Blue Starr Occurence Project - Summary

This corundum occurrence outcrops approximately one kilometer northwest of the junction of the Little Slocan and Slocan Rivers and is easily accessed by a gravel road from Vallican. The outcrop trends roughly east-west and can be followed for approximately 350 metres. Discontinuous outcroppings extend westward for another 2 kilometres, at elevation ranging from 520 to 600 metres.

Magnetite is a common accessory mineral and in some areas accounts for as much as 5% of the mode, forming large (up to 1.5 centimetres) blobs. The rock is consequently very magnetic in those areas. Zircon is another accessory mineral locally found on the outcrop, with crystals reaching 1 centimetre (~ 15 carats).

A felsic intrusion outcrops at the southernmost part of the Blu Moon showing. It is coarse grained to pegmatic, cream in colour and contains large (up to 4 centimetres long) elongated black amphibole crystals.

The Blu Moon sapphires occur as hexagonal barrel-shaped crystals and plates, singly or in small groups. The colour of the sapphire varies from sky-blue to cornflower and indigo blue, violet and purple, and is often zoned. In the core of the fold hinge, large sapphire crystals have formed including a blue crystal exceeding 150 carats in weight.

Previous hand mining from this area has averaged about 1 kilogram (5,000 carats) of course rough sapphire per tonne of rock.