Mount Mather Creek claim (Mt Laussedat prospect), Golden Mining Division, British Columbia, Canadai

Regional Level Types
Mount Mather Creek claim (Mt Laussedat prospect)	Property (Active)
Golden Mining Division	Division
British Columbia	Province
Canada	Country

The Mount Mather Creek sodalite occurrence is located on the west side of Mount Mather Creek, which flows south into Laussedat Creek, which is in turn a tributary of the Blaeberry River. It is about 30 kilometres north of the town of Golden, British Columbia. There is an extensive description of the prospect on the British Columbia “Minfile” site, current to 2014, to which interested readers are referred.

From Piilonen et al. (2022).
The Mount Mather Creek sodalite-bearing carbohydrothermal breccia dike is located ~ 35 km northwest of Golden, British Columbia, Canada, within the Foreland Belt on the eastern side of the Mississippian-to-Devonian British Columbia Alkaline Province. The dike occurs in situ on the western side of the Mount Mather Creek gully, outcropping over a distance of ~ 80 m with a thickness of up to 10 m, intruding a syncline of Middle and Upper Cambrian Chancellor Group carbonate rocks. To date, no parental alkaline complex has been found adjacent or proximal to the dike. The breccia dike is flow-banded and matrix-supported and consists of host rock clasts, medium- to coarse-grained, anhedral-to-poikilitic carbonate-rich syenite segregations that occur as veins and pods, and fine-grained banded sodalite plus carbonate fragments in a carbonate-rich matrix. The sodalite-carbonate segregations consist dominantly of sodalite, ferroan dolomite, calcite, and microcline, with an extensive suite of trace minerals enriched in REE, Na, Ba and Sr, including albite, analcime, ancylite-(Ce), chabazite-(Na), fluorapatite, baryte, barytocalcite, cancrinite, galena, goethite, gonnardite, harmotome, edingtonite, a potentially new Mg-bearing edingtonite-like mineral, natrolite, nordstrandite, pyrite, quintinite and sphalerite. Alteration of the primary silicate + carbonate assemblage has resulted in a secondary assemblage of hydrothermal or carbohydrothermal REE-Ba-Sr-Na phases including albite, analcime, cancrinite, gonnardite and nordstrandite after sodalite, as well as complex intergrowths of ancylite-(Ce), barytocalcite, edingtonite, and a potentially-new Mg-bearing edingtonite-like mineral. Remobilization of Ba and Sr from barytocalcite resulted in crystallization of late-stage baryte and Sr-rich calcite. Mount Mather Creek is only the fifth Canadian occurrence of the Ba-zeolite, edingtonite, and the second Canadian occurrence of the rare layered double hydroxide quintinite. The Mount Mather Creek breccia is a carbohydrothermal deposit, the product of a low temperature (<450 C), highly evolved, alkaline, SiO2-undersaturated, Na-Ba-REE-Cl-rich, residual carbonated silicate melt whose parental origins remain unknown.

Comments by Giles Peatfield on the history of the locality:

It is not fully clear when or how the sodalite occurrence was discovered. According to the “Minfile” report, the then owner of the claims made the discovery in 1957, at which time there was “. . . already an old, short adit blasted into the main sodalite syenite breccia body.” I can find no reference to this work in the Minister of Mines Reports. Balkwill (1969) mentioned the occurrence in his (unpublished) Ph.D. Thesis at the University of Texas, and it was mentioned, with no detailed information, by Currie (1975) as the Mount Mather or (1976) as the Mount Laussedat occurrence. As mentioned above, Mount Mather Creek flows into Laussedat Creek, so there is no doubt that Currie is referring to the same occurrence. Lefurgey (1997), who was at that time the owner of the property, filed a report with sketch maps that allowed for a reasonably accurate location of the occurrence. Wilton (1997) described the occurrence, and Hora and Hancock (1997) presented a detailed description, with a sketch and photographs, including the location of the old adit. Finally, the occurrence has been described, with detailed mineralogical data, by Piilonen, et al. (2022). Also note that the “Minfile” page refers to Currie (1976) as GSC MEM[oir] 239 – it should in fact be Bulletin 239.

IT IS IMPORTANT TO NOTE THAT THIS IS AN ACTIVE MINERAL CLAIM, AND COLLECTING IS NOT PERMITTED WITHOUT THE EXPRESS CONSENT OF THE CLAIM OWNER.

Other Databases

Link to British Columbia Minfile:	082N++090

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References