Field Trip 07

Kennady North Project Drill Core

Leaders: Casey Hetman (SRK Consulting), Kimberley Webb (SRK Consulting), Tom McCandless (MCC Geoscience Inc.) and Chris Hrkac (Aurora Geosciences)

Dates: 

  • PRE-FT07A takes place on the morning of Sunday 07 July 2024.
  • PRE-FT07B takes place on the afternoon of Sunday 07 July 2024.
  • CANCELLED: POST-FT07C takes place on the afternoon of Saturday 13 July 2024.

Duration: Half day.

Location: Based in Yellowknife.

Registration: Registration fee is $95 CAD and includes ground transport. 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 FT07, so bookings for the main conference can be extended. See Accommodation Page for more details.

Description: This is an exceptional opportunity to learn about how Kimberley-type Pyroclastic Kimberlites (KPK, formerly known as ‘tuffisitic kimberlite’) form. Participants will examine drill core from the Mountain Province Diamonds Kennady North Project adjacent to the Gahcho Kué Diamond Mine, NWT. Extensive and detailed work has shown that this property hosts the early Cambrian to late Neoproterozoic Kelvin and Faraday 1, 2 and 3 kimberlites located ~10km northeast Gahcho Kué which were emplaced into the Archaean Slave Craton. These kimberlites are eroded, unique shallow-dipping, subterranean, tubular bodies with complex external morphologies. The bodies comprise multiple phases of kimberlite separated by sharp internal contacts subparallel to the external contact that resulted from multiple emplacement events. The textures of each phase are mainly KPK as well as hypabyssal kimberlite (HK) and KPK-HK transitional textures. These KPK and related textures must have been produced deep within the volcanic plumbing system.

In addition to drillcore, participants will have the opportunity to view polished cut slabs, photomicrographs, high-resolution drillcore scans, 3D Leapfrog geological models as well as series of posters and manuscripts from previous kimberlite conferences. Binocular microscopes will be available to examine drill core and slabs.

Field Trip Sponsors:

Above - Location of the Kelvin and Faraday kimberlites in the Kennady North Project area in relation to other kimberlites located on the Slave Craton.
Above - Leapfrog 3d image of the relative positions of the Kelvin and Faraday kimberlites

Top: Kennady North Project core logging facility. Second from top: High resolution core image from the Kelvin kimberlite. Bottom left: Photomicrograph examples from the Faraday 2 kimberlite. Middle right: Core slab examples from the Kelvin kimberlite. Bottom right: Leapfrog 3d model of the Kelvin kimberlite with drill hole traces.