Geologic description
C.C. Hawley and Associates, Inc. (1978, Fig. 4.2 - C(3) - A(1)) locate the Boulder Creek occurrence about 300 feet north-northeast of the J+K discovery adit. Shallow shafts, dozer cuts and diamond drill holes have been used to explore the prospect. Host rocks are thermally metamorphosed calc-silicate rock, felsic schist, dolomite, and argillite approximately 300 to 600 feet north of Tonzona pluton. In plan the main exposure is circular with about a 40-foot diameter. Disseminated cassiterite, arsenopyrite, chalcopyrite, galena and pyrrhotite occur in clusters of narrow, open-space fracture fillings, suggestive of a stockwork-type deposit, and in veins up to five or six feet long and a foot wide. A six-foot-wide zone of manganosiderite is noted along the southern contact of one 18-inch-wide vein. Silicification and fracturing are intense. C.C. Hawley and Associates, Inc. (1978) report up to 4 percent tin, 0.3 percent copper, 2.8 percent zinc, 1 oz/ton silver and a trace of gold in rock chip samples. A nine-foot channel sample across a mineralized sheeted vein set averaging 1.57percent tin and 10.0 oz/ton silver is described by Conwell (1977). Selected samples from adjacent clusters contained as much as 18 percent tin and 230 oz/ton silver. Drill hole data suggest the deposit overlies a marginal cusp of the granite. Twelve of twenty-three drill holes intersected zones containing more than 0.53 percent tin. Intercepts were between 1.9 and 7.8 feet wide, with an average grade of about 2 percent tin. One interval contained 5 percent tin over an 11.5-foot intercept (Conwell, 1977; Warner, 1985). C.C. Hawley and Associates, Inc.(1978) suggest that the drill holes may have been drilled down dip and thus did not adequately test the configuration of the mineralization. Warner (1985) estimated this occurrence contains at least 136,000 kg Sn.
In the entire Boulder Creek area there are widely separated, mineralized outcrops. Mapping and ground geophysical surveys, including magnetics and Chrone VLF, suggest extensive skarn development and skarn mineralization across Boulder Creek from the J+K adit. Little sub-surface exploration has been completed (C.C. Hawley and Associates, Inc.). Reed and others (1978) report that high tin values in pan concentrate samples collected along the northern granite-sedimentary contact suggest that tine mineralization occurs for at least 5 kilometers west of the Boulder Creek prospect and the possibility that addtional tin-silver deposits occur along this northern contact zone is considered excellent. The Boulder Creek region, probably due to its remote location and the low tin prices, is relatively under-explored. The geologic setting of the Boulder Creek area is provided, as follows, from work done by C.C. Hawley and Associates, Inc. (1978) and Reed and Nelson (1980). Blocky slate, argillite, thin-bedded siliceous limestone and chert define a belt of lower Paleozoic sedimentary and metavolcanic rocks (possibly Keevy Peak, other Totalanika series, or equivalents) bordered by the Tonzona granitic pluton (Tmt), part of the McKinley sequence of Late Cretaceous and early Tertiary age intrusive rocks mapped by Reed and Nelson (1980). The granite has three phases; a coarse-grained, locally porphyritic biotite granite; a medium-grained biotite granite; and a late fine-grained, leucocratic, locally aplitic, muscovite-tourmaline granite in which ovoid clusters of small black tourmaline crystals give the rock a 'dalmatian' appearance. Muscovite may exceed biotite and accessory minerals include tourmaline with lesser amounts of topaz, fluorite, garnet, zircon, and apatite. Late-stage greisen veinlets contain muscovite, topaz, tourmaline, locally abundant beryl, and occasionally, cassiterite. Lead, silver and tin mineralization occurs in Paleozoic metasediments and metavolcanic rocks along the north and northeast contact of the pluton. |
