Ximen Mining Corp (TSX-V:XIM, OTCQB:XXMMF) reported promising results from rock and soil geochemical surveys carried out last year on the Quartz Mountain property, which lies 12.5 kilometers (km) southwest of Kimberly, in British Columbia.
Quartz Mountain consists of two blocks of claims covering 3,829 hectares and 13 mineral occurrences. Ximen said the northern block was explored in 2022 and covers 8 mineral occurrences with past production and known showings of gold.
Field work in 2022 consisted of GPS surveying of historic workings, verification sampling of known gold occurrences, soil geochemistry, and drone photogrammetry, according to the Vancouver-based company.
Ximen said that its rock sampling of the Anderson's pit area on the Quartz Mountain property yielded 12.2 grams per tonne (g/t) gold (Au), 62.2 g/t silver (Ag), and 2.9 weight % lead (Pb) on a channel sample of 1.2 meters (m).
Quartz Mountain straddles Perry Creek, on which there are modern and historic placer gold workings. Perry Creek lies near the center of the 100 km long and 30 km wide Kimberley Gold Trend, which covers placer gold deposits on the Wild Horse River, Perry Creek and the Moyie River.
Originally discovered in 1864, nearly 1.5 million ounces of gold have reportedly been recovered and small operations continue on each of these water courses nearly 150 years after discovery. The Kimberley Gold trend is centered around the St. Mary's and Moyie faults and overlies the Vulcan basement tectonic zone.
On Quartz Mountain, the well-known Anderson's pit was mined historically and produced 102 ounces of gold, 167 ounces of silver and 200 kilograms of lead, according to BC Minfile records.
Ximen said its soil geochemical survey conducted northeast from Anderson's pit showed a gold anomaly extending along the projection of the vein. Analytical results ranged from the detection limit of 0.001 to 0.167 parts per million (ppm) gold.
The firm described the results as “encouraging” as the vein and trend of the soil anomaly coincides with the orientation of the Perry Creek fault, suggesting “this fault is a fundamental control on the location of the gold mineralization.”
A subparallel gold anomaly is seen further east, and an anomaly occurs on the eastern most extent where the soil grid coincides with an occurrence named "Gold". The geological structure is an antiform within the Creston formation, and the interpreted hinge area coincides with the Perry Creek fault, close to Anderson's pit. This fold structure may be another control on the localization of gold, said the company.
Ximen explained that it plans to “extend the soil geochemical grid to the east” and geochemical surveys will also be done at other occurrences on the property.
Contact the author Uttara Choudhury at uttara@proactiveinvestors.com
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