Field Trip 04

Northwest Territories Kimberlite Drill Core Collection

Leader: Scott Cairns (Northwest Territories Geological Survey)

Dates: 

• PRE-FT04A takes place on the afternoon of Saturday 06 July 2024.
• PRE-FT04B takes place on the morning of Sunday 07 July 2024.
• PRE-FT04C takes place on the afternoon of Sunday 07 July 2024.
• POST-FT04D takes place on the morning of Saturday 13 July 2024.

Duration: Half day.

Location: Based in Yellowknife.

Registration: Registration fee is $95. Ground transport is included.  If the field trip is full at the time of registration, there will be an option to be added to a waiting list and you will be informed should spaces become available. See Field Trip Overview, Important Dates and Registration for more details.

Transport: By bus within Yellowknife. Delegates will need to make their own travel arrangements to and from Yellowknife.

Accommodation: To be organised by delegate. The 12 IKC preferred room rates at the three hotels are available for the dates required to participate in PRE-FT04A,B,C and POST-FT04D so bookings for the main conference can be extended. See Accommodation Page for more details.

Description: The Northwest Territories Geological Survey operates a geological materials storage and viewing facility in Yellowknife that hosts over 270 kimberlite drillholes, making it one of the largest publicly available kimberlite collections in the world. This collection includes many examples of both well-documented and lesser-known kimberlites from the Northwest Territories and Nunavut and select kimberlites from other jurisdictions.

For this half day field trip, drillcore will be displayed from various Northwest Territories and Nunavut mines and exploration projects in the Slave and Interior Platform geological provinces.

These will showcase a variety of kimberlite emplacement types including intrusive, extrusive, pyroclastic, resedimented volcanoclastic and epiclastic. Core from diamond mines will include Panda, Koala, Leslie and Misery from the Ekati Mine, A21 and A514 from the Diavik Mine, Jericho Mine as well as the Renard Mine in Quebec. Core from exploration projects will include core from the Kelvin-Faraday kimberlites, DO-27, Drybones, Contwoyto, Mud Lake, Ranch Lake, Dharma, Nicolas Bay, Monument, Big Blue, the recently discovered Anchor and Sequoia kimberlites as well as the Fort à la Corne project in Saskatchewan.

The kimberlites that can be viewed on this trip range in age from approximately 50 to 600 Ma. Photography will be permitted. No sample collection will be allowed and drillcore is to remain in the core boxes. Arrangements for using samples at a later time for research purposes can be discussed with the Northwest Territories Geological Survey on a case by case basis.