Deposits of this type are referred to in many ways, such as; gold quartz veins or lodes, mesothermal gold, shear-hosted or shear zone gold, orogenic gold, syn-orogenic veins, Mother Lode gold, etc.
Locally, these deposits occur primarily as quartz veins, stockworks or stringer zones in fault, fracture and shear zones and are typified by the variability of host rocks which are affected by pervasive carbonatization with localized sericitization and sulfidation marginal to gold-bearing quartz veins.
In the Yellowjacket Zone, ophiolite-hosted gold quartz veins stockworks or breccias are contained within faultbounded lenses of oceanic igneous crust. Listwanite altered ultramafic rocks are consistently associated with the ophiolite-hosted gold veins, but rarely host them. This deposit type contains very high grade, coarse native gold occurring in quartz veins or flooding hosted by ophiolitic mafic igneous crustal rocks (gabbro, diabase, basalt, andesite) adjacent to listwanite altered ultramafic rocks.
Placer deposits in the camp are situated in stream valleys cutting erosional windows through the carbonatized relatively flat lying thrust faults within the Atlin ophiolitic assemblage.
Historically, significant economic concentrations of placer gold are restricted to streams in the Pine Creek and McKee Creek watersheds. It appears that preferential erosion through flat-lying mineralized thrust contacts in both these areas was accelerated ........
