Exploration Potential
The 120 claim (2500 hectare) Burwash property is 100% owned by Pacific Coast Nickel Corp. It is located in the Kluane Ranges of southwest Yukon, 8 km by all weather road from the Alaska Highway. All areas of exploration interest on the property are served by a network of four-wheel-drive roads.
The exploration target is nickel-copper-platinum group element (PGE) mineralization related to intrusions of the Late Triassic Kluane Mafic-Ultramafic Suite that were emplaced during a period of uplift and extension related to widespread basaltic volcanism. The Burwash property overlies the east half of the Quill Creek Mafic-Ultramafic Complex, a 20 km long multiphase sill-like intrusion that attains a maximum thickness of over 1 km. The Complex hosts a number of nickel-copper-PGE occurrences. The most significant and well explored of these is the Wellgreen Mine which adjoins the Burwash property to the west".
Nickel-copper-PGE mineralization was discovered on the current Burwash property in 1952 and it was quickly incorporated into the Wellgreen property. Exploration since that time has been episodic, usually in concert with development of the Wellgreen deposit. Work included grid soil sampling, ground geophysical surveys, road building and minor diamond and percussion drilling before the claims were allowed to lapse in 2003. They were immediately restaked by Strategic Metals Ltd., which had held adjoining ground to the east since 1998. Strategic complied all the historical data for the combined properties into a GIS database before farming out the project to another group which drilled seven short drill holes within a small area before relinquishing the option. A helicopter-borne Versatile Time Domain Electromagnetic (VTEM) and magnetic survey flown by Strategic in 2007 provides a window to bedrock geology through overburden covered areas of the property while outlining several new areas of exploration interest.
Widespread nickel-copper-PGE mineralization on the property is related to a swarm of Triassic aged mafic-ultramafic sills that extend over a lateral distance of 4.5 km and a stratigraphic interval of at least 1.5 km. The sills are preferentially emplaced along the contact between Pennsylvanian to Permian Station Creek Formation volcanic rocks and Early Permian Hasen Creek Formation sedimentary rocks. The sills are thickest along a northerly trending ridge that bisects the central part of the property and this area may be near the intrusive centre.
Best grades of mineralization occur in the west part of the property where relatively thin but laterally extensive sills that are elsewhere dominated by peridotite give way to a greater proportion of gabbro. Mineralization consists of disseminated sulphides in gabbro, which to date have received little attention, and banded to massive sulphide mineralization along the sheared contact between gabbro and country rock. The banded to massive sulphides are enriched in the rare PGEs rhodium, osmium, iridium and ruthenium.
Exploration on the Burwash property demonstrates that the mineralized zones are, on the whole, more enriched in platinum group metals relative to copper and nickel than those at Wellgreen. A summary of significant results from the historical sampling is given on the accompanying table.