Drilling program underway at Alianza's Klondike property... Vancouver, BC – TheNewswire - August 10, 2022 - Alianza Minerals Ltd. (“Alianza”)(TSXV:ANZ), (OTC:TARSF) is pleased to announce that a 1,000 metre (m) drill program is underway at the Klondike Property (“Klondike”), a property in Alianza’s strategic alliance with Cloudbreak Discovery PLC (“Cloudbreak”), located in southwestern Colorado, United States. The drill is turning and most of the construction related to the drill pads and temporary road access to them is complete. Notably, construction of the access between pads L and N at the Northeast Fault target revealed numerous new occurrences of copper oxide mineralized sandstone.
The planned 1,000m drill program, fully funded by partner Allied Copper Corp. (“Allied”), is designed to test three separate multi-kilometre copper-mineralized targets at the West Graben, East Graben and Northeast faults. The first phase $1.0 million drill program will test at least five of the 12 highest priority drillholes to a maximum depth of approximately 250m.
“We are extremely pleased to have drilling underway at Klondike, just over one year after announcing its acquisition with our alliance partner, Cloudbreak.” stated Mark T. Brown, Executive, Chairman of Alianza. “It is very encouraging that we are uncovering new copper occurrences as we build access into the drill pads, strengthening our conviction that we are testing robust copper targets.”
It is anticipated that the program will take four to six weeks to complete, with results potentially available in Q4 2022. Allied is funding this program under an option agreement whereby Allied can earn a 100% interest in the Klondike property from the Strategic Alliance (Alianza and Cloudbreak) over a four year period by funding $4.75 million in exploration, issuing 7 million shares and paying $400,000 to the alliance partners. An additional 6 million warrants in the stock of Allied are payable at certain milestones. The alliance partners will hold a 2% NSR, of which 1% can be purchased for $1.5 million.
About the Klondike Property
The Klondike Property is located approximately 25 kilometres south of Naturita, Colorado. This property lies within the Paradox Copper Belt, which includes the producing Lisbon Valley Mining Complex. Numerous historical copper occurrences have been identified throughout the district, however, many of these have not been explored using modern exploration techniques.
A 2021 reconnaissance program consisting of mapping, stream sediment sampling and rock sampling was undertaken at the Klondike Property to help define drill targets at the West Graben Fault and East Graben Fault targets. Rock sampling and mapping successfully expanded the footprint of both targets and identified a new target named the Northeast Fault. Sampling at the Northeast Fault returned 1.56% copper and 1.4 grams per tonne (“g/t”) silver over a 4.6 metre chip sample of bleached, bitumen spotted and altered Jurassic sandstones of the Saltwash member of the Morrison Formation.
Copper mineralized sandstones at the Northeast Fault target can be traced along the fault and outboard from it into the adjacent sandstones over an area 200 metres long by 100 metres wide before becoming obscured beneath gravel cover. Further anomalous copper, including 2.1 metres of 463 ppm copper, was encountered over one kilometre to the northwest where the structure and host strata next appear from beneath the same gravel cover.
At Klondike, documented copper exploration ceased in the 1960s with subsequent exploration targeting uranium the 1970s. Previous workers reported high-grade copper mineralization highlighted by results of 6.3% copper and 23.3 g/t silver in outcrop. In addition to its high-grade potential, disseminated copper-silver mineralization has been observed which may be amenable to modern open pit mining with Solvent Extraction Electrowinning (“SXEW”) processing similar to the Lisbon Valley Mining Complex. Sedimentary hosted copper deposits are an important contributor to world copper production, accounting for more than 20% of the world’s copper supply annually.
The project is road accessible year-round, traveling two kilometres of gravel road from paved highway. The project is comprised of 76 mining claims on Federal mineral rights managed by the BLM, in addition to an Exploration Permit and an exclusive right to a State lease from the State of Colorado.