m east of the Wolf deposit. Chemical
zoning within the mineralization and peripheral alteration, and deposit morphology indicate that stratigraphy may be overturned.

Authors: Gibson, J.S.M., Holbek, P.M., and Wilson, R.G.,

Keywords: deposit models, Mineral Deposit

NTS Mapsheet(s): 105F, 105G

Citation: Gibson, J.S.M., Holbek, P.M., and Wilson, R.G., 1999. The Wolf property - 1998 update: Volcanogenic massive sulphides hosted by rift-related, alkaline, felsic volcanic rocks, Pelly Mountains, Yukon. In: Yukon Exploration and Geology 1998, Roots, C.F. and Emond, D.S (eds.), Exploration and Geological Sciences Division, Yukon Region, Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, p. 237-242.

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