The San Carlos project is located
within a north-south trending belt of alkalic intrusive rocks
in eastern Mexico. A mining camp was active on part of the property during the late 1800s and early 1900s in a zone now know as the San Jose Area.
The geologic and structural environment at
San Carlos compares very favourably with the settings of several
world-class porphyry copper-gold and skarn deposits associated
with alkalic rocks. These include the Grasberg district, West
Papua, Indonesia and the Bingham Canyon deposit, Utah, U.S.A.
The San Carlos project covers an intrusive complex which has cut through folded and deformed limestone units. Almaden’s believes that the contact environment between the intrusive and sedimentary rocks is prospective for both copper-gold and silver-lead-zinc mineralisation. Work to date has only explored roughly a quarter of this contact environment, but results have been extremely encouraging. Soil samples from the SAn Jose Area returned gold values up to 1000 ppb within a broad geochemical anomaly with values ranging from 100 ppb to 1935 ppb gold, and averaging 372 ppb gold over an area of approximately 300 metres by 1000 metres.
The San Carlos project
comprises a number of exploration targets: the San Jose Area, the Magnum Area, and the Jatero Area.
The San Jose
Area represents the most advanced area, being the site of an historic mining camp that was active during the late
1800's and early 1900's. Production from this area was from a
number of high-grade copper-gold skarn ore bodies and was limited to 100 metres of less in depth. An indication
of the high grade nature of these skarn bodies comes from records of 4,067 tons of direct shipping ore that averaged 4.02% copper
(Cu) and 11.24 grams/tonne gold.
Fifteen grab samples from dumps, taken by a major company,
averaged 2.58 grams/tonne gold, 15.4 grams/ tonne silver and
2.99% copper. One of the highest samples ran 14.25 grams/tonne
gold, 100 grams/tonne silver and 7.70% copper. Of equal interest
is the possibility of developing a large porphyry copper-gold
deposit in the altered intrusive complex, which has intruded
into the limestone units that host the high-grade skarn mineralisation.
The Magnum
Zone located 15 kilometres south of the San Jose mining
camp is a large area defined by an airborne magnetic anomaly,
and a number of stream silt samples strongly anomalous in copper
and gold. Follow-up reconnaissance work has identified skarn
boulders and large areas of outcropping gabbro and pyroxenite.
High grade float samples from some of the anomalous creeks returned
values of up to 0.8% Cu and 2.0 g/t Au. Further prospecting and
sampling will be required to determine the significance of these
anomalies. Geochemical stream samples will also be re-analysed
for platinum group elements.
The El Jatero
Zone: Little is known
about this interesting gold stream silt anomaly, which is located
15 km east of the magnum zone. The anomalous streams appear to
drain an area of highly clay altered in intrusive rocks, and
follow-up mapping and prospecting will focus on the epithermal
gold potential of this target.
2006 Soil Geochemistry & IP Geophysical Surveys |
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Hawkeye has informed Almaden that the program consisted of six holes for a total of 950 meters of drilling designed to test several high chargeability induced polarization ("IP") anomalies that are spatially coincident with elevated lead, zinc, silver, copper and gold in soil and rock samples taken during previous work programs.
