Tracy Carson HBSc thesis abstract

Kaminak’s Coffee Gold Project located south of Dawson City, Yukon is a structurally controlled gold deposit.  The Coffee Gold Project is hosted within the Yukon –Tanana Terrane, bounded between the Tintina and Denali Faults and along the strike of the Teslin Fault.  Microstructural analysis was completed on three zones within the project, the Kona, Latte and Supremo, to assess controls on mineralization, as well as to classify the protoliths at each zone.  Microstructures indicate significant deformation in the Latte and Supremo zones, and the least deformation in the Kona zone.  The Kona zone is a weakly deformed granite, composed of approximately 2mm euhedral grains of feldspar, quartz, and biotite. Microstructures in the quartz include subgrains, serrated grain boundaries, and undulose extinction, indicating deformation by dislocation creep.  The Supremo and Latte zones show more deformation; in these zones, feldspar has deformation twins and forms rigid porphyroclasts.  A well-developed foliation is defined by the parallel alignment of muscovite.  Each of the three zones contains porphyroclasts of feldspar that give evidence for the protolith being coarse-grained and felsic, likely a felsic plutonic rock.  The Latte zone is mapped as a biotite schist; however, biotite is present in only small amounts. Additionally, the mineralogy in the Latte zone consists dominantly of quartz and feldspar, consistent with an igneous origin.  A relationship between deformation and mineralization is observed; as deformation increases, the gold mineralization increases.  Gold mineralization, based on published assay values from Kaminak, were lowest in the Kona zone and higher in the Latte and Supremo zones. The protolith of all three zones is likely a deformed felsic plutonic rock with varying degrees of metamorphism and deformation.