PolarX Ltd (ASX:PXX) (FRA:PX0) has successfully staked and registered 96 new federal lode claims to consolidate tenure at Humboldt Range Project in Nevada, USA, more than tripling the size of the land under tenure in the Fourth of July area.
The Humboldt Range Project now comprises 273 lode mining claims in two groups: Black Canyon and Fourth of July.
The 96 new lode claims at Fourth of July will be subject to the mine lease agreement with existing claim owners once PolarX exercises the option to acquire the mine lease agreement from the vendor.
Legal due diligence on the existing 177 lode claims is still in progress and is expected to be completed within the next two weeks, following which, PolarX’s option to acquire the mining rights may be exercised.
Presence of high-grade gold and silver
Upon exercise of the option to acquire the mine lease agreement, PolarX will immediately begin an evaluation of the length and continuity of the vein sets to determine whether high-grade mineable widths and tonnages are present, along with an evaluation of whether the altered rock between the veins contains economically viable grades of gold and silver amenable to bulk mining.
The Humboldt Range Project complements PolarX’s Alaska Range Project, providing a longer field season (April-December) for another high-quality project in a Tier-1 jurisdiction that can be serviced by the company’s existing consultants.
Validation sampling by PolarX at several sites confirmed the presence of high grades of gold and silver in outcropping veins and historic mine dumps, with peak values of up to 37.7 g/t gold and 18 g/t silver at Black Canyon and up to 31.2 g/t gold and up to 1,590 g/t silver at Fourth of July.
Humboldt Range Project
The Humboldt Range Project is between two large-scale active mines: the Florida Canyon gold mine (more than 5 million ounces of gold) and the Rochester silver-gold mine (more than 400 million ounces of silver and more than 3 million ounces of gold).
Humboldt Range contains geology consistent with bonanza-style epithermal gold-silver mineralisation and bulk mineable epithermal gold-silver mineralisation, both of which are well known in Nevada.
The claims have been owned by the same family since the 1950s and very limited exploration has been reported.
Access to the project is via roads off the I-80 Interstate Highway, which lies less than 15 kilometres to the west.
Widespread narrow vein mineralisation with visible gold occurs in the claims and was historically mined via numerous adits and underground workings between 1865 and 1927.
Mineralisation occurs in high-grade epithermal quartz veins of varying thickness, either as isolated veins or as zones of sheeted/anastomosing veins within zones of intensely altered and mineralised host rocks.
Numerous high-grade gold and silver assays from 2006-2007 sampling of outcropping veins and grab sampling from the dumps of old mine workings occur in both groups of claims, with peak values up to 3,384 g/t gold, 2,837 g/t silver, 22.9% lead and 3.1% zinc.