The South Fork Silica deposit is located adjacent to Highway 3, 26 kilometres south of Salmo at an elevation of 857m.
The area is underlain by quartzite (Nugget Member) of the Hadrynian to Lower Cambrian Quartzite Range Formation. The quartzite, ranging from phyllitic to purer white, has a high silica-low contaminant content. In 1987, a 2000-tonne shipment of quartzite was sent to Trail to test for use as a silica flux.
This was an open pit operation with a production capacity of 64,000 tonnes per year. Production in 1988 was 22,750 tonnes; the product was transported by truck to the Cominco (Teck) smelter at Trail, British Columbia. Production apparently continued to at least 1992 if not longer. Reserves are estimated at 9 million tonnes (Mining in British Columbia 1988, page 94) but no grade is associated with this tonnage.
Work in 2017 focussed on collecting representative specimens and SiO2 assay results. Results indicate high silica with Si content up to 30.87%Si, less than 1% Al and less than 0.2% Fe.
Future work should include detail geological mapping and diamond core drilling to define chemical variation in the quartzite layers.
