An Interesting Picture - Homestake

A very interesting picture is presented by the Homestake mine. You can make a direct comparison that holds water with deposits in the Waddy Lake area. At surface, you have the supergene-enriched outcrop and alluvial deposit in the glacial till of the EP Zone. But, in the immediate vicinity, you have also the Komis mine.

The Homestake deposit can be summarized as an iron-formation with manganese as its indicator minral, but this doesn't mean that there aren't other sorts of geological phenomena of differing types in the immediate vicinity.

So this explains why the EP Zone, really quite literally the very tip of the iceberg, can be found in the same vicinity as the Komis mine. And why you might have a flat-lying shallow descending mine that continues on downwards, but that might give way to other types of rock at depth, where they intersect.

Now that we know for certain that the EP Zone is not glacially plucked, or allochthonally shifted along a fault, because of the rudimentary drawing in the last presentation demostrates the fact, and that it extends into the rock and is merely the outcrop of what lies beneath, and that the EP Zone might represent the kind of deposit that would have been formed in the same geological trend as the Homestake mine, then you can say logically that the Waddy Lake region may host something very similar, only because the circumstances are so very much the same.

Of course, one of the very important details that would have to be left out in order to dissuade any curiosity are the indicator minerals. You would be looking for manganese. (Of course, copper would go along with that.) This information is not necessarily forthcoming.

But a picture will demonstrate what is difficult to portray otherwise. Think of the bluish as Komis type and think of the orange and yellow as EP type:

source: http://homestake.sdsmt.edu/longsection.jpg

Conclusion: The EP Zone, discovered in the 1980's, and its downplunge source, drilled off to a significant tonnage in yr. 2002, and with the differring geology of the Komis mine in the immediate vicinity, represents a geological aspect that can be found elsewhere along the Trans Hudson Orogen, with the former Homstake mine as an example for comparison.

And, of course, you have other areas of deposits in the La Ronge gold belt with geological dispositions similar to historical mines in other locations in the Superior province in Canada.

-F6