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The Yago/La Sarda project is located in the state of Nayarit near the Pacific Coast of Mexico, seven kilometres from highway 15 which is one of the major thoroughfares from the United States to Mexico City.

Almaden has focussed La Sarda area, which is in the most northern part of the property. The area has four parallel quartz-adularia veins in altered volcanic rocks that underwent exploration and mining development in the 1990's by a small Mexican concern. Almaden acquired a 100% interest in the claims covering the area of these veins in 2000.

Although there has been production from all four veins, most production came from the La Sarda-San Juan vein system.

 

The Yago project covers an area of extensive epithermal quartz-adularia veining. Many of the veins have had historic production of bonanza grades. In the La Sarda area of the property, production was underway in shallow workings on four separate veins until February 2000.

On the La Sarda vein, workings extended to depths of roughly 80 metres below surface. On the bottom levels, veining coalesces into wider, stronger vein structures (one and a half to about two metres wide) and grades become more consistent. Fluid inclusion analysis of vein material from the lower mine workings indicated formation temperatures around 140% Celsius, an indication that these workings are still high in the vein system which indicates potential for grades to continue to depth. Surface sampling and inspection of the limited workings on the other three known veins indicates that these also have the potential to host high-grade ore-shoots, similar to those mined on La Sarda vein.

The banded quartz-adularia veins and stockwork veined country rocks bears many similarities to the Sleeperdeposit in Nevada, McLaughlin in California, the Hishikari deposit in Japan, as well as Golden Cross and Martha Hill in New Zealand, all of which were or are significant gold producers. The recent discoveries of two deposits of this class, the El Penon deposit in Chile and the Midas deposit in Nevada, were made by drilling veins exposed in shallowly eroded hydrothermal alteration systems. There has been no exploration by drilling or other means beyond the lowest workings and Almaden considers the depth potential and bonanza grades already encountered on these vein merits a thorough drill test.