Annual Report for year 5 on EL 2770 The Margaret Dome

Abstract

In our proposed exploration program for the year we outlined a program that revolved around drainage line geochemistry. Unfortunately, on inspection of the exploration licence, the deep tertiary weathering found in the drainage lines made this avenue of investigation of little value in a practical sense. The period of weathering and laterization in the Tertiary had the effect of concentrating gold as 'micro-nuggets' through changing Eh and pH relationships. The result is very little gold distributed throughout the drainage lines and the chance of recovering a piece of this nucleated gold from anything other than a large bulk sample is very slim. It was for this reason and the excellent rock exposure found in the region that we abandoned this type of exploration tool. This was also proven by the taking of a number of samples (5) which when panned showed no signs of gold. After abandoning geochemistry we returned to classical prospecting and concentrated on locating and sampling gossans, banded iron formations and nodular chert units within the middle and upper members of the Koolpin Formation. Our resident prospector Mr John Crago made several traverses across the exploration licence looking for old workings and favourable geology as well as access routes to and throughout the licence. On several of these traverses he was accompanied by his field assistant Mick Hannegan. Access to most of the EL could be gained on foot only. Because of the rugged terrain it was decided to circumvent these problems by gaining access from the air. To this end John and the author flew over the area in a helicopter looking for several things, the first priority was to locate to old alluvial field of Krana Creek mentioned in Bulletin 16 in 1916. This target is now thought to be located just to the north of the exploration licence. Our second objective was to compare the geology as seen from the air with both the NTGS 1:100 000 geological map and a map accompanying Nord Resources' 1982 progress report for the area as the two maps disagreed dramatically. On comparison from the air it was decided that the Word Resources map was unreliable and the nearest thing to true was the NTGS map. The third target was to locate suitable access areas of our Toyota. This was accomplished satisfactorily. On investigation of outcrop located by John, and later the author, the geology looked favourable and samples were taken accordingly. Unfortunately only two of the samples showed any anomalous gold values. A summary of the assay results is given as an appendix to this report. Investigation of the gossan line around the Margaret Dome by Word Resources and now by ourselves has shown that negligible gold values are to be found in surface exposure and near surface exposure in costeans. This is not surprising as the gossan where costeaned lies on an old high energy river terrace of Krana Creek and as such is extremely leached. More reliable results will be obtained where the gossan is sampled away from any weathering interface such as is exhibited here.