Gold-silver-lead-zinc-copper-molybdenum-bismuth mineralization in the Breckenridge mining district is related to intrusive complexes that were emplaced above and along the periphery of the late Eocene-early Oligocene Breckenridge stock. Deep drilling of the Wire Patch intrusive complex provides an important geologic and geochemical profile of nearly 3000 feet (900+m) of one of these systems. In the Wire Patch area, an upward-flaring complex of rhyodacite, rholite, and igneous intrusive breccia intruded Precambrian basement and nearly 3000 feet of moderately dipping Jurassic and Cretaceous sedimentary rocks and late Eocene and early Oligocene monzonite and quartz latite porphyry sills. This complex in turn was forcefully intruded by a composite body of multilithic hydrothermal intrusive breccia, which shattered adjacent country rocks, forming an envelope of monolithic breccia. The lower part of the complex also was intruded by aplite and igneous and hydrothermal breccias. Clasts of gneiss, schist, and granite within multilithic breccia indicate that the source of the intrusions lies below the basement contact.

Alteration and mineralization are present in three main zones within the Wire Patch pipe. Early biotite (?) and garnet and diopside skarns are present in rocks adjacent to the pipe, and they were overprinted in the upper part of the complex by inner phyllic and outer propylitic assemblages that are centered on the pipe. Green sericite that is present mainly in the matrix of the multilithic and monolithic breccias defines a middle zone of phyllic alteration; and pervasive green sericite alteration that overprints potassic alteration in the lower part of the pipe defines a low zone of phyllic alteration. Mineralization in the upper phyllic zone consists of galena, sphalerite, native gold, chalcopyrite, galenobismutite and pyrite within cavities in multilithic and monolithic breccia and in veins in adjacent hornfels. Highly anomalous concentrations of Pb, Zn, Au, G, Cu, Bi, and Mn were found in geochemical samples from this zone. A middle zone of chalcopyrite and pyrite within monolithic skarn breccia corresponds to anomalous concentrations of Cu, Mo, Au, Zn, Bi, and Mn; and mineralization within the lower phyllic zone is manifest as disseminated pyrite plus stockwork quartz-molybdenite-chalcopyrite veining. anomalous Cu, Mo, and F are present within the lower mineralized zone. Mineralization within the upper and middle zones followed intrusion of the multilithic breccia, whereas in the lower zone it was related to the emplacement of deep rhyolite intrusion(s).

In the surface rocks, anomalous Au, Ag, Pb, Zn. Cu, Mo, and Rb coincide with exposures of intrusive breccia, plus adjacent rocks southwest of the Wire Patch complex. Within the pipe, rubidium is enriched and strontium is depleted in areas of strong phyllic and potassic alteration. High Sr concentrations in the pipe are related to regions of carbonate alteration and to the present of Ca-silicates within sills adjacent to the complex.