Geology and Mineral Deposits of the Whipsaw Creek-Eastgate-Wolfe Creek Area, British Columbia, (parts of NTS 092H/01W, 02E, 07E, 08W), 1:30 000 Scale
Mapping and Compilation N.W.D. Massey, J.M.S. Vineham and S.L. Oliver
View Open File 2009-8 (PDF, 36.5 MB)
Downlaod Open File 2009-8 Map (ZIP, 48.2 MB; MANIFOLD GIS digital file)
The map covers an area about 15 km to the southwest of Princeton. The map area stretches from the Wolfe Creek area and Copper Mountain southwest to Eastgate and the boundary of Manning Park and west to the Whipsaw Creek and Hudson Flats areas.
The map area lies at the western edge of Quesnellia and includes the southernmost exposures of the late Triassic Nicola Group. To the east of the Boundary Fault, rocks of the Nicola group are assigned to the “Eastern Belt” (Preto 1979; Mortimer 1987). Interbedded black argillites, grey siltstones and sandstones are overlain by volcanic and volcaniclastic rocks of the Wolfe Creek Formation, which display an alkalic affinity. They host the important porphyry and skarn deposits of the Copper Mountain area (Preto, 1972).
To the west, the Nicola Group is lithologically similar to that in the east, though differing in details of stratigraphic succession. Here, clastic sedimentary rocks are intercalated with feldspathic tuffs and tuffaceous sediments. These pass westwards, and probably upwards, into typical Nicola pyroxene-feldspar tuffs, lapilli tuffs and breccias. However, in contrast to the eastern part of the map area, most of the exposed volcanic rocks are deformed and schistose. The change from massive to schistose rocks is transitional and gradual from east to west as foliation becomes progressively more penetrative and steeper.
In the west of the map area, rocks of the Eastgate-Whipsaw metamorphic belt have been correlated with the Nicola by Rice (1947) and Monger (1989). The belt is bound by the syntectonic Eagle Plutonic Complex to the west and the Similkameen fault to the east. The belt shows significant lithological differences to the immediately adjacent Nicola volcanic rocks. It can be divided it into three northwest trending lithological assemblages that show increasing metamorphic grade from greenschist in the east to amphibolite in the west. The belt is host to VMS mineralization (e.g. Red Star and S&M group), as well as porphyry-Cu style mineralization associated with the Eocene Whipsaw porphyry. The belt may be equivalent to the Late Permian to Early Triassic Sitlika-Kutcho sequences, including volcanic rocks and intrusions from the Ashcroft area (Childe et al., 1997), about 150 km to the north-northwest of Princeton.
Volcanic and sedimentary rocks of the Eocene Princeton Group occur at higher elevations in the central and eastern parts of the map area. They lie unconformably on the Nicola Group and all older intrusive rocks. Comagmatic minor intrusions occur throughout the map area, particularly to the east of the Boundary fault. They include the bimodal felsic-mafic “Mine Dykes” suite in the area around and to the east of Copper Mountain, as well as ubiquitous intermediate-felsic porphyry dykes.
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