Unnamed Occurrence (ARDF - TL051; near Kohlsaat Peak), Yentna Mining District, Matanuska-Susitna Borough, Alaska, USAi

Regional Level Types
Unnamed Occurrence (ARDF - TL051; near Kohlsaat Peak)	- not defined -
Yentna Mining District	Mining District
Matanuska-Susitna Borough	Borough
Alaska	State
USA	Country

Location: Curtin, Karlson, O'Leary, Day, and McDougal (1978) locate this silt sample site approximately one and a quarter mile N20E of Kohlsaat Peak in the southwest quarter of Section 23, T. 25 N., R. 19 W., of the Seward Meridian.
Geology: Curtin, Karlson, O'Leary, Day, and McDougal, (1978) recorded a silt anomaly with up to 0.75 ppm gold from a stream draining Kohlsaat Peak. In the late 1980s Cominco American Incorporated (unpublished report) collected rock samples of quartz-sericite-chlorite altered intrusive upstream from the published stream silt site that contained values ranging from 2.43 to 7.96 ppm gold from samples with minor arsenopyrite and chalcopyrite. Foley and others (1997) report six rock samples from the Kohlsaat pluton with maximum values of 14 ppb gold, 4 ppb palladium, and 5 ppb platinum. Reiners and others (1996) describe the Kohlsaat pluton as a concentrically zoned body with a biotite-granite-porphyry core that intruded seriate and porphyritic intermediate composition rocks. The latter include olive-, pyroxene-, and biotite-bearing quartz syenite, quartz monzonite, and monzonite. Lamprophyric mafic and ultramafic rocks that range in composition from peridotite to alkali gabbro and monzonite are found as large xenoliths at the northeastern margin of the pluton. The granite-porphyry core is altered to sericite, quartz, carbonate and tourmaline assemblages, with minor enrichments of copper, gold, lead, molybdenum, and zinc. They have postulated that the composite pluton at Kohlsaat formed from depleted mantle melts that were contaminated during several stages of mafic magma generation by crustal components. The Kohlsaat pluton is one of the larger composite plutons (Tcp) in the Yentna region described by Reed and Nelson (1980). These composite plutons form a 65-km-long curvilinear belt from Mt. Estelle in the south to Cascade Creek in the northeast that primarily intrude Mesozoic marine sedimentary rocks (KJs). Anomalous gold, platinum-group elements, copper, chrome, nickel and arsenic are reported from these plutons (Reed and others, 1978; Reed and Nelson, 1980; Nelson and others 1992; Foley and others, 1997). Gold and platinum group element placers have been worked at sites downstream from these bodies (Mertie, 1919; Cobb, 1973). See TL020, TL023, TL052, and TL005.
Workings: Reconnaissance mapping, stream silt and rock sampling by the U.S. Geological Survey (Curtin, Karlson, O'Leary, Day, and McDougal, 1978; Reed and Nelson, 1980) and Cominco American Incorporated in the late 1980s (unpublished report) have been done in this vicinity.
Age: Late Cretaceous/early Tertiary; mineralization is interpreted to be linked to the Kohsaat pluton which has been determined to be 65.6 +/- 1.9 m.y. old by Reed and Lanphere, 1973.
Alteration: Carbonate, chlorite, sericite, and quartz alteration.

Commodities (Major) - Au, Cu, Mo, Pb, Zn; (Minor) - As
Development Status: None

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Link to USGS - Alaska:	TL051

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References