| | | | | |
| | | | | |
| | | | |
| | |  43-101 Report Ziggurat Gold-Silver Property, Round Mountain-Northumberland Trend, Nevada Mexivada Mining Corp. owns 100% of 53 lode mining claims totaling 1,060 acres in size, located 20 km north of Kinross-Barrick's giant +15 million ounce Round Mountain open pit, heap leach gold mine, and 5 Km south of Fronteer Gold's +3 million ounce Northumberland Mine gold property. Fronteer controls a large block of claims in between and north of the Mexivada claimblocks. Mexivada would like to Joint Venture the Ziggurat property to drill test it for open pittable Goldstrike (Rodeo Mine)-type gold deposits and epithermal Gold Hill-type gold deposits. Fronteer Gold has been conducting exploration drilling at its Hilltop target area, situated just north of Mexivada's Ziggurat north claim boundary, and is now permitting for additional drilling exploration! Mexivada's lode claims were staked based on sampled areas containing anomalous gold assay values, and the inferred presence of a Goldstrike (Rodeo sub-type)-style bulk mineable Carlin-style gold target area. Twelve apparently shallow exploration holes were drilled by Teck and Western States Minerals (in the 1980's and 90s?) into Upper Plate carbonate strata in the western part of the Ziggurat property, away from the now-perceived best gold targets, and other drillholes to the east of this target area. Teck, Homestake, and Western States Minerals found surface "gold showings" (outcrops assaying up to 2 grams per tonne gold) along the "Ziggurat Tectonic Zone" ("ZTZ"), a major WNW-trending regional structural zone which is several kilometres wide and tens of kilometres long. It appears to be similar in form to the major WNW-trending major, deep-seated basement fault structures present at Mexivada's Jefferson property, at Gold Hill and Gold Junction - Moores Creek, Round Mountain, and Great Basin Gold's Hollister Mine to the north. Part of the ZTZ, north of Mexivada's claims, recently was tested by induced polarization geophysics by Newmont and now is being drill-tested by Fronteer Development. The best Carlin-style targets, with large scale OPHL gold potential, are believed to lie on Mexivada's claims. See the figures below. Mexivada staked 2 gold-mineralized areas along the southern side of the ZTZ, along Riedel-type shear structures and arcuate northwest-trending Roberts Mountain Thrust ("RMT") type fault structures on the west side of Mexivada's target area that intersect the main ZTZ. Mexivada channel sampled outcrops there of "Upper Plate" gold mineralized "Upper Plate" Paleozoic cherty limestones and shaly, locally iron-permeated (hematite and limonite) sedimentary rocks with local hematization, sulfidation, and silicification, discovering several areas with anomalous gold mineralization. Teck and Western States Minerals conducted initial, apparently shallow drill tests in Upper Plate cover rocks of certain mineralized areas along the ZTZ in the project areas. These drilling data appear to have been lost. Fronteer was drilling far to the north in 2008, in the Northumberland mining district area. Mexivada has generated a new geologic gold model of the Ziggurat claims area that suggests that gold was not only localized along the main, west-northwest trending high-angle ZTZ faults, but also alongside curved NW-trending Carlin gold-host RMT faults, with gold having leaked upward into and through the low-angle faulted "Upper Plate" Paleozoic rock strata via NNE and other high-angle gold feeder faults. Rocks at the surface above Newmont's Leeville gold mine at Carlin-Goldstrike show similar hematitic to limonitic iron enrichments as are seen at the surface at Ziggurat. Contact metamorphic alteration and Cretaceous(?) bull quartz veins are situated north of the proposed new drilling targets, suggesting the presence at depth of a large granitic "buttress" zone adjoining mineralization, such as occurs at Gold Acres in the Cortez Mining district further to the northwest. At Barrick's Goldstrike (Rodeo) Mine near Carlin, gold-bearing ore-depositing solutions came up along high-angle feeder faults and then spread out locally, as at Rodeo, along low-angle RMT faults that also channelized gold-bearing solutions which then deposited gold ores along them in permeable, altered Lower Plate limestone host rock strata. Lower Plate "Popovich-style" Paleozoic dirty limestone rocks likely are present (Dan Shawe geologic map and description, USGS) beneath the presently exposed mineralized Upper Plate strata at Ziggurat, and the curving NW-trending fault geometry is suggestive of the presence of a similar low-angle dipping Lower Plate block of folded, thrust faulted strata at unknown depth. The thrust faulting also could easily have formed anticlinal ore traps in both the Lower Plate and Upper Plate Paleozoic strata. This geologic-mineralization setting is interpreted to be very similar to that present at Goldstrike, albeit of smaller size, and is very favorable for localization of larger bodies of gold mineralization, if present. Carlin-style gold mineralization was reported by Shawe to be present at the Steigmeyer prospect south of the Round Mountain gold mine (see figure below). No exploration holes have been drilled at Ziggurat to test this new gold exploration concept, only local tests of the Upper Plate rock sequence. The target size at Ziggurat is large enough to host a multi-million ounce Carlin-style bulk mineable gold deposit, and no sulfides are seen in the oxidized limy rocks in the immediate target zone to date. Mexivada believes that Ziggurat offers good potential for either a stand-alone gold mine or a mine that could provide incremental feed to one of the existing nearby mines along the Round Mountain - Northumberland gold Trend. Maps & Photos
click on thumbnail to enlarge
| |    | | | |
| | |  | | | |
| |  |  | | | |
)
)
)
)
)
)