[lightedman]

"Amazing hematite crystals mixed with copper with strong assay signs of gold underneath."

Did you actually assay out anomalous gold concentrations or are you seeing the sulfides and oxides that are associated with gold? If the former, what sort of concentration are you getting?

[jandrewrogers]

I have only assayed samples from the iron cap. You would not expect to find much in that part of the formation but it still came in at 1-2g/ton. There is a large area of visually striking bornite[0] that I have not yet been able to properly sample which is roughly the area you would expect the gold to concentrate. It is in the walls of a narrow, deep canyon at high elevation. The region was mined for gold/copper a century ago, so the existence is not surprising.

The location makes access extremely challenging. It requires 3 hours of hiking, assuming you are fit, and borderline technical mountaineering once you get close to the site. The lower parts of the canyon are also under tens of meters of ice most of the year, which creates a separate set of safety issues. When these mountains were prospected in the 1920s, it would have been underneath a deep permanent snow field. I've visited some of the old gold mines in the area for calibration and this deposit appears substantially larger than those.

The discovery was accidental. I was looking for a waterfall I had seen on satellite imagery in the backcountry and came across an enormous chunk of molybdenite[1] while climbing across granite scree. I made several trips to find the source of the molybdenite higher up the mountains, which I never did, but while searching for that I localized a bunch of other beautiful sulfide/oxide mineral specimens to the above canyon. It gives me a great excuse to explore parts of the mountains no one has been into before.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bornite

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molybdenite

[msds]

Honesty I know a bunch of people who are burntout climbers and burntout geologists - sounds like a blast. Fun mineralogy with climbing that’s not…super exotic but still fun? I’d pay for it.