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Gold/Mining/Energy : Winspear Resources
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To: whiskeyjack who wrote (14564)2/13/1999 11:57:00 AM
From: Walt  Read Replies (1) of 26850
 
Its an interesting question you ask and as you say at this point one can only speculate. However that is one of the fascinating things about snap lake it doesnt seem to fit any known deposits, at least none that I know of.
Most kimberlite pipes are roughly in the shape of carrots. Small at the bottom and they increase in size towards the surface and many of them have small dykes and sills shoot off the sides of them.
From what Ive read the fissure deposits in South Africa tend to be more vertical and often quite irregular in shape, thickness etc. It is as if they filled in a fault or shear zone.
What WSP has is a big sheet of kimberlite dipping at around 15 degrees and it seems to be reasonably uniform in size to date and it appears to be a single age off kimberlite and thus a single emplacement event. Also when you add it all up it seems to be a considerable volumn of material.
It had to come from somewhere so it has to have a feeder system of some sort.
The way I visualize it, and thats all it is at this point a visualization, a pipe was coming up to surface when it hit a preexisting crack (fault) in the rocks and then blew out along that .
The analogy here is quartz veins will sometimes do a similiar thing.
If its not a pipe then the feeder system could be the kimberlite dyke
itself but I would expect it to suddenly change dip to a much steeper one somewhere out under snap.
What ever the path it is probably still there filled with kimberlite.
It is one of those mysteries that wont be solved without more drilling. To me it is a double barrelled one. What path did the kimberlite have and why did it suddenly change paths and form a dyke.
Ie did it follow some preexisting fracture or weakness or did it create its own.
Dont know if that helps at all, but snap is a little hard to visualize and I wouldn't be surprised if it doesnt have a few more surprizes up its sleave waiting to be discovered.
regards Walt
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