Hi Vaughn,
That was a heavy duty post you made this morning. For the record I'm not a geologist. I just had the good fortune of growing up surrounded by mining and geology types in the 40's and early 50's in a small northern Ontario town. I later studied the subject at university but got married, did not graduate, pursued other avenues and have no regrets. Still, it's a fascinating subject and great hobby.
Like you, I've been wondering about River Valley and other layered intrusives nearby to the west. I think there's little doubt that River Valley is a layered mafic intrusive and would have been formed by successive pulses or flows of magma from a feeder source. The type of rock and layering are evident from surface work. A good reference site for understanding such layered intrusives is
muskoxminerals.com
I'm not plugging the Muskox company. It's just that they have a textbook sample of a very large, layered, mafic intrusive which has been little changed since it's formation. It's a good model. The type and nature of their exploration targets may also become similar at RV. Unlike Muskox, I don't think the feeder zone is known for River Valley and I'm not sure the number of layers is known.
I'm also wondering if the margins and true extent of RV and other nearby layered intrusives are known. Various companies have nice dotted lines indicating these margins. Are they accurate?
Several years ago my son was doing post-graduate work at the University of Toronto. One evening we went for a stroll and walked through the mining faculty. There was a large model of throw or splash rock from the Sudbury impact crater and this thrown rock was being used to explain geological non-conformities more than one hundred miles away. However, Mr. Brown at Haywood dates River Valley as 700 million years older than the Sudbury impact crater. If correct, would there not have been splash onto the much closer River Valley area? Since formation, River Valley would also at times have been a sea floor and later subjected to glaciation. Then there are all the tectonic forces.
With the above in mind, questions arise. Has recent surface work truly identified the true extent of RV? Reference is made to faulting and fracturing. Could there have been later flows from a feeder zone into these fractures? Are present margin zones the true extent of River Valley or does other rock now cover them? Many questions Vaughn and I'm not sure anyone has answers.
The result is that it may be difficult to say which company has the better ground. As you point out, PFN has an attractive bet in a margin zone of River Valley. Whatever they eventually find may be all that's in RV but logic appears otherwise. If there is a similarity to Muskox as suggested, multiple types of targets likely exist.
I recently bought both PFN and ITF because they appeared oversold and cheap. It had little to do with geological considerations. With a second phase of drilling underway, and because they connected on 13 of 13 last time, my hunch was/is we'll see a stronger market. It's when you think of potential drill results and look at other areas of RV that geological aspects become interesting.
Perhaps some high octane geo types will appear on this thread. It would be a treat. So will exploration results as they soon start coming in. It could be an interesting summer.
Regards,
Bob |
