A Canadian gold mining and exploration company

Austin & McVeigh Tuffs

  
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The Madsen Mine, when operational, worked a series of stacked, en echelon ore lenses consisting of gold-bearing pyritic shoots with subordinate pyrrhotite and arsenopyrite. The mineralization is hosted within two parallel micaceous units termed the Austin and McVeigh "tuffs". These tuffs are interpreted to be an alteration/deformation corridor within basalts, with pillowed through volcaniclastic facies. The alteration corridor occurs at the contact of the underlying Balmer assemblage with the much younger Confederation assemblage. The host rocks dip to the southeast. The McVeigh horizon lies approximately 90 metres to the north of the Austin tuff. The latter was the most prolific producer in the past. Workings extended to a depth of 1,275 metres and the mineralized zone has been traced for 2,308 metres along strike.

The McVeigh tuff contains variably altered, auriferous pyrite-bearing lenses that occur within the Flat Lake-Howey Bay deformation zone hosted by massive and pillowed basalts overlain by a thin mafic to ultramafic sill, highly altered mafic volcanic and volcaniclastic rocks (the Austin tuff) and a quartz feldspar porphyry that marks the base of the Confederation assemblage. The mineralization is semi-conformable to stratigraphy and dips at a slightly steeper angle than the host formations.