Silver Queen Property Map - click here to view map
The Silver Queen property is located south of Houston, BC, on the forest service road to the Huckleberry Mine in the Omineca Mining Division. The SQ (Silver Queen) property consists of 17 Crown Granted mineral claims and four staked claims covering approximately 3,187 hectares.
Recent staking of 10 DQ (Dancing Queen) claims increased the tenure by an additional 3,968 hectares. Reclamation on old and previous workings consisted of covering and repairing raises and filling in old trenches. Those to remain open were contoured to safe and acceptable levels and those having no further interest were covered and re-contoured to approximate the original surface.
The property has been the focus of many exploration and development programs since its initial discovery in 1912. The Bradina JV took the property into production during 1972 – 1973. In the late 1980’s an extensive development and exploration project was conducted consisting of surface and underground diamond drilling and lateral development on three underground levels. Under the direction of Houston Metals Corporation, Cominco Engineering Services Ltd. conducted a feasibility study in 1988. The metal recoveries with the technology available at that time precluded a production decision. Occurrences of silver, gold, copper, lead, zinc, gallium, indium and germanium have been established by previous work. Increased metal prices, along with recent site visits and review of data, have motivated the Company to focus on taking this property forward.
As part of a structural study conducted in 1998, Dr. G. Millar of EraMaptec concluded that the property still has considerable exploration potential, and that previous exploration efforts paid insufficient attention to structural considerations. As the principal known mineralized structure on the property, the No. 3 Vein should be the prime focus of exploration, the main area of interest being the southern portion of the vein where grades appear to be increasing. Exploration should be directed down dip in the area of the vein inflection and also along strike to the south. The possibility of encountering as yet undiscovered hanging wall and footwall structures also needs to be investigated. Possible extensions of the No. 3 Vein beyond the Cole Creek and Chisholm faults should be investigated. The vein is known to exist beyond the Cole Creek fault, where it was intersected by a surface drill hole in 1970 at a depth of 1435 feet (437 metres) and by an underground drill hole in 1987. In addition to his comments on the No. 3 vein, Dr. Millar made a number of general recommendations concerning future exploration on the property. His recommendation that information for the property be assembled into a 3-D visualisation software package is presently being implemented by the company. The large volume of data input into 3D software will add to our exploration tools. A property-wide geophysical survey (mag/em) over the property using modern, high resolution techniques will be undertaken with the objective being the delineation of larger structures. Dr. Millar also recommends further drilling of the Cole and Chisholm structures and the area of intense alteration encountered at the Borrow Pit.
The George Lake Lineament, which appears to be a major structure with characteristics similar to the #3 Vein, is also deserving of further testing. The George Lake Vein was intersected by the Bulkley Cross-cut at a depth of 170 metres below surface and limited underground and surface drilling was conducted at that time, but most of the structure remains untested.
The Camp Vein system was drilled extensively during the late 1980s. Due to the absence of surface exposure and the considerable structural complexities of the vein system caused by faulting, a satisfactory model of the vein structures was never produced. Dr Millar’s study suggests that the strike of the veins may differ from that which was assumed during the original drilling and that further investigations of the area should be based on that hypothesis, beginning with the construction of new cross-sections perpendicular to the proposed strike of the system. This could be aided by re-logging of drill core paying particular attention to vein and fault relationships and geometries, re-processing of existing geophysical data using modern processing techniques and further testing using oriented core drilling.
A 3 to 4 year program is being developed based on the above recommendations and results of specific components of the plan. We expect to be ready to conduct the mag/em airborne survey by late May setting the timeframe for geochemical sampling, surface geophysics followed by drilling.
Jim Hutter, P.Geo. is the Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 on the Silver Queen project,and has reviewed and approved the applicable content of this release.
Silver Queen Technical Report Link
