Nice summary there. Hopefully they get some nice gold hits with copper or cobalt. The trick now will be to find any lenses or pods of massive mineralization beneath the surface - the potential source of the various points of hydrothermal concentrations on the surface. What I think has prevented modern exploration so far was the challenging terrain and lower hanging fruit downstream. That there is good gold (up to 98g/t) being found now in rock chips at Jewel shows that the high grade mines at Bralorne and Pioneer do not exhaust the region.
I've just taken at look at the geology and mineralization chapters of
Avino's 2016 Technical Reporton restarting the Bralorne and Pioneer mines, interesting reading if you're into that sort of thing (which should be a given in this end of the market!). I think it supports my contention above. Here's some juicy bits:
On the mineralization:
"The Bralorne-Pioneer gold-quartz vein system is hosted in variably altered mafic and ultramaficrocks that occur as fault-bounded lenses in a structurally complex zone between the Cadwalladerand Fergusson faults referred to as the Bralorne-Pioneer fault lens or Bralorne Block (Figure 7-4). The ore bodies occur within a lens-shaped area with an approximate 4.5 km strike length,mostly along, adjacent to, or between these two faults."
This map shows the extensions of the faults to the north west (BSX) and the southeast:
On the formation of the ore body:
"The main gold-forming event in the Bridge River district took place at ca. 68 to 64 Ma at theBralorne-Pioneer deposit (Hart et. al., 2008). Mineralization pre-dated or was synchronous withthe emplacement of the Bendor batholith, and the gold event overlaps initiation of dextral strikeslip on the regional fault systems in this region. The abundance of gold, antimony, and mercurydeposits and occurrences along the various main structures in the district (Figure 7-2) suggeststhat the onset of dextral strike-slip in this part of the Cordillera facilitated widespread fluid flowalong the reactivated fault systems (Hart et. al., 2008)."
Fig 7.2:
On the veinage:
"The gold-quartz veins form an approximate en echelon array. They have strike lengths of as muchas 1,500 m between bounding fault structures, and extend to at least 2,000 m in depth, with nosignificant changes in grade or style of mineralization recorded. Ores consist mainly of ribbonedfissure veins with septa defined by fine-grained chlorite, sericite, graphite or sulphide minerals.Massive white quartz tension veins also comprise some of the ore, although thinner connectingcross-veins are generally sub-economic. The fissure veins tend to be larger, thicker, and host thehigher gold grades...
"Three types of veins are recognized on the property; fissure, tension and cross veins. Fissureveins are the richest and most continuous in the camp and include the 51, 55 and 77 veins atBralorne, the Main vein at Pioneer and the Peter vein. They have been traced continuously for upto 1,500 m along a 110° to 145° strike and to a depth of 1,800 m down a steep northerly dip. Thefissure veins are commonly ribbon-banded. They have an average width of 1 m to 1.5 m but oftenpinch and swell, ranging from centimeters to seven meters in width."
They argue it is an orogenic deposit, meaning as a result of mountain-making. This model from
Geosciences Australiaoffers some useful detail:
You can see how the lodes and veins form on the faults beneath the surface.
What is noteworthy is the lack of base metals in the Bralorne deposit (which is what I was hunting for), which makes BSX's project a potential unique discovery.
