Arizona Silver Exploration Inc (CVE:AZS, OTCQB:AZASF) reported the first encouraging findings from initial geophysical surveying at the new Sycamore Canyon gold-silver property in Graham county.
As revealed last month, it has struck a lease with option to purchase agreement for the site, which it believes has 'tremendous' potential.
Arizona completed 11km of VLF-EM survey lines across the prime gold-silver bearing breccia and silicified zone in the heart of the property, it said.
"The survey grid covers an area 600 metres long by 500 metres wide, with geophysical lines on 25-metre spacing and stations every 10 metres. Notably, the survey detected the main target zone from one end of the grid to the other, and clearly shows the target extends beyond the limits of the initial grid."
As well as defining the geometry of the prime target area and the open extensions of this target to both the north and south, the survey identified several parallel but weaker structures that could represent additional targets within the grid area, added the firm.
The firm has also submitted 98 rock samples to ALS Minerals’ sample preparation facility in Tucson.
Historic rock sampling by the underlying owners detected gold and silver values up to 31 gpt (grams per ton) gold and 458 gpt silver, but the descriptions of those samples were inadequate to correlate precious metal values with discernible geology, said the company.
"We were particularly attracted to the Sycamore Canyon property because the geology has some similarities to the upper portions of gold-silver ores from the Comstock lode in Nevada," said Greg Hahn, president and chief executive.
"At Comstock, the upper portions of the precious metal lodes were characterized by brecciated quartz veins and encasing silicified wallrock with erratic to absent precious metal and base metal values.
"Many of the high-grade lodes discovered by underground drifting had no visible manifestation either at the surface or vertically above the high-grade stopes when intersected by subsequent exploration drill holes looking for up-dip extensions.
"We believe we may be at the very top of the level where precious metals and base metals were precipitated from solutions at Sycamore Canyon. The prime target on the property has never been drilled and we look forward to being able to drill this target area later this year.”
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