Option Agreement with Williams Creek Explorations Ltd.
May 2006: Williams Creek can earn an interest in either or both the Merit and the Brookmere properties through spending $C4 Million over 4 years and issuing 1,000,000 shares of Williams Creek to Almaden during the same period.

overview | geology | past work

The Merit Project is an wholly Almaden owned epithermal gold-silver prospect in southern British Columbia covering about 1,700 hectares (17 sq. km). The property is easily accessed by road, 30 km west from the city of Merritt, and is situated in the Spence's Bridge Gold Belt, identified by Almaden Minerals.

low-sulphidation epithermal gold system

The main or El Gordo structure has been traced intermittently along a strike length of 2,700 metres and is highlighted by two segments of exposed alteration and mineralization called Discovery Hill and Sullivan's Ridge zones. Both of these zones are characterized by intense iron carbonate-hematitic silica and clay alteration containing elevated to strongly anomalous values of one or more of the epithermal suite trace elements As, Sb, Hg, Ba plus copper (Cu) and manganese (Mn).

The more prominent Sullivan's Ridge consists of a 10- to 50-metre wide zone that is readily traceable in outcrop and talus over a length of 750 metres. Locally abundant quartz vein and carbonate-quartz breccia rubble occurs within the alteration envelope. Seven grab samples of this material from random sites along the zone have yielded gold and silver analyses averaging 640 ppb (Au) and 19 ppm (Ag), with values up to 1,721 ppb and 75 ppm respectively (1.7 g/t Au, 75 g/t Ag). Initial soil geochemical sampling on Sullivan's Ridge over an area of 800 metres by 200 metres, at 100-metre line spacing by 25-metre sample intervals, generated a total of 104 soil samples. The results of this soil survey show many anomalous multi-element sites including gold values of 10 ppb to 307 ppb.

A second, parallel northerly trending structure has been identified 1.5 kilometres to the west of El Gordo. This structure is characterized by the West Zone quartz vein and rubble train which has been traced over a 350-metre strike length. Initial hand trenching across this zone at three closely spaced intervals has revealed a massive hematitic quartz vein having true widths of 1.5 to 2.5 metres. Ten continuous chip samples across the vein have returned gold analyses averaging 105 ppb (0.1 g/t Au) together with anomalous Ag (to 12.9 ppm), Cu (to 169 ppm), As (to 256 ppm), Sb (to 10.2 ppm), Ba (to 1517 ppm) and Hg (to 11.75 ppm). A single grab sample of vein rubble located about 135 metres along strike from the trenched exposures yielded respective gold and silver analyses of 880 ppb (0.8 g/t Au) and 29.9 ppm (~ 30 g/t Ag).

The nature of the alteration and mineralization found to date at Discovery Hill, Sullivan's Ridge and West zones, including the presence of high mercury and barium values, suggest that these zones may represent the very upper reaches of a significant epithermal system. Detailed geochemical, mineralogic and fluid inclusion studies of vein material will be conducted to better determine the setting of these occurrences. Almaden considers the initial sampling results to be very encouraging, and a 2005 field program is being planned.

 

During late 2004 and the summer of 2005 an initial property evaluation was carried out by Almaden under the supervision of Edward Balon, P.Geo. The program included prospecting and reconnaissance rock sampling, grid soil geochemistry (1,182 samples taken), limited geological mapping and hand trenching on two of the three mineral zones identified to date. Highlights include average gold analyses of 965 ppb (0.97 g/t) from all 115 reconnaissance rock samples (with values up to 7.9 g/t gold) and three contiguous channel samples which average 7.2 g/t gold across a 1.8 meter true width section of quartz veining and altered hostrock exposed by trenching in the main (Sullivan Ridge) zone.