RE: More NEWS out today...Strange to see not one but two good NRs no a Friday! I was able to visit the Tecalote target in December with EXM, and it is impressive. What you cannot appreciate from reading the NR is that from the crest of the ridge that hosts the mineralization, you are looking down a long way to the Moris Mine below. It is like standing at the top of a ski hill looking into the valley.
All of that extra distance up the mountainside, about 700m, is potentially mineralized. We know that Moris was a nice deposit with millions of tonnes of ore grade mineralization, but it was probably emplaced as part of a much larger structure like Tecalote, and then it was eroded by the forces of nature over millions of years. So the productive mine is just the lower elevation remnants of the system. Tecalote is exciting because the indications are that it is mineralized from top to bottom, and therefore could amount to a much larger total deposit.
There is a silica cap at the top of the ridge, which was probably formed as the mineralizing fluids within the veins boiled off, depositing the disolved silicates. That cap would have formed a barrier to trap the metals in the fluids, emplacing them within the vein structure below. It would also serve as a barrier to erosion, preserving the system.
There were numerous smaller workings along the top of the ridge that had been worked by local miners. Craig Gibson has done some sampling of that material and came up with assays of more than half an ounce of gold per tonne. Further down the ridge, other outcrops have been mapped which are believed to be part of the same system, and some very high assays were also recorded.
There are reasons therefore to be optimistic that the new targets may amount to a larger, richer deposit than the Moris Mine. And the entire project is still within easy trucking distance to the recovery plant at Moris, located just across a narrow valley. So if Hochschild is successful in their exploration, it will be a rapid development cycle to get the new deposit into production.
Watch this program very closely, because it certainly has the potential to report some very high grade intercepts that will get the market buzzing, and this could be the first big new discovery for EXM and the JV.
cheers!
COACH247